Pre brewday advice

[chrig]

I'm planning a brew day this weekend using two 1.5kg cans of Youngs harvest Pilsner. I've also got two 1.5kg cans of light malt extract which I plan to use brewed to 40L.

What i'm unsure about is if i need to change the process at all or if i just add the extract as i would normally add brewing sugar / enhancer?
Is any extra boiling required ?


I could brew at 15-16'c but this is uncontrolled mostly based on the weather, I have an enclosed space in one room next to an air vent. Are there any yeast recommendations instead of the kit yeast for this sort of temp?
Otherwise i will be fermenting at 19'c with kit yeast.

Unfortunately my order with one of our forum sponsors went a bit sideways and i've ended up with a 0-100% alcohol hydrometer rather than a beer and wine one, so i need to go out to buy one before i can put this all on. I had planned to do it tonight but I cant find any info regarding the kit strength using sugar let alone malt extract. so i would be flying blind(er!)

 

[pittsy]

you'll have around 1044 at 4.4% but you may need some hops and boil em too

 

[calumscott]

No boiling required.

Just bung it all in.

Brew it as cool as you can but if you can't get it down to proper lager temperatures you could do worse than investing in a couple of packs of US-05. It's an ale yeast but if you can keep it under 18 degrees it's seriously clean.

If you are mail ordering you could also go for The Malt Miller's own West Coast Style Ale Yeast - no idea what it actually is but it brews just as clean and sediments out WAY better than US-05.

Those kits come out mid fours I think. Brewed that little bit shorter should push you just over 5% at a guess.

 

[chrig]

I have a couple of local Home brew shops for the hydrometer and yeast, I think I've seen US-04 and US-05 quite often within threads so assume they are quite common.

A couple of weeks ago my cool area by the air vent sat at a steady 5'c which was very handy for clearing wines, but no good now.

I have a small stock pot of about 5L which i could use for boiling some hops. I guess I would need to buy some small bags or something from the HB shop to remove them before adding the water to the FV.



I've just e-mailed youngs and got his response :

Good morning Chris In an average Harvest Pilsner kit you would expect an abv of between 4 and 4.5% depending as you rightly say on how much sugar / malt that is used.

 The fact you are using less water will also make the abv alot greater. The introduction of Enhancer and less water you may get as much as 6% but it is very difficult to get a precise abv without knowing exact starting gravity's and finished gravity's. 

You could also change the yeast to a Saf-Ale S04 this again will give you a higher gravity.  The yeast provided with the kits are purely for a kg of sugar so you may decide to enhance your brew with a differn't yeast. Hope this helps

I'm pleased to get such a quick response from a manufacture. And it pretty much follows the path of tuis thread

 

[chrig]

I unfortunately became impetient last night and threw in the two kits and 3kg of liquid malt and topped up to 40L. At a cost of less than £20

The corner jn which it is sat is currently 16'c and dropping with the return of bad weather, too low for the kit ale yeast?

I ended up with the wrong type of hydrometer and the replacement is in the post, so I have taken out a small sample and put it in the fridge to test when it arrives.

I figured that I should get a base line before I start playing with hops and different yeasts, ill be happy with 60 or 70 bottles to put away in the shed and forget about for a few months. That much lager will last me years, gives me horrific indigestion.

Thank you for the advice which I failed to follow. Back to tesco for two more kits!

 

[chrig]

My hydrometer arrived today so i warmed the original sample from the fridge back up to around 20'c.

The reading shows just over 1.045 i think, the hydrometer says 6% which is on the strong side, maybe i'm reading it wrong...or its incorrect.

I'm going to resist opening the lid and having a look, i checked something was happening after 48hours but left it alone since. 1st of May makes it 10days

 

[calumscott]

6kg of extract in 40l will give you around that mark.

If you get it down to 1.006 that'll give you around 5.2% The 6% is if you get it right to 1.000 which you just won't with a beer. Infact, anything under 1.010 is doing well when you don't use sugar. :thumb:

 

[chrig]

That sounds about right then.

Have i missed my chance for adding some hops? I'm wondering if i could dry hop whilst its fermenting?

 

[rpt]

The reading shows just over 1.045 i think, the hydrometer says 6% which is on the strong side, maybe i'm reading it wrong...or its incorrect.

Ignore the percentage scale. You know the ABV by the difference between the final and original gravity.

 

[chrig]

Ive added a 12g saaz hop teabag today. I gave it 10 minutes in a cup of boiling water and then poured it and the teabag in to the brew. Looking at the total volume I find it hard to see this making any difference in flavour, but then I have never used hops before!

Hydrometer is reading 1.014 but its now looking rather cloudy so going to leave it be for a while and take another sample.

Tasting rather nice, looking forwards to it cold and fizzy

 

[chrig]

It was still at 1.014 so I Did a bit of bottling the other day, had to get about half in to 1L plastic bottles and primed with about 120g sugar per 20L.

Quite a lot of sugar i'm lead to believe, and the plastic ones have gone quite hard after 3 days in the warm. But they are rather cloudy even from the FV.

A little taste was of warm flat lager which isn't at all pleasant, but i'll give it a few months and maybe open a small bottle every 2 weeks.

As for using a big blue barrel as a FV, great.... until you need to syphon it out,then its a very very slow job.