Nelson's Revenge final gravity

[Ian Piper]

Hi,

I've made a brew using the Woodforde's Nelson's Revenge kit. I think it might have failed. I left it for 7 days and then took a look. There was almost no foam on the surface; a bit of scummy stuff around the side, and a very thin layer of bubbles on the top of the liquor. I checked the specific gravity and it was (if I'm reading it right) about 1.012 - 1.014. Can anyone tell me what the expected final gravity should be for this kit (I think the expected ABV is about 4.5)?

Also, is there anything else I can do with this if it has failed? Is it feasible to restart it, or do I need to pour it down the sink and start again?


Ian.
--

 

[Hengoedbrewer]

Hiya

I've not done this kit but have done Wherry and Admiral's Reserve. What was your starting gravity? To get the approx 4.5 abv estimated on the box; you'd need to have about 1.049 for your SG or so with an FG of 1.014.

 

[Pavros]

I think it's probably done. What was the starting gravity reading and what temperature did you ferment at?

I would leave it as is for at least another week so it can drop a little further just in case it hasn't finished yet. This will also let the yeast clear up after itself and allow the trub to settle at the bottom of the fv resulting in a clearer beer at bottling time. I know the kit instructions say it will have fermented in 7-10 days but this is very optimistic. I always leave mine for at least 2 weeks and some even take 4 weeks to completely finish.

 

[Mungri]

Hi,

I've made a brew using the Woodforde's Nelson's Revenge kit. I think it might have failed. I left it for 7 days and then took a look. There was almost no foam on the surface; a bit of scummy stuff around the side, and a very thin layer of bubbles on the top of the liquor. I checked the specific gravity and it was (if I'm reading it right) about 1.012 - 1.014. Can anyone tell me what the expected final gravity should be for this kit (I think the expected ABV is about 4.5)?

Also, is there anything else I can do with this if it has failed? Is it feasible to restart it, or do I need to pour it down the sink and start again?


Ian.
--

This was the very first beer I ever did.
SG was 1050 and FG was 1011. So you're there or there abouts. Leave it for 2 weeks in total before bottling though.
Everything you've described sounds perfectly normal.

 

[Ian Piper]

Thanks very much for those replies; I feel a lot happier about it now. It's in a room that is about 21 degrees. It's either that or in the garage (which is cold!). I will leave it until next weekend I think to give it two clear weeks. Unfortunately I didn't have a hydrometer when I started the brew, so I don't know the original gravity.

 

[terrym]

Thanks very much for those replies; I feel a lot happier about it now. It's in a room that is about 21 degrees. It's either that or in the garage (which is cold!). I will leave it until next weekend I think to give it two clear weeks. Unfortunately I didn't have a hydrometer when I started the brew, so I don't know the original gravity.

Your beer sounds fine and you are doing the right thing in leaving it longer. At 7 days in there may well be a little further to go. If not 1.012 is quite respectable. I would leave it alone for the rest of the week, then take another SG reading and then another the following day. If they are the same its done, if not leave it longer until they are the same which means its safe to bottle. And when its bottomed out it's best to move it to a cold place for a day or two to give you clearer beer going into your bottles, which means less yeast at the bottom when its fully carbed and conditioned.

 

[parpot]

The last Nelsons I did (Dec 2018) had a starting ABV of 1.052 and finished at 1.013. 5% ABV it took 19 days in the FV at around 22 degrees, it cleared and carbed in about two weeks but tasted really great after 6 weeks!

 

[Ian Piper]

Well, I opened the first bottle of my Nelson's Revenge brew today. I bottled it two weeks ago, kept the bottles at room temperature for a week and then put it into the garage. I got 32 500ml bottles from the 36 pint kit, so there was a bit of wastage. But (excluding my time) it works out at around 80p per bottle, so I'm not complaining. Shining a torch through a bottle today it looked a bit hazy but I was impatient, so I opened it.

Results - mixed, I'd say. There was a pressure release when I opened the top. In the glass there was a nice amount of life (bubbles) but not much head. The beer was quite hazy - I'd probably have declined a pint in a pub that looked like that. I'd like to resolve this cloudiness issue in future brews.

