A Home Brew Journey

Turbo Cider

2010-08-09T21:57:00.000+01:00

I thought I would have a stab at making a Turbo Cider. It gets the name because its fast and easy to do, although the fact that you can make it like rocket fuel also adds to the theme. I am finding that doing the 40 pint brews are good if they turn out ok but if its a failed or just a bad brew its a waste. I mean who really wants to pour away beer.

So I went and invested in some small 1 gallon demijohn's as its my turn this year to host the Halloween party these brews should be easy in time for that.

New bit of kit

I also made a trip to the local Lidl's for the juice and picked up some Cider yeast at my local home brew store


All ingredients and gear together

I will be brewing 3 different types of cider on this run. There is a plain apple juice that i will be adding black current juice to creating a pre mixed Diesel. There is a apple and cranberry juice and a pear juice.

First job is to rehydrate the yeast. As it will only be 12L in total one packet spit between all 3 brews is more than enough.


Filled with juice

While everything was sterilising I measured and poured around 170g of sugar into each demijon. This is where a funnel would come in handy but as per I did not have one so a make shift one was made out of a leaflet that was lying about. Not really all that sterile but I am sure it will work out ok.

I could only take original gravity readings for the two apple based brews as the pear one was a denser liquid in fact it was more like a pulp. Perhaps I should have strained this through a muslim bag first of all but I did not have any so that idea was a bust.

All that was lest to do was to add the yeast to the demijons give it a quick stir and job done. In total it only took about one hour to do all 3 so jobs a good un.


Ready to ferment

After only two hours you can see the fermentation process has already started by the layer of scum forming on top of the juice. It will be left in there for about a week before bottling.

All that is required now is patience and some luck

A Charcoal Feast

2010-07-30T17:19:00.000+01:00

Well I finally got round to making use of my BBQ and as far as I know there was no outbreak of E-coli or food poisoning so I am happy with that. As there was plenty of folk round it was a good chance to off load my slightly disappointing last 2 brews.

The Geordie Lager was just not as good as my last brew of lager. Once you has a couple down your neck it was perfectly acceptable but there was none of the instant tastiness of the last batch. To be honest it tasted like a watered down lager. Now I don't know if it was my fault for leaving it in the fermenter to long but that should really have made that much of a difference. Or it could be that I previously used a mixture of light spray malt and sugar and that's what I think gave the dryness of the previous brew.

I may have mentioned that I used Fining's in the last to brews and to be honest I just wasted my time. Fining's are used purely for aesthetic purposes but to be honest they did not clear the beers as well as I thought they would. So I have a couple of packets left and I think that will be the last I will be using it.

So sadly I will need to do another batch just to try and get the perfect pint. I think that a brew of alcoholic ginger beer might be in order as I had a taste of some and it was very very tasty. I have heard that it can be quite volatile when bottling so that should be fun.

Youngs Scottish Heavy

2010-06-09T17:53:00.000+01:00

Well I thought I would crack open one of my home brews after a hard shift and I need to clear some space in my fridge. I just got one at random and got one of the heavy bottles.

First impressions were not great to be honest but the taste is growing on me, I am only half way thought the first one. It is a little bit too heavy for my taste I am not quite sure if it is to much hops or what as I am not that clued up on what tastes I am looking for. As it was one of the bottles it was chilled as well so I will be able to compare better once I open the keg with the heavy.

As you can see from the picture the finnings didn't clear the beer as much as I thought it would so I don't think that they will be used again. I will maybe just use them in the lagers. Perhaps it is just me but I think that getting the fizz balance is crucial in a beer, this time I have used less sugar in the carbonating process and it certainly is less gassy than the last time but still a little to much. Ahhh well these things are all trial and error and I am quite happy to keep on brewing and tasting till I get it perfect.

Beer Labeled

2010-06-08T10:06:00.000+01:00

I had some time to spare today so I had a crack at making some labels. I wont win any prizes but at least I will know what I am getting before I pour

From One Extreme to Another

2010-05-25T19:32:00.000+01:00

Well saying that this is Scotland not 2 months ago there was snow on my door step and now there is a great big warm thing in the sky. I have heard its called something like the sun but that has yet to be confirmed. Not that I have seen much of it due to work commitments leaving me on constant night shift of late.

