St Peters Golden Ale review

[GhostShip]

Sorry guys, but can anyone help with the above please?

I don't need to add sugar at the start of the brew as it's all in the can (so presumably should not add any spraymalt at this point), but I do need to add priming sugar before secondary fermentation (not supplied with the kit).

Can I use spraymalt at this point or is it too late to make any real difference to the final beer?

 

[terrym]

The flavour hit from half a teaspoon or so of DME for priming will be minimal. Plus you will have to fiddle about dissolving it before you can use it. Thats why table sugar is so much better.
If you want to add it at the beginning use the Brewers Friend calculator to find out what your DME will do to the kit LME gravity. Use 'extract' in the brew method. calculation. https://www.brewersfriend.com/homebrew/recipe/calculator
As a suggestion you could brew very short (say 13/14 litres) use one of the kit cans only and use up your DME with that, maybe adding a hop tea. Then follow on with the second kit can (use the trub from the first to start it off ) and try something different, perhaps another hop type. I've just split a Wherry kit and done different things to the two cans.

 

[GhostShip]

Well, that’s my Golden Ale in the FV. I found some light spraymalt I’d forgotten I had (still in date) so added that (around 250g). What surprised me was the suggested fermentation temperature on the instructions (18-20C) which seems lower than most of the kits I’ve done.

I’ve set the fridge to 20C so will wait and see how much action I get in the airlock.

 

[GhostShip]

Wow! It’s superb! The beer has really cleared nicely, it’s perfectly carbonated and has a really nice light, hoppy flavour with a good bitter aftertaste. It’s got a really good head (not something I’ve achieved before) and when I gave a pint to a mate last night he said ‘That’s really nice, if I was served that in a pub, I’d be delighted with it’. I’m glad I dry hopped it because it’s not overly hoppy and I don’t think the hop powder that comes with the kit would have given me the same result. In fact, I only decided to dry hop it as I’d read reviews that described the kit beer as ‘thin’.

Brewed on 26th January to 20.5L.
Water was Tesco’s Ashbeck Mineral Water.
Added approx. 250g of light spraymalt I had lying around.
I added half of the sachet of hop powder, knowing that I was going to dry hop it.
Dry hopped with 100g of Goldings for four days.
Batch primed (100g of brewing sugar dissolved in boiling water added to barrel) and then bottled on 5th February and kept in the brew fridge at 21C.
Moved to outside shed on 5th March (when weather was cold).

Thinking about it, the head is so much better than on any other kit I've done and this has to be down to the light spraymalt I added. It's not something I'd used before but I may make it a regular addition - it's definitely made a big difference here.