Youngs Harvest yorkshire bitter

[Jimbo77]

Hi All. New member. Feel a bit of a fraud using kits amongst all the experts on here.
Going to start my 2nd home brew tomorrow youngs yorkshire bitter.
The kit is one can type, but unlike many one can kits it asks for 1.5 kg of sugar which i almost overlooked.
The question i have is what will the final Alc % be compared to the the Harvest Yorkshire bitter which only
requires 1kg of sugar.
And should i brew it using 500g light spray malt + 1kg brewing sugar.
Thanks

 

[dwhite60]

No shame in doing kits. We were all noobies at one point.

I've only done one and it was over twenty years ago. I have two on the way so I can say I did some kits.

 

[An Ankoù]

Welcome Jimbo. Nearly all of us started on kits. Some continue with lots and others return to kits. My memory of kits is distant but I'd say that replacing any or all of the sugar requirement with malt extract or spray malt would be an improvement. I could never get on with spray malt. It would clump and refuse to dissolve, but that's just my experience.

 

[dwhite60]

Dry malt extract will clump up pretty quickly once opened if it's not resealed real well. It attracts moisture and starts to stick together.

 

[Rodcx500z]

No shame mate i do biab outside so over the winter when its to cold to brew i revert back to kits, it can be a lot fun plying around and tweaking them and they make decent beer, there is a kit section on the forum as well

 

[Rodcx500z]

When i use dme i boil the kettle pour into fv then slowly mix the dme in small amounts (boil another kettle for rinsing your can out) pour the warm liquid in and mix pour hot water into can stir tip into fv and mix it up really well then top up to required amount, tip stop 2 or 3 ltrs short check temp and adjust to amount needed pitch yeast close lid fix airlock leave for 2 weeks

 

[Tanglefoot]

Hi All. New member. Feel a bit of a fraud using kits amongst all the experts on here.
Going to start my 2nd home brew tomorrow youngs yorkshire bitter.
The kit is one can type, but unlike many one can kits it asks for 1.5 kg of sugar which i almost overlooked.
The question i have is what will the final Alc % be compared to the the Harvest Yorkshire bitter

I have just brewed the Harvest scottish heavy kit which also uses 1.5kg of sugar, expected ABV is 5%.
I cant' t be too sure as SG reading was a bit suspect due to foam and inexperience, around 1.045
and FG was 1.006 so seems about right.
If you want a slightly less strong brew omit the .5 kg of sugar, of course that also depends on final
finishing gravity too.

 

[terrym]

Hi All. New member. Feel a bit of a fraud using kits amongst all the experts on here.
Going to start my 2nd home brew tomorrow youngs yorkshire bitter.
The kit is one can type, but unlike many one can kits it asks for 1.5 kg of sugar which i almost overlooked.
The question i have is what will the final Alc % be compared to the the Harvest Yorkshire bitter which only
requires 1kg of sugar.
And should i brew it using 500g light spray malt + 1kg brewing sugar.
Thanks

Both your kits are 1.5kg one cans. So if you add more sugar to one relative to the other, It will up the ABV. So if you make up your kit with 1.5kg of dextrose and make it up to 23 litres it will produce a beer of about 5%ABV, but if you only use 1kg dextrose it will turn out at about 4%ABV. But if you add all dextrose to a 1.5kg kit it tends to come out a bit on the thin or dry side. 1.5kg kits tend to be at the cheap end of what you can buy because they are light on malt.
So my suggestion to you is to use all 500g of the spray malt but only 500g of the dextrose and brew short which means you don't brew to the full volume. That way you beer will turn out with a little more flavour and be nearer the ABV the instructions are looking for. I suggest you brew short to 20 litres which will produce a beer of around 4.5%.
And if you havent used spray malt before it can be a bit difficult to dissolve, but not impossible. What I do is to put about one litre of off the boil water in the FV, add the spray malt then keep mixing it well until its all more or less dissolved which may be over few minutes. I have found mixing it then leaving it, then returning to mix it does help as does starting to top up with cold water as it gets cooler. And in your case I would add the kit can contents after you have mixed the spray malt.