So during the winter months I was having trouble keeping my beers warm enough to ferment this problem is now solved. Now I just need to find somewhere cool enough to let the beer clear after it has carbonated. Who said this home brewing malarkey was easy.

Thanks to my working away/night shift I have only just bottled my Lager after it fermenting for almost 3 weeks but I think it should be ok. Although I have used beer finnings on these last two batches so I should produce a less cloudy beer / lager but it was over a week between adding them to the fermenter and bottling / kegging so hence why I think it should be ok.

The majority of the beer is in the keg with some being in the red capped bottles this will let me fire them in the fridge and see if there is a difference between the beer at room temp or chilled. The lager is in the blue capped bottles and they will all be in the fridge, well as many as I can fit in anyway. So all going to plan a Beer tasting BBQ should be in order by the end of the month

Biting Off More Than I Can Chew

2010-05-09T07:54:00.001+01:00

Lately I have been really busy at work and have hardly had a minute to get anything done, you know the basics like eating and sleeping (hence writing in a blog at 7AM on a Sunday). So when I had the bank holiday Monday off at the beginning of the week I thought that it was time to get another brew on the go. Unfortunately for me the staff at my local home brew shop also had the day off. So I had no beer kits, no brewing sugar or malt extract left over from my previous brews.

All was not lost though I had heard a rumour that Tesco in Glasgow had homebrew products in. As I was also needing food I thought it would be worth a trip in anyway. After 20 minutes of looking up and down the beer aisle I was beginning to think that I was having my leg pulled so I had to ask one of the staff. As I stood there waiting for a puzzled look from the guy I got a shock when he told me it was down the same aisle as the car care stuff.

All they stocked was Geordie kits and Youngs UBrew kits and products , definitely not as much of a selection as you would get online or at a home brew store but it did in a pinch. The prices were on a par with most places as well so I went on a little shopping spree

I was only going in for a lager kit but seeing the Scottish heavy kit was to tempting for me and I couldn't resist. I do enjoy a good pint of Heavy from time to time. So because I didnt know when I would get a chance to have a brew day again I thought I would go ahead and make them both at once. I will be putting the Heavy in the keg and bottling the Lager again. I must admit it was a fair bit of work doing the both of them in the one go but I put that down to not planning things correctly or leaving myself enough time. It was all kind of spur of the moment stuff

Original gravity reading for the Heavy I think

And Gravity reading for the Lager

The thing is I am about to be going away for a week so the both brews will be fermenting for 2 weeks before I get a chance to keg/bottle them. So fingers crossed everything will go to plan.

Who needs Vegas !!!

2010-05-01T05:24:00.001+01:00

Finally got round to having a beer tasting evening and the last brew was an all round success. Although we all need to brush up on our poker skills. But back to the beer, for some reason it was still a little cloudy even though it was in the fridge for about 4 weeks so I will need to refine that a little. After much sampling by all it was decided that it went down far to easily up to the point that we even got some manky shop bought beer in just in case we ran out. I must admit I was slightly proud of myself (even though it was a kit) everyone was impressed with the lager being in the glass bottles and at how it was not flat.

I think the thing with homebrew is that people are so used to commercial beers and lagers that it takes a while to appreciate the taste of a good brew. On a side note because it was looking as if we may run out I had an early sample of my pear Cider and it looks like it may be a bit of a dud brew. Its not that its bad but I think it could be better.

So I now have a list of requests/suggestions to carry out for my next batch of home brew like make more and creating labels for my bottles. So as soon as I have finished constantly working nights I will be right on it.

Official Review

"That was the best bottle of home-brew I've ever tried.
It was really smooth. It still had that slight home-brew'ish tinge to it that they all have but it was quite pleasant after a few sips.
The bubbles were fantastic, they were small and not overly fizzed yet lively and had elements of spring lambs leaping on fresh summer meadows. "

A Herculean Task

2010-04-14T18:16:00.000+01:00

For some crazy reason the weather has been almost tropical of late. Well its warm at least considering there is still snow on the hills about 30 miles from me. So as it was time to bottle my pear cider I thought that a wee stroll would be in order to the local supermarket to get the bottles which is only about 1.5 miles away. I just bought some of there own label still water in 2 litre bottles so it worked out at £1.30 for 10 of them. Good times

You may notice that the bottles are all still full. Yes being the idiot that I am at times I walked almost all the way home carrying 20 litres of water before realising that I did not need the actual water inside the bottles but just the bottles themselves. As I was about 100m from my door when that thought occured to me theer was no way that I was tipping it out at that point. So I got a little more exercise than expected.

