I made one of these brews in February of this year and made the mistake of squeezing the hop tea-bags when they'd been in for two days. As a result they burst and I had a hell of a job filtering the crud from the brew. The result after three weeks' bottle conditioning, though a bit cloudy because of my stupidity, was the best home-brew I have ever made:smile:. I have just bought another kit and am looking forward to the new brew!
Thoroughly recommended if you like a high alcohol, hoppy beer.
just recently bottled my batch and got a mighty 8% ABV from this kit!
OG 1061
FG 1000
Added lemon peel (half a lemon) 4 days after fermenting started.
Fermented for total of 15 days in 1st fermenter and then I had a 2nd fermenter for 1 day, just to avoid all particles from bottom / yeast etc
Added then 145 grams om table sugar boiled in some water as priming sugar.
And now I'd just cant wait for this beer to get ready...!! :party:
Really smelled awesome....lemon and hops all the way! and sooooo strong!
Going to attempt to crash cool mine for a couple of days then hop midweek when I've brought the temperature back up. Got some additional cascade hops which im going to use and split the batch, half original half with additional cascade. Can't wait for the end result.
My brew genuinely took 7 weeks before there was no airlock activity. Racked and batch primed before bottling - one week in the warm and then out into the garage. Now 3 weeks later, it's clear as a bell and starting to lose some of the raw alcohol taste that it had. I've a funny feeling I'll be making more of this.
Drinking : Woodforde's Sundew
Conditioning : Evil Dog DIPA
Conditioning : Milestone's Green Man
FV : Brooklyn Everyday IPA
Next Up : Coopers IPA
Mine has been in the bottle around a month and exactly as the poster above said is incredibly strong but not as hoppy as hoped. Disappointing really as the fermentation smelt incredible and tasters along the way had the hoppy taste I was looking for.
I guess I'm going to leave this a few more weeks to see if the taste improves.
Not as hoppy as hoped either but put that down to the fact that I'd broken my glass trial jar and used airlock activity to judge when to add the hop teabags. Started fermenting again so the hops were in there far longer than the 2-3 days the kit recommends. Not sure that maturation will help with a hop aroma though but it is getting better to drink.
It isn't as hoppy as I'd imagined it was going to be either, the alcohol taste masks it quite a bit though I think.
I actually bought this kit in error, the one I wanted was the four finger jack kit by bulldog.