 

[Jimbo77]

Thanks for the reply's. Decided to bottle my wherry yesterday instead that had been in a fv 15 days.
I think I'm going to do as per instructions this time, but next time i make it i’ll brew short as Terrym suggested.

 

[Jimbo77]

I finally got around to doing this kit. Hit a bit of hitch when the tin opener decided to pack in
Mid tin had to nip out and buy a new one from corner shop ( Note to self buy a spare)
22 litres of water.
1 kg brew sugar.
500g light spray malt (figured i might as-well use as i’d bought it).
Spray Malt was clumpy as hell, thankfully i’d followed advise and dissolved it first in a few litres of boiling water.
OG 1050, added yeast at 24 deg.
Hasn't stared bubbling away yet, fingers crossed.

 

[Tanglefoot]

Recently made my second Harvest kit - a pilsener, now fermenting.
Got my first effort, the scottish heavy in a pressure barrel for secondary fermentation and conditioning.
Both yeasts reacted very similarly, about half a day to get going then produced fairly thin krausen of no more than an inch which didnt last long and left a scummy tidemark.
Seems to be a pretty reliable line of kits from Youngs, the heavy got to an FG of 1.006 in a seven days and cleared nicely by racking off time a week later.
Sure you'll be enjoying listening to the burbling of the airlock soon !

 

[Bevvied]

Apologies if this is teaching anyone to suck eggs, but....
I find it incredibly easy to add the spray malt into a stock pot, add cold water.
Turn on heat, slowly whisk/stir as heat comes up, most will dissolve quite quickly, a few small lumps that remain will disappear as the heat and stirring increases.

Obviously, I sanitise the pot & stirrer first, as it's not getting to a boil before it dissolves.

 

[Jimbo77]

The Yorkshire bitter was bubbling away nicely this morning.
Tanglefoot.. I’ve read some canny reviews Re the Young’s Scottish heavy, that’s on my to do list. I wound imagine it’s quite malty and sweet, Along the lines of Mckewans best scotch which was popular here in the N/e and one of my 1st legal pints..
It’s only my 2nd homebrew So I’m still learning, But I’ll try the pre-heating spray malt on the hob...

 

[AnimatedGIF]

The Yorkshire bitter was bubbling away nicely this morning.
Tanglefoot.. I’ve read some canny reviews Re the Young’s Scottish heavy, that’s on my to do list. I wound imagine it’s quite malty and sweet, Along the lines of Mckewans best scotch which was popular here in the N/e and one of my 1st legal pints..
It’s only my 2nd homebrew So I’m still learning, But I’ll try the pre-heating spray malt on the hob...

I'm late to this thread, but this (Harvest Yorkshire Bitter) was the first kit I did (I'm still new to home brewing). I didn't much like it when I first tasted after three weeks in the bottle. I promplty left it in the cupboard and almost forgot about it for a couple of months until I had nothing else left to drink, and couldn't be bothered to go to the shop. I opened one up and it was lovely! From what I read, this is likely to be the case, improving with time in the bottle, rather than being limited to this kit, but like I say, I am still finding my way.

I'd be interested to know how it goes.

 

[terrym]

@AnimatedGIF
It's good to hear that someone has confirmed by experience the usual advice to new brewers about leaving beer to properly condition rather than drinking it as soon as they can no longer wait. What I find is that darker beers usually take a little longer to come good and yours probably fits into that category.

 

[Jimbo77]

I'm late to this thread, but this (Harvest Yorkshire Bitter) was the first kit I did (I'm still new to home brewing). I didn't much like it when I first tasted after three weeks in the bottle. I promplty left it in the cupboard and almost forgot about it for a couple of months until I had nothing else left to drink, and couldn't be bothered to go to the shop. I opened one up and it was lovely! From what I read, this is likely to be the case, improving with time in the bottle, rather than being limited to this kit, but like I say, I am still finding my way.