As it turns out it wasnt that bad I just used the water to fill my sanatising buckets so it did not just go to waste.

So on to the actual bottling of the cider the usual rules apply everything that will come into contact with the brew gets a good soak in the sanatising solution for a while.

The last time I was in my local home brew store I made another couple of purchases, I got myself a racking cane which is not an essential bit of kit but the last time I was syphoning I had to restart a couple of times it as the syphon tubing was stored it was curling up inside the fermenting bucket and not staying at the bottom. I also got myself some wider tubing that fits over the top of my bottle filler so that takes care of the wads of tape used the last time I was bottling.

Before transfering I took my Final Gravity Reading which was actually about 0.997 bit its not that clear on the picture. So using the formula for calculating alchohol content (( OG - FG ) / 7.5 = approx ABV ) my cider should be about 6.1% ABV

I took this pic to try and show the pear flavouring mixing with the cider but it did not show up all that well. You should just be able to make out what looks like oil on top of water on top of the wort. A word of warning do not take a taste of the pear flavouring it might smell great but it is very concentrated and does not taste good at all. Think walking through a haze of hairspray eating a pear and that is something like what it tasted like.

Bottle filler on new wider syphon tube

Racking cane in use. Allowing me to get all of the tasty cider into bottles without restarting the syphon.

The end result.

The bottles will be wrapped in a old sleeping bag to try and keep them warm enough to let them carbonate for a week and I will pray for no bottle bombs.

Happy Easter!!!!!

2010-04-04T20:21:00.001+01:00

There is me talking about getting a Cider ready for drinking in the summer and there was still snow out in my front garden. I really am planning ahead.

Brew Day 3

2010-04-04T20:18:00.002+01:00

So as the summer will soon be upon us and festival/bbq season will start up again I thought I would brew a pear cider that it could sit and condition for a couple of months so that it would be a perfect summer drink.

So first up I gathered up all the equipment I would be needing

Upon opening the kit I found there was 2 sachets under the cap 1 yeast and one pear flavouring. This worried me a little so I had to refer to the instructions and the yeast goes in as normal but the pear flavouring gets added at the conditioning stage (thank god I looked at the instructions)

Thanks to looking at the great guide on kit brewing over at Jims Beer Kit forums I rehydrated the yeast at this point

Then sterelised everything that would come into contact with the brew

As everything was steeping I sat the can in some warm water I dont think this was really nessesary for this particular kit as it did not seem to be as thick as the beer and lager kits but it done no harm

Once everything had been rinsed out after being sterelised I added the contents of the can and 1.5kg of sugar the kit said 1,3kg but a little bit more shouldnt do any harm (I hope!!!)

Time to start filling the fermenter up with cold water. I stopped at this point to test the temp and top it up with a bit more boiled water and some cold water so that my final temp was about 24`C

Time to add the rehydrated yeast

I actually remembered to take an original gravity reading this time. The sample I had from the trial jar was great even without the pear flavouring so I am really hoping this brew turns out ok.

Then all that was left to do was tuck the fermenter into the heating bath and let the yeast work its magic

That was the temperture reading of the water in the bath prior to putting the fermenter in so it was spot on as per the instructions that indicated it should be kept somewhere between 20 and 28`C

The whole process from start to finish, including clearing up took less than 2 hours so if it turns out of it will be the best 2 hours I have spent brewing so far.

Just as a side issue I had no major dramas or mishaps happen during this brew apart from dropping my didgital termometer in the heating bath yesterday but that was nothing to do with the actual brew day so it dont count.

Have you got the Bottle to Bottle it?

