Hi All,
My first post on this forum - greetings!
Am a relative newcomer to home brewing - have done a couple of the Wilko's six-bottle wine kits over the summer, with mixed results, then a Youngs cider kit that SWMBO got for a birthday present (and which she couldn't be bothered to brew herself), and have now finally taken the plunge with an ale. Had fully intended to start with a Woodfordes kit because I'd heard that they were excellent quality and almost idiot-proof, but at the last minute was talked into a Festival kit in my LHBS. Went for the Old Father Hooks.
Brewed it up exactly as per instructions for a temperature-corrected initial SG of 1.044. It sat in the FV for about 14 days, after which it was still bubbling and down to about 1.012. The instructions said don't bottle or keg until you get down to 1.009 - I work in a laboratory so couldn't bear to take it off before time! I don't have time to mess around with bottling during the week, so it got left on until this Saturday, which was day 21. By that time it was nice and steady at 1.009 so I was happy. Still bubbling slowly but I'm willing to believe this was just trapped CO2 escaping rather than ongoing fermentation. Racked it into bottling buckets with the full 100 g of priming sugar (boiled first) and then bottled it - got 41 x 500 ml bottles out of it.
In no particular order, a few thoughts on the kit now that it's bottled:
1) Slow fermentation - as a newb I don't have much of a frame of reference but from what I gather other kits (e.g., Woodfordes) ferment much more vigourously. Be prepared for a long wait.
2) Don't rush it - I would advise leaving this to ferment for at least three weeks, despite the instructions claiming that it's ready to bottle after 10 days. I left mine for more than twice this long and I think the final result will have benefited greatly. After two weeks the taste of the sample jar was still very bitter with a noticeable yeast twang. I glad I left it the extra week because by the time I bottled it there was already a lovely, much more rounded and mellow flavour to it. I'm obviously no expert but I know people say that the extra time can be good because it allows the yeast to 'clean up after themselves'. Can't wait to see what this is like after a month or two of conditioning.
3) Flavour - the tasting notes on the box (who'd have thought home brew would be so refined??? Not I!) go on about oranges, marmalade and caramel and so on. I thought "what a load of old rubbish" - but how wrong I was. Even by the time I bottled it I could taste those flavours. Think it will be pant-wettingly good once it's ready!
4) Dry hop pellets and syphon bag - there's a lot of discussion on these boards about how best to do this so I thought I'd add my £0.02. I followed the instructions and dolloped the pellets loose into the FV after 5 days. Then when I racked into the bottling buckets I tried putting the mesh bag over the end of the syphon that goes in the FV (i.e., the inflow end of the tube). I thought this would stop me getting a gob full of hop leaves. It didn't really work very well, because the flow into the syphon tube from the FV starts to pull the bag into the tube just a little bit. Of course, this is also where the hop leaves collect, so you end up with a dense bung of hops blocking the inflow end of the tube and the flow slows to barley a trickle. So I re-sterilised everything and then tried putting the bag over the other (outlfow) end of the syphon tube. Of course, then you have to start the flow without the bag, then once it's going quickly whip the bag over the outflow end to catch the hops. One piece of advice at this point - unless you intend to swallow your mouthful of 15-day-old, half-fermented hops then have a spittoon of some description ready! Anyway, putting the mesh bag over outflow end worked very well. It doesn't restrict the flow, because you can hold the bag quite loosely over the end of the syphon and the hop leaves just drop into it. Almost no leaves at all made it into the bottling bucket. Brilliant.
5) Storage - this is my only remaining problem, how to keep your paws off it until it's ready? Our flat is quite small and we don't have a garden shed or a garage, so I've had to store my bottles under the sink in the kitchen, in the hardest-to-reach nook right in the back corner. I have to crawl on my hands and knees to get to them so hopefully that will be sufficient deterrent to stop me from 'sampling' them while they condition. Any advice for tactics on how to leave your conditioning brew alone would be most welcome! Think I need to get a rolling stock going...
Ok, sorry for going on for so long - am just excited!
All the best,
Rucky.
