Youngs Harvest Yorkshire bitter

[old_git]

Just put this on last night. It smells like a more hopped variety than the harvest bitter. From drinking plenty of Yorkshire ales I can say this smells like they got the they got the Hop extract right.

I brewed this with one kilo of light spray malt and 450 grams of white sugar + 150 grams of demerara. I added some Golding's pellets to the boil for around 45 minutes and strained into the fermenting VAT. After rehydrating my yeast the thing took off like a rocket now bubbling nicely in the corner of the kitchen.

I will let you know how I get on once I have bottled and primed and left for two weeks.

 

[old_git]

I tried a taste of this earlier and it is wonderful. Bittersweet and refreshing.

It's a lot better than my earlier efforts. So much so that I'd have to leave off full judgement on this kit until I've duplicated the recipe on the standard harvest bitter and one or two others. It's only fair I think. I'm learning a lot about brewing beer and have had to make some mistakes along the way so attempting to comment on this kit was perhaps a little premature.

Back to the brew - it has given me renewed faith in the process of combining hopped malted fermentables with yeast to create the perfect drink. I'm a big fan of yorkshire bitter so this kit gets a big thumbs up from me. If you brew it right, it will take the hassle out of an all grain brew and deliver a very decent beer.

 

[ericmark]

Youngs Harvest has a range of bitters, the Yorkshire Bitter was the most bitter, then the Bitter, and the Scottish Heavy was the smoothest of the three, the latter was to have 1.5 kg of sugar the other two just 1 kg of sugar. Of the three done as instructions the Scottish Heavy was more to my taste, and it would stand 2 kg of sugar which lifted up the ABV.

I have just started replacing sugar and to be frank not sure if worth while, dried malt is expensive and by time you add the costs together, the twin can kit very quickly becomes cheaper, and better than adding spray dried malt or brew enhancer.

I note the Coopers English Bitter has just 500 grams of light spray dried malt, and so not as expensive, but low on the ABV. However even if low ABV it tastes good, and I can drink so much more in an evening without getting drunk, it makes some sense to keep the ABV low.

I am interested in how your experiment works out with the other two in the range, even if I go for other end of the range the whole idea of swapping sugar for other fermentables is now something I am looking into, but 1.5 kilogram of Spray Dried Malt in Wilko is £13.50 add to that £12 for kit and that's £25.50 compared with Woodfords Wherry at £20. Both end up with putting 3 kilograms of fermentables in the fermentor so likely the same strength.

I now can actually compare my brews, when I started I tried messing around with the brew, and I was not getting consistent results, I would do one in March and it was great, so would put on another in August which was a flop, then I realised how important temperature is. Unless your keeping the brew temperature the same then the results can be as much to do with temperature as what you have put in the brew.

OK some brews have a larger range to others, Coopers can be brewed hotter than most. But I rejected some brews as useless just because I have brewed in Summer when it was too hot. It was not the kit at fault, it was me.

I messed up with a few brews even after I had some temperature control, and I am only just starting to taste brews which where kept cool enough. I had misjudged how much heat was released by the fermenting. So the December brew was A1, but by March the brews were getting a thermal run away. My idea was to keep as cool as I could to give some room for the temperature to climb, so starting at 18°C so it could over shoot and still be below 21°C which I regard as the upper limit. However they would hit 24°C before settling down using an old fridge as an insulated box, once the ambient hit 14°C really I need cooling.

It was well into the summer before I had got a new controller and was able to stop the run away. So my attempts are only just reaching a point where I can test them. Early tastes of the brews seem to show the using of the freezer and controlling the temperature has paid off. When brewing in the kitchen I was actually better off than in garage. As the heat could leave the fermentor. I thought I was clever moving into garage using the fridge of the old fridge/freezer as an insulated box, but I made an error.

So now waiting for Christmas when a whole range should be ready to drink and I can compare them all, and decide what to do in the future. But early tests seem to show the two can kit is the way to go.

 

[old_git]

Thanks for providing this useful info ericmark. I noticed the increased bitterness in the yorkshire kit. After tweaking various can kits I've come to a long awaited moment of realisation about brewing beer. I started out thinking I had to get the final gravity down to achieve dryness. Now I know that with a hop addition to bitter the wort you can have a beer finish at 1.013 but it will have a perceived dryness of something much lower thanks to the magic of hop oils and alpha/beta acids.

Two cans is certainly a more economical option as you present it opposed to brewing with dried extract and a can. I have also had mixed results and, you're right, temperature plays a big part too. You can get an under hopped or over hopped beer that can be good or awful either way by not/controlling temperature well, from my experience.

I'm on the way to customising my brewing preferences now but it's all thanks to the ease of use of these kits when I started out. As I said, yorkshire bitter is a fav of mine so these more bitter kits hit the spot. I'm going to try dry hopping this one next and see how it turns out :-) Thanks again on the input you gave. All very sage advice and info