2010-04-01T18:01:00.001+01:00

So after barreling my first beer I decided that I would do a lager as most of my friends aint beer lovers. So as it was a lager I thought I would try my hand at bottling it so that they could be put in the fridge. So it was time for another shopping trip to my local home brew store. Where I got another fermenter, 48 500ml beer bottles, a hand capping tool, some crown caps and best of all a bottle filler.

I had heard very good things about this little device while reading about tips and tutorials on the best way to bottle your brew and I was not disapointed. With all good ideas it is a very simple one it is a tube with a spring loaded pin valve on the end that opens when you press it against the bottom of your bottle then closes when you release it for moving onto the next one. A simple idea but a great one, I had visions of spilling beer everywhere as I moved from filling one bottle to the next.

So first up I had to seterelize all the new bottles this was harder than I thought due to finding space to put them all but Imanaged to fit them all in the containers I had, just. I simply half filled the storage container and fermenter with solution and then dropped the bottles in and let them fill with the solution. Once that was done I rinsed them out a good 2-3 times with fresh water. This has to be the most tedious and boring part of bottling it was never ending but had to be done.

Job done

While the bottles were in the solution I began syphoning from my fermenter into my other fermenter/bottling bucket, this reduces the amount of sediment that can go into the bottles and allows an even mix of the sugar (for carbonating). I could have added a teaspoon of sugar to each bottle then the beer but sod that for a game of soldiers I was bored of just cleaning them never mind doing that.

So after that was all done I moved into the kitchen to do the actual bottling. which was a piece of cake. I just popped the bottle filler onto the end of my syphon tube and off I went. Well no, if only it was that simple, as you will notice from the pic below I have a wad of tape around where the tube and bottler meet that is because the 2 parts were the dame diameter. So after much mumbling I focused on the solution and not the problem (we had a team talk in work recently) and that solution was cut the tube a bit and then half a roll of tape to make it hold.

This may be low tech but it worked so who am I to complain. It was then time to cap them all which is yet another soul destroying job but all I was thinking was how satisfying it would be to open your own bottle of beer. It is the simple things in life that keep me sane you know!!

Then move to a warm area to let the lager carbonate

Then into the fridge for 3 weeks to let it clear

I just found out that to let the beer clear it must be kept as cold as possible after the first week of carbonating that will be why the first brew was cloudy, drinkable but cloudy. So I am anticipating a nice cold crisp clear lager in a couple of weeks.

Much thanks goes out to CrownCap over at Jims Beer Kit forums whos great bottling guide put a few of my fears at ease. It really is well worth a look if you are going to bottle for the first time.

Beer Drinking

2010-03-30T22:40:00.000+01:00

So thanks to my work messing me about I had canceled my premier beer tasting night for the begining of this month. Well not so much canceled just never actually organised it. As it turned out I managed to get home for the weekend and as I was dying to test the home brew out a few quick phone calls were made on the Fri night to try and get the boys round.

This turned out to be harder than I thought, I mean who turns down free beer!!! To be fair some were doing proper grown up stuff like going to see a wedding band that they were wanting to hire for there wedding and out on dates so I will let it slide. I did manage to rustle up a small ragtag bunch of ~~victims~~ tasters though.

So off to the supermarket we went to get in some supplies and some emergency beer and we were ready to rock. At first I placed the barrel in the living room then decided to move it to over the sink thank god i did because it had to be the gassiest beer in the world. I mean there are fire hoses that are not under as much pressure. So after some careful pouring we had 5 pints that you could put a flake in. Still we battled on and after letting it settle it went down really well in my opinion. It got a thumbs up from Sandy, another positive response from his missus Louise (who is Australian so any beer is better than what they drink over there anyway) and even Scott said he liked it although he did move onto the emergency beer but I put that down to the fact that he is a shandy drinking balerina. There was one other who described it as chewy, but her opinion was neither wanted or needed.

So after little Miss Chewy and the Shandy drinking balerina went onto the emergency beer Louise went to bed so myself and Sandy got wired in and this was all that was left in the morning. Quite frankly I would describe my first brew was a success and has only spurred me on to do more. I dont know what i was worried about this beer drinking is the easy part. Next up bottling the Beer should be fun!!!