But the taste was really very good indeed. Malty and mouth-filling and very drinkable. There was a slight yeasty note but nothing too objectionable. I can believe that it's around 4.5% - 5% from the flavour. I'm going to leave it for another couple of weeks and try it again. Looking forward to it...

On the basis of this I will definitely try other kits (thinking of maybe an Admiral's Reserve. Not sure I'm ready for the whole ground-up brewing process but this is a perfectly acceptable way to get good beer.

 

[terrym]

Well, I opened the first bottle of my Nelson's Revenge brew today. I bottled it two weeks ago, kept the bottles at room temperature for a week and then put it into the garage. I got 32 500ml bottles from the 36 pint kit, so there was a bit of wastage. But (excluding my time) it works out at around 80p per bottle, so I'm not complaining. Shining a torch through a bottle today it looked a bit hazy but I was impatient, so I opened it.

Results - mixed, I'd say. There was a pressure release when I opened the top. In the glass there was a nice amount of life (bubbles) but not much head. The beer was quite hazy - I'd probably have declined a pint in a pub that looked like that. I'd like to resolve this cloudiness issue in future brews.

But the taste was really very good indeed. Malty and mouth-filling and very drinkable. There was a slight yeasty note but nothing too objectionable. I can believe that it's around 4.5% - 5% from the flavour. I'm going to leave it for another couple of weeks and try it again. Looking forward to it...

On the basis of this I will definitely try other kits (thinking of maybe an Admiral's Reserve. Not sure I'm ready for the whole ground-up brewing process but this is a perfectly acceptable way to get good beer.

I think after only two weeks in bottle you are expecting a lot. Even the very basic rule of thumb is to leave your beer two weeks in conditioning, although you may not be aware of that (the 2+2+2 rule). And my experience of Muntons kits (albeit limited) is that the yeast supplied takes a while to settle. Plus when you open a bottle it gets disturbed very easily. As for the head on your pint the longer you leave it in conditioning (again in my experience) the smaller the bubbles so the tighter the head. So give it another month or even longer, not two weeks, and you could notice an improvement, especially since darker beers take longer to come good. But in the short term if you want to encourage a head on your pint use one of the syringes that come with infant's Calpol or similar and inject some air into the beer, which aerates it and displaces the CO2 in solution to form a head on the beer, like what you get in the pub from the handpull. Which is probably something you don't often get on commercial bottled beers consumed at at home.

 

[tribalfather]

In muddle of glass or three of the Wherry, I have not had a 'good' ferment shown in the FV, put into barrel for stated two weeks and then drunk

 

[Ian Piper]

Results - mixed, I'd say.
[...]
But the taste was really very good indeed. Malty and mouth-filling and very drinkable. There was a slight yeasty note but nothing too objectionable. I can believe that it's around 4.5% - 5% from the flavour. I'm going to leave it for another couple of weeks and try it again. .

After a further two weeks, I opened a bottle. Not very nice at all. It had cleared a little but tasted very yeasty (brought back memories of the awful homebrew I used to make as a poor student) and had almost no head. Down the sink it went, and I opened another. This one was great. Almost all of the haziness has gone, it has plenty of life and almost no yeasty flavour. Even my wife thought it tasted nice. It was odd how different two bottles from the same batch, stored side-by-side, could turn out.

I'm going to keep patient, and try another in two weeks time.

 

[Graz]

Dirty bottle maybe.

Not long finished drinking one of these kits. First run with the kegerator, turned out really well.

 

[Ian Piper]

The dirty bottle could be behind it, though I'm almost obsessive about cleaning them out.
Anyway, I've left my Nelson's Revenge for another couple of weeks. The bottle I opened tonight was crystal clear in the glass, and had a creamy head about an inch deep. It tasted excellent, but there is still a slight yeasty aftertaste. Is this the "twang" that keeps cropping up here?

About this twang thing; I'm about to start a new brew (Festival Old Suffolk Ale), so I'm taking no chances. I'll be using Tesco Ashbeck water, finings to clear the beer and I'll make stringent efforts to avoid siphoning crud into the bottles. And I'll leave it for at least a month in the bottle before I open it. If after all that it still tastes yeasty I'm not sure what I'll think.

