Okay, my second brew has been in the FV for 11 days and will be moved to the cask at the weekend (brew+14). I've again gone for the Muntons Gold Olde English Bitter just to prove to myself that the first effort was not a total fluke. I did, however, make a couple of changes from my previous method:
- I treated the water with half a campden tablet;
- Used sodium metabisulphate for the final rinse of the kit;
- and I swopped the kit yeast for Safale S04.
The sample taken this evening to test the FG seems to prove that kit brew #1 wasn't a fluke. The fermentation went off like a rocket after an initial 12 hour lag (which I think is partly to do with the FV coming up to temperature) and appeared to be complete in a little over 24 hours. The sample was noticeably clearer than the previous brew and has an initial FG of 1009. I would attribute all these good things to use of the Safale S04 yeast.
The next method I want to experiment with is the use of finings in the keg. I want to use finings because I am trying to achieve a bright attractive beer as quickly as possible. After reading numerous articles and pieces about this I have devised the following method:
1 - The usual cleaning and sanitising of the equipment;
2 - Preparation of my priming sugars using 150g of DME dissolved in 500ml of beer taken from the FV before adding this solution to the keg;
3 - Once the priming solution has cooled carefully syphon the beer from the FV to the keg, seal and leave warm;
4 - After three days open the keg to vent the air and take 500ml of beer from the tap;
5 - Mix this beer with 500ml of fresh liquid isinglass, pour this carefully back into the keg and slowly stir before tightly closing the keg;
6 - Vent the keg again after three days then leave for a further eight days to warm condition/secondary ferment;
7 - Remove the insulation and leave to cold condition checking regularly to ascertain how effective the isinglass has been in fining the beer.
What do you think? All comments welcome.
[And before anyone starts, yes I have also posted this on JBK not realising my first brewday post was here...]
- I treated the water with half a campden tablet;
- Used sodium metabisulphate for the final rinse of the kit;
- and I swopped the kit yeast for Safale S04.
The sample taken this evening to test the FG seems to prove that kit brew #1 wasn't a fluke. The fermentation went off like a rocket after an initial 12 hour lag (which I think is partly to do with the FV coming up to temperature) and appeared to be complete in a little over 24 hours. The sample was noticeably clearer than the previous brew and has an initial FG of 1009. I would attribute all these good things to use of the Safale S04 yeast.
The next method I want to experiment with is the use of finings in the keg. I want to use finings because I am trying to achieve a bright attractive beer as quickly as possible. After reading numerous articles and pieces about this I have devised the following method:
1 - The usual cleaning and sanitising of the equipment;
2 - Preparation of my priming sugars using 150g of DME dissolved in 500ml of beer taken from the FV before adding this solution to the keg;
3 - Once the priming solution has cooled carefully syphon the beer from the FV to the keg, seal and leave warm;
4 - After three days open the keg to vent the air and take 500ml of beer from the tap;
5 - Mix this beer with 500ml of fresh liquid isinglass, pour this carefully back into the keg and slowly stir before tightly closing the keg;
6 - Vent the keg again after three days then leave for a further eight days to warm condition/secondary ferment;
7 - Remove the insulation and leave to cold condition checking regularly to ascertain how effective the isinglass has been in fining the beer.
What do you think? All comments welcome.
[And before anyone starts, yes I have also posted this on JBK not realising my first brewday post was here...]