Brew Day 2

2010-03-24T22:49:00.000Z

So this brew should be a winner with no problems or hassles now that I have everything I need to get going right? Well sort of. Spurned on by my DIY skills I was keen to test my new bit of kit out. So once again time to get all my stuff I would be needing out

Then time to sterelise everything again

So once I had sat the can in some warm water while everything was sterelising and had boiled about 6 pints of water it was time to add it all to the fermenter

Now all was going well so far then it got messy in the real sense of the word. The mixture in the can comes out like treacle and I got a bit distracted by something so some ended up over me !!! Anyway i then added the boiling water and then the sugar. Do NOT do this, any sane person who has half a brain would see the steam coming up from the bucket and know that it will make the sugar all moist and stuck to the bag. I mean i knew that would happen but went ahead anyway thus making a bit more mess. So another lesson learnt sugar before boiling water.

Time to add the rest of the water to the mixture and aereate it well before adding the yeast

Does that not look like one hell of a pint. So now that I had a thermometer I thought I should test the temp to see what it was when I added the yeast. Turns out that the cold water in my house is really cold and had brought it down to about 12`C. This is not what I was wanting to see as yeast 'goes to sleep' below about 16`C, but in for a penny in for a pound I added it anyway.

I then fired it in my heat bath which I had switched on earlier that day to heat it before adding my fermenter (always thinking I am). Thankfully after 3 days I started to see some results the airlock was bubbling away nicely and a good layer of foam had formed on top of the mixture.

So now I know to add sugar before the water and to top up my beer with hot water so that the yeast is not getting pitched at to low a temp. I have also been reading up on rehydrating the yeast which is supposed to give it a head start so I might try that out when I do my next brew which I think will be a Pear Cider that will be left for the summer I think.

Lessons learnt ?

2010-03-14T17:57:00.000Z

Well sort of. After my first attempt at my home brew I rushed out and purchased a thermometer and another kit to try again, so first on the agenda was a test to see what temp my beer was being stored at.

Basically I got the water to about 20`C then inserted the probe of my thermometer into the fermenter and left it for a couple of days. It turns out that even in the warmest room of my house it still dropped down to 15`C after abou 24 hours, this will be the reason that I had little to none fermentation in my first brew. Even wrapping my trusty indestructable Swiss army blanket around the fermenter could not help. Damn crappy central heating system.

Fill level before adding fermenter

So because of this I decided to build myself a heating bath. Basically I got an 80 L storage bucket and put a 100 Watt fish tank heater in it this allows me to heat the water around the fermenter therefore keeping it at a constant 19 - 20 `C

Heating element for the bath, I stuck it to the bit of metal as I was not to sure about having a very hot thing stuck straight onto the plastic of the storage box

All that was required after that was to butcher the lid of the box to allow the airlock to pop out and job done. I ran some more temp tests with the probe of the thermometer inside the fermenter and for a couple of days and the temps held at a toasty 19`C. Perfect conditions for the yeast to do its Job. I wrapped it in the Swiss army blanket just to save some of the heat escaping so fingers crossed the next batch of Lager will be better

Beer Tasting Night Out The Window

2010-03-07T13:26:00.001Z

In anticipaton of my first batch of home brew being ready for next weekend 13/03/10 I thought a wee poker/beer night might be in order, so I went and got a poker set with poker chips and felt the whole shooting match.

Unfortunatly I need to work away for the next week or 2 so it means I will be away the weekend I was planning to do it. This in itself is not a great problem as it will give the beer a bit more time to mature in the barrel. The bigger problem is that I started another brew in anticipation that the barrel would be empty in time for the fermentation process to be finished so I could condidtion the 2nd brew straight away. I think that as the next brew is lager I will invest in glass bottles and a capping tool so that should be fun.

I did have a cheeky wee taster of the beer in the barrel last night (I couldnt resist) and it was not bad at all, it wasnt great but it certainly was not as bad as I was expecting it to be so fingers crossed it will only get better over the next couple of weeks.

Let the brewing commence

2010-03-04T18:11:00.001Z

So after purchasing everything I thought I needed it was time to get the brew underway. As this was my first brew I studied the instructions some more just to be sure (cant be wasting the beer now can we). The instructions that came with the kit were shall we say 'minimal', this I thought was a good thing.

