First brew - preperation.

[Fil]

fwiw whenever i bottle i grab 4-6 and stash em in a crate at the back of the garage, when i have a few cratefuls of stashed ales, its a fun evening with a pal or 2 to have a sampling and comparrison taste test.. however if doing this pay more attention to lable glue, milk n pritstick work well for a few weeks, but will fall off the bottle if exposed to a lil damp now n again over months in a garage..

you can end up supping lushouse ales and spend all night guessing what lable fell of what bottle so be safe and cellotape stash bottle lables on

 

[Brewski]

Now that I've bottled my brew, I've been having trouble keeping the bottles at a constant 20C in this cold weather. There isn't really anywhere suitable in the house where I can keep them.

The solution - I dug out a large, shallow plastic tray, filled it with most of my bottles, some water and my trusty aquarium heater. They're now at a constant 19.7C. :thumb:

 

[Brewski]

After carbonating for a week and a half I thought I'd see how it was doing, so I stuck a bottle in the fridge for an hour before cracking it open.

I don't think it looks too bad! (Opinions welcome.)

Carbonation and head retention could be better but it's certainly a lot clearer than I expected and there's even a bit of lacing. The flavour has improved since bottling day too - cheers!

Edit: Blimey that was tasty - very, very tasty. It's so tempting to stick another one in the fridge. :party:

Edit2: I may or may not have stuck another one in the fridge which I may or may not drink in an hour or so. :

 

[Brewski]

After sampling two bottles last night, I can confirm that this brew is without doubt over 6% ABV.

:drunk:

 

[Brewski]

After 2 weeks carbonating I've just taken the bottles out of the water bath, dried them off, boxed them (and taped the boxes shut to help reduce early drinky-poo temptation) and stuck them in the coldest part of the house for the cold conditioning stage.

They're currently sat at 13C but will drop further overnight. Is this cold enough or should I stick them in the shed?

 

[Fil]

Thats fine, 11-13C are the ideal cellar temps anyway

i admire the resolve, even with my preference for a mature beer i often have a green bottle to sample when conditioned

 

[Brewski]

Thats fine, 11-13C are the ideal cellar temps anyway

i admire the resolve, even with my preference for a mature beer i often have a green bottle to sample when conditioned

Cheers Fil. :thumb:

And worry not, there's been a fair bit of "quality control" sampling along the way. :whistle: (I knew those 330ml bottles were a good idea. :) )

 

[Brewski]

I cracked one open after tea and I've just finished it. It's improving.

Held up to the light, it's a lovely light-ruby colour and absolutely crystal clear. Carbonation seems to have improved - the bubbles are now tiny and there were plenty of them rising through the beer right to the end. It doesn't look how I imagined home-brew would look (i.e. alco-soup :) ). The flavour is improving too, it's very, very drinkable. :thumb:

If I was going to be critical then I'd say head retention and lacing was OK but I'd like it to be better but heck, this is a kit, right? I'd like more body too but I did add a lot of dextrose on top of the beer enhancer.

Overall, no complaints whatsoever.

Edit: I'm now promoting this in my signature from "conditioning" to "drinking". *Fanfare* :)

 

[Fil]

Great to hear your happy with the brew, and your inspired to continue enhancing the kits..

Just my opinion..
as beer enhancer is a mix of dextrose and spray malt, a lil spray malt and a load of dextrose.. and dextrose alone will ferment out without any body enhancing benefits, for more body perhaps use spraymalt or lme to enhance the kits in future.

imho dextrose has very little benefit over white sugar 500g spraymalt and 500g sugar would be a better addition, opt for lighter spray malt as the kit lme should contain all the colour needed..

or start considering if you would enjoy a longer biab brewday

 

[Brewski]

Great to hear your happy with the brew, and your inspired to continue enhancing the kits..

Just my opinion..
as beer enhancer is a mix of dextrose and spray malt, a lil spray malt and a load of dextrose.. and dextrose alone will ferment out without any body enhancing benefits, for more body perhaps use spraymalt or lme to enhance the kits in future.

imho dextrose has very little benefit over white sugar 500g spraymalt and 500g sugar would be a better addition, opt for lighter spray malt as the kit lme should contain all the colour needed..

or start considering if you would enjoy a longer biab brewday

Cheers Fil, much appreciated. For my next brew I'm going for something lighter, just for a change. I've ordered a Coopers Ozzy Pale Ale kit, 1Kg Coopers Brew Enhancer2 and some hops (Cascade), and may also add 200g or so dextrose just to bump it up a bit (I used the 1Kg Youngs Beer Enhancer, 850g dextrose and no hop additions with this JB IPA kit). I get what you're saying about body but for now I'm just going to reduce the sugar a bit (compared to my last brew) and see what happens.

I will be cutting added sugar out all together soon though, hopefully, by doing at least a partial mash with the aim of going all grain BIAB very soon after. I look forward to comparing the results. :thumb:

 

[Brewski]

I should say, and I can't believe I didn't mention this in my "critical appraisal" a couple of posts ago, is the hop profile of this, or at least, my beer.

Now, if you're a typical "English beer" drinker, used to drinking modestly hopped "English" (British?) IPA's then you'll be fine - there's a nice malty flavour with nice bitterness and a hop profile which is very tasty but not outstanding. It's very, very good. (I'm really enjoying it, as you already know). :

If you want a bit more however, like a distinctive hop flavour, or a hop kick, then you need to think about hop additions. It's very easily done and I imagine it would work really well with this kit.

I like both styles of beer but thought it was worth mentioning. :thumb: