St Peters Ruby Red Ale review

[GhostShip]

My fridge was kindly donated by SWMBO when she decided to upgrade the kitchen and I went for the stc 1000 inkbird. It cost, from memory, �£11.00 ish. You have to wire up yourself, but it's easy enough. Not much harder than wiring a 3-pin plug. Failing that, 30 odd quid gets a ready to go one.

Brilliant - thanks very much for your help.

 

[GhostShip]

Sorry, excuse my ignorance on this but I understand the cold conditioning in a fridge, but if the fermentation needs to take place at around 18C, can a fridge and an Inkbird really do that?

 

[marlon]

Sorry, excuse my ignorance on this but I understand the cold conditioning in a fridge, but if the fermentation needs to take place at around 18C, can a fridge and an Inkbird really do that?

Forgot to mention, you also need a heat source in the bottom of the fridge. (I used a 40watt bar heater from Screwfix - about 15 quid). The fridge compressor is powered from the 'cold' output from the inkbird and the bar heater powered from the 'heat'output. So, the inkbird powers up either the fridge motor for chilling or the bar heater for heating - whichever your brew needs - and thus, maintains the right temperature, whether you're fermenting, at say, 18deg C or cold crashing at say, 3 deg C.
You should also by-pass the fridge thermostat if you feel the urge to 'lager' at -1.5deg C like I do sometimes.

Sorry about forgetting the heater, it's a time of life thing...

 

[GhostShip]

Forgot to mention, you also need a heat source in the bottom of the fridge. (I used a 40watt bar heater from Screwfix - about 15 quid). The fridge compressor is powered from the 'cold' output from the inkbird and the bar heater powered from the 'heat'output. So, the inkbird powers up either the fridge motor for chilling or the bar heater for heating - whichever your brew needs - and thus, maintains the right temperature, whether you're fermenting, at say, 18deg C or cold crashing at say, 3 deg C.
You should also by-pass the fridge thermostat if you feel the urge to 'lager' at -1.5deg C like I do sometimes.

Sorry about forgetting the heater, it's a time of life thing...

Ha ha - no problem. That's really helpful - thank you.

 

[GhostShip]

Determined to drink my Ruby Red despite the 'twang'. I don't really like cold ale, but put a bottle in the freezer tonight for half an hour just as a test. Amazingly, the chill reduced the twang considerably and made it much more drinkable.

This new found knowledge will make it much easier to get through the last 30 bottles!

 

[BeerisGOD]

Try pumping a syringe in and out gently in ur brews mate. Get them.rom eBay. I use them to get the correct amount of starsan out the bottle.
But they also take a bit of the twang out of beers plus the give a poor head retention beer a better head if this makes sense. Froths it up

 

[Covrich]

Try pumping a syringe in and out gently in ur brews mate. Get them.rom eBay. I use them to get the correct amount of starsan out the bottle.
But they also take a bit of the twang out of beers plus the give a poor head retention beer a better head if this makes sense. Froths it up

Certainly helps give your head a boost

in what way do you find it removes twang?

 

[shepp]

Determined to drink my Ruby Red despite the 'twang'. I don't really like cold ale, but put a bottle in the freezer tonight for half an hour just as a test. Amazingly, the chill reduced the twang considerably and made it much more drinkable.

This new found knowledge will make it much easier to get through the last 30 bottles!

https://youtu.be/bUr7rdsFdOU

 

[BeerisGOD]

Certainly helps give your head a boost

in what way do you find it removes twang?

If you do it enough times I find it smooths the mouthfeel out minimising twang.
In fact I find it helps with commercial bottled beers too. Like when u poor into a glass and there's crap head.
I find any beer has a twang if the head is poor, hb or commercial.

 

[JonPB]

I've just bottled a batch of this as my first ever brew. It was in the fermenter for 14 days, though it went from OG 1.040 to FG 1.012 in about 9. I used Safale S-04 instead of the yeast included in the kit, and it was very active for a few days, with the airlock bubbling away like mad, before tailing off quite quickly.

It was pretty cloudy when I bottled it, so I was concerned that I'd done something horribly wrong, but reading this thread it seems that's fairly common. I now have to force myself to wait a few weeks to see how it turns out!

 

[BeerisGOD]

It should be ok if left for long enough. Get another brew on.
I've noticed all beer clears no matter how murky if left long enough to condition. Normally two months does the trick

 

[JonPB]

Well, I got a bit impatient and opened up a bottle after two weeks. It was great to drink my first ever bottle of home brew - realising that I'd made a real beer! It's coming along nicely, a lot clearer than it was, and going down very smoothly. I'm looking forward to giving it time to clear out and develop more flavour, but I'm very happy so far.

 

[joiner_8]

I made a batch of st Peter's ruby ale in February 2016 and still have some left, it turned out nice and clear with a lovely hippy flavour although the yeast sediment is still not firm you still have to watch when pouring it BUT IT'S WORTH IT, just away to open one now Hope this helps I would brew it again

 

[trummy]

I have made this a couple of months ago and cannot get it to clear - have added more finings and still no sign of it settling. Anyone any ideas?

 

[BeerisGOD]

Just time I'm afraid. Did u secondary? This may help with the next one

 

[trummy]

decanted into 2-3 ltr pop bottles and then primed. Done loads of brews never had this problem before

 

[terrym]

Not done this before so I thought I'd give it a go.
This is a Muntons kit and comes with two 1.5kg cans hopped extract, a small packet of (goldings?) hop oil with maltodextrin in powder form which I have never had before in a kit, and the dreaded 6g packet of yeast.
So...
Made up to 21 litres, not 23 litres.
Instructions advise adding hop oil at the outset but I didn't do this because I didn't want to lose any hop aroma during the vigorous first stage of the primary.
Kit yeast was replaced with a packet of Wilko Gervin ale yeast.
Fermented in a water bath at 19*C.
OG 1.043
Five days in added hop oil.
Nine days in racked off.
Six further days in second FV, before bottling at FG 1.009.
Almost clear into bottles.
Twelve days to carb up, then into fridge for six days before sampling first one tonight at 'cellar' temperature ie not chilled .
Good head to start but that quickly goes. Quite dark, and much more brown than red in glass.
Quite a bitter beer, with a malty caramel taste. But with a slight hint of the twang.
I suspect this one will need a long conditioning so will be unlikely to open the next one until the new year.
Verdict, if it doesn't improve I certainly won't be doing another.

 

[Covrich]

Not done this before so I thought I'd give it a go.
This is a Muntons kit and comes with two 1.5kg cans hopped extract, a small packet of (goldings?) hop oil with maltodextrin in powder form which I have never had before in a kit, and the dreaded 6g packet of yeast.
So...
Made up to 21 litres, not 23 litres.
Instructions advise adding hop oil at the outset but I didn't do this because I didn't want to lose any hop aroma during the vigorous first stage of the primary.
Kit yeast was replaced with a packet of Wilko Gervin ale yeast.
Fermented in a water bath at 19*C.
OG 1.043
Five days in added hop oil.
Nine days in racked off.
Six further days in second FV, before bottling at FG 1.009.
Almost clear into bottles.
Twelve days to carb up, then into fridge for six days before sampling first one tonight at 'cellar' temperature ie not chilled .
Good head to start but that quickly goes. Quite dark, and much more brown than red in glass.
Quite a bitter beer, with a malty caramel taste. But with a slight hint of the twang.
I suspect this one will need a long conditioning so will be unlikely to open the next one until the new year.
Verdict, if it doesn't improve I certainly won't be doing another.

My 2nd ever brew and it seems I have a few differences from what you had.

Mine was pretty mucky and took a few weeks to clear but it was very drinkable straight off the bat.

One of the only kits I did which I thought was twang free but I think there is varience to teh cause of that.

Wasn't overly bitter either.

I used kit yeast though but mine was down to 1012 only

 

[sdt7618]

Put one of these on last night. Looking forward to this, the St. Peter's honey porter in nice to.

 

[Covrich]

Put one of these on last night. Looking forward to this, the St. Peter's honey porter in nice to.

Tbh I never did many kits but this was certainly the better of teh ones I did..

I have tried many many kits, my dad does one can ones but IMO they just aren't as good, He don't have time for AG so I have got him some better kits.