Clean and Sanitise. Everything that comes into contact with the ingredients
Boil 6 pints of water and add contents of can,sugar and boiled water to fermenting bucket
Mix together and top off to 5 gallons with cold water
Add yeast once correct temperature has been achieved
Leave fermenting bucket in a warm place for at least a week
Check hydrometer reading is consistent for a couple of days
Siphon beer into barrel and add priming sugar. Then leave to carbonate for 3 weeks
Drink

Not a problem I said to myself. Ha was I wrong there. Steps 1, 2 and 3 not a problem then came step 4 that will be the point I realise I do not own a thermometer DOH!! What to do ? I ask myself, well what does any man do in that situation? Exactly, stick it in anyway and hope for the best, I think that may have been my first mistake.

Step 5 should have been a simple thing to do but that is where my second mistake happened. As it said in the instructions the beer should be left in a warm place at between 17 and 20 degrees C the only room in my house that is constantly warm is the boiler cupboard, again no thermometer so in it goes and I hoped for the best again.

Now you might be noticing a pattern here of alot of hoping and praying well the mistake I made with step 6 is just down to sheer impatience. After 7 days I checked the reading it was a bit high, day 8 still the same reading so sod it I am putting this in a barrel.

The actual job of siphoning was a piece of cake and even I didnt muck up adding the primimg sugar. There was just one problem though, you knew there would be. When I was sanatising the barrel I took the tap off to give that a good clean also and possibly, just maybe I or someone else didnt tighten it back up fully. I only found this out after a few hours when my house started to smell like a tramps coat after a good session. In my ignorance I thought that this was just how it was supposed to smell. Evenyually I had a look then had a little panic attack and grabbed the barrel and ran to the kitchen with it. Thinking that I had somehow threaded the tap I took it completly off, that was the point that all the gas escaped. All I could do at this point is screw it back on and hope there was no more leaks, but wait I thought the gas has all escaped 'I know', I says 'just add a wee bit more sugar that will sort it right out'. Never do this it is the same as dropping Mentos into Cola not a pretty sight.

Step 8 has still to happen but I am not looking forward to it, you never know though after a couple it might be ok.

Shopping Spree

2010-03-01T21:27:00.000Z

So thanks to the starter kit not having all you need to get started I had much googling to be getting on with. First of all what is best to use bottles or a barrel? Well there is no clear answer to this it is really up to you how much money you want to spend and what you prefer.

I opted for a pressure barrel with a Co2 injection kit from Home Brew Online. While I was there I purchased a few other odds and ends like a long mixing spoon, an airlock with grommets, brewing sugar and malt extract. Now including the cost of these items and the starter kit I got as a kit so far the homebrewing experience has cost about £80. I am really begining to wonder if it is all worth it.

Where To Begin

2010-03-01T20:40:00.000Z

First off welcome, I hope that this blog will aid some of you out there who are venturing into the home brewing world.

My aim is not to tell you the best way to make your own home brew beer/lager/cider just simply to show you how I have went about it and the mistakes that I have made and possibly prevent you doing the same. As I am just starting out I will be using beer kits that can be bought form your local homebrew store or online. The whole hops and grain way of brewing is a mystical world to me so please no questions about that type of brewing.

I personally had no interest in brewing my own beer until a friend of mine puschased me a starter kit for my Christmas (although I think it was more for his own gain as he knew that he would help me drink it) Now though I have caught the bug so beware.

The kit I got was Youngs Brew Buddy and I thought ot would be great to make the beer, drink it and then forget about it. Boy was I wrong about that. Now as the starter kit was a gift I never asked how much it was but all the blurb constantly went on about how much money you could save by brewing your own beer.

So come January I knew I was going to be skint come the end of the month so decided to get the homebrew underway, The starter kit boasts ALL YOU NEED to brew your own beer, which is true there is everything you need to BREW the beer but if you want to drink beer and not some flat brown liquid then you need to get either a pressure barrel, glass bottles with caps and a capping tool or plastic airtight bottles. So out the window went the idea of getting the beer ready for the end of Jan.