 

[Ian Piper]

Well, I'm down to the last few bottles of this Nelson's Revenge kit. Here's how the time went:

• Started fermenting around 28 November
• Bottled on 7 December (9 days)
• First bottle opened 21 December - not good
• Another bottle opened 4 January - better but still not that good
• Next opened 15 January - not bad
• 22 January - 2 February - mixed results - probably 1 good bottle out of 2

Total time since starting fermentation is now 66 days, or just over 9 weeks.

I had a couple of these last night and they weren't bad at all. They are reliably clear and have a small - medium amount of head and similarly variable amount of bubbles. However for every good-ish bottle I open, I see another that has hardly any fizz on opening and has a quite strong yeasty after-taste. So I'm seeing quite a high attrition rate.

So I think those advising waiting are right. The instructions with the kit are way over ambitious in terms of timing. If I do another of these I think I will let the fermentation run for two weeks, then leave it in the bottles for at least six weeks before tasting.

 

[terrym]

Well, I'm down to the last few bottles of this Nelson's Revenge kit. Here's how the time went:

• Started fermenting around 28 November
• Bottled on 7 December (9 days)
• First bottle opened 21 December - not good
• Another bottle opened 4 January - better but still not that good
• Next opened 15 January - not bad
• 22 January - 2 February - mixed results - probably 1 good bottle out of 2

Total time since starting fermentation is now 66 days, or just over 9 weeks.

I had a couple of these last night and they weren't bad at all. They are reliably clear and have a small - medium amount of head and similarly variable amount of bubbles. However for every good-ish bottle I open, I see another that has hardly any fizz on opening and has a quite strong yeasty after-taste. So I'm seeing quite a high attrition rate.

So I think those advising waiting are right. The instructions with the kit are way over ambitious in terms of timing. If I do another of these I think I will let the fermentation run for two weeks, then leave it in the bottles for at least six weeks before tasting.

My experience is that stronger darker beers take longer to come good. You may have found the same. As for the Festival kit you were planning and avoidance of 'twang', if your tap water tastes and smells a bit off especially for chlorine you are probably better using bottled water. But for kits the cheapest water you can get will do. For AG that might not be the case. That said I believe its LME that causes twang not water and if you have found your Nelsons Revenge to be a bit twangy, its a Muntons kit which I always found to be susceptible to that.

 

[Burtie]

Out of interest, Do you use a FV with a tap and bottling wand?
Also, how did you prime your bottles - teaspoon of sugar, batch prime, carb drops etc?

I always mark the 1st and last few bottles. The first usually goes into a 500ml PET bottle to check carb levels. The last I mark as they're more likely to contain more yeast trub.

 

[Ian Piper]

For the Festival Suffolk Old Ale kit I used Tesco Ashbeck bottled water. I also added finings to hopefully help clarify it. I've been scrupulous about cleaning the bottles too. So far so good; the starting gravity was 1060 and the final was 1014 (tested twice, 48 hours apart). I think that translates to just over 6% ABV. If it tastes bad after all this I don't know where to go from there.

 

[Ian Piper]

I've just finished bottling the Suffolk Old Ale. I used the two bucket method, and I got 40 500 ml bottles out. I thought about marking the first and last bottles, but to be honest I don't think there was any difference between them as I'd just siphoned the beer from the fermentation vessel and the second bucket had no time to settle. I was actually surprised how clear the beer was going into the bottles, so I'm hopeful now that I should get something without too much yeast residue (apart from what comes out in secondary fermentation. Six weeks from now (St Patrick's Day) I should have an idea of the final product.

Washing and disinfecting all of the bottles was a faff though.

 

[GerritT]

Twang=cabbage

 

[Burtie]

It's certainly a learning curve but great hobby - I've been brewing for only 18 months ..

Could the yeasty taste be described as 'burnt toasty'.. I had this on my first brew, I put it down to trying to brew during hottest days of 2018..

Head retention is harder to achieve, don't judge your homebrew on it, taste and clarity are much more important IMHO.

Perhaps consider a Pressure Barrel, some may give you a pint of froth but most of the time it's a less gassy beer with nice head.

Also consider the seasons/environment ...Fermenting and conditioning temperatures matter.. I bottled an IPA last June on a FG of 1.010 only for a cascade of explosions on the hottest day of the year.. In hindsight I should have probably left it a week more in the FV and been more careful with the amount of carb sugar in each bottle.

Had good head though..