I'd be interested to know how it goes.

How much sugar did you use to carbonate the Harvest bitter and did it have a head on it? Cheers.
I ask because i batch carbed my woodforde wherry with 90g of sugar, tried a bottle after a week to check for carbonation and it didn’t have much.
I plan on making another few brews straight after this One, once they’re finished and bottled,
the wherry i bottled last week should be drinkable, then on to the Harvest bitter.

 

[terrym]

How much sugar did you use to carbonate the Harvest bitter and did it have a head on it? Cheers.
I ask because i batch carbed my woodforde wherry with 90g of sugar, tried a bottle after a week to check for carbonation and it didn’t have much.

Assuming you bottled about 22litres of beer, 90g of table sugar should give you a carbonation of just above 2 volumes, which is at the top end for the style. More on that here
https://www.brewersfriend.com/beer-priming-calculator/But as far as expecting your Wherry to be fully carbed after a week that may be asking a bit too much. I suggest you forget all about it for another 3 weeks then try a sampler. In any case my recollection of Wherry is that it needs at least 6 weeks in bottle before it comes good and more may be better.

 

[AnimatedGIF]

How much sugar did you use to carbonate the Harvest bitter and did it have a head on it? Cheers.
I ask because i batch carbed my woodforde wherry with 90g of sugar, tried a bottle after a week to check for carbonation and it didn’t have much.

I must admit I can't quite remember how much priming sugar I used. I just looked on the blog I wrote about it, and I wrote "There was minimal head and only a slight carbonation. This was due to the use of minimal priming sugar prior to bottling (85g to 125g seems to be the consensus, and I went for the lower end of this range).", so I imagine I used 85-90g for ~40 500ml bottles.

Interestingly I have a Wherry currently conditioning in bottles. I used carbonation drops for mine as I find it more convinient now. I used 1 coopers carbonation drop per bottle. The only problem is, I added as I bottled (rather than adding to all the bottles at the start). The odd time after filling a bottle, I did think "did I add the carbonation drop?" - live and learn. Anyway, I digress.

I hope this helps. I could link the artcicle I wrote if you'd like, though I don't share it out of habit as my blog is full of typos I never get round to correcting.

Looking forward to hearing what you do!

 

[Jimbo77]

Assuming you bottled about 22litres of beer, 90g of table sugar should give you a carbonation of just above 2 volumes, which is at the top end for the style. More on that here
https://www.brewersfriend.com/beer-priming-calculator/But as far as expecting your Wherry to be fully carbed after a week that may be asking a bit too much. I suggest you forget all about it for another 3 weeks then try a sampler. In any case my recollection of Wherry is that it needs at least 6 weeks in bottle before it comes good and more may be better.

Thanks for that link.
I leave them in the house another few weeks to carbonate before moving to garage fridge.
i’m in no hurry to drink as back to work on Monday, Plus i’m buying bottled ales to build
up a supply of empties ( thats what i’m telling the mrs anyway)

 

[Jimbo77]

I must admit I can't quite remember how much priming sugar I used. I just looked on the blog I wrote about it, and I wrote "There was minimal head and only a slight carbonation. This was due to the use of minimal priming sugar prior to bottling (85g to 125g seems to be the consensus, and I went for the lower end of this range).", so I imagine I used 85-90g for ~40 500ml bottles.

Interestingly I have a Wherry currently conditioning in bottles. I used carbonation drops for mine as I find it more convinient now. I used 1 coopers carbonation drop per bottle. The only problem is, I added as I bottled (rather than adding to all the bottles at the start). The odd time after filling a bottle, I did think "did I add the carbonation drop?" - live and learn. Anyway, I digress.

I hope this helps. I could link the artcicle I wrote if you'd like, though I don't share it out of habit as my blog is full of typos I never get round to correcting.

Looking forward to hearing what you do!

Yes a link to your Blog would be appreciated as we’ve got similar taste in Home-brew beers.