Jim's Beer Kit

I’ve brewed a few of these. Fantastic beer when it works out but there are one or two things to watch out for. Because it’s basically a late hopped, relatively low alcohol lager with lager yeast you need to get the water right. A higher alcohol IPA with lots of crystal or munich and a yeast which fi...

I consult on water chemistry for a number of breweries.

5 days is fine.

Dry hopping can range from 2 days to 2 weeks with a lot of breweries (and home brewers) leaving them for about a week. Fuggle is not an intrusive hop and 25g is on the lower end of a typical dry hop. I'd say it's a good starting point and should give you some extra aroma.

Couple of things... Don't forget that you are tasting a nine day old flat beer ! There is probably still quite a bit of yeast still in suspension which will kill the flavour of both the hops and the malt. Equally, the beer hasn't had time to condition properly - it's still a bit green. I've also fou...

You just need to wait. It'll go in time. Don't worry about it. I've been there a few times with those types of yeasts, you just need to patient - I think sometimes we are too used to ale yeasts, although they throw off esters, they are still drinkable young. You'll see the difference though, lagered...

I knew a few members are commercial brewers or involved in commercial brewing.... So has anyone an suggestions as to activated charcoal filters for a 1600L brewery ? Quite a few breweries I've spoken to don't filter or pretreat for chlorine/ chloramines at all.

I bottle most of my beer too.

I bought one of these

http://www.brewuk.co.uk/counter-top-cap ... black.html

I'm very happy with it. Well worth the money. Takes some of the pain out of bottling and speeds thing up.

Traditionally, transferring to a second vessel to condition would have been the norm. It's what I did when I started brewing. Nowadays a lot of home-brewers skip this step and ferment and condition in the same vessel. I do now too, and I haven't really noticed any difference in the finished beer. I'...

There are quite a few threads dealing with this ranging from simple to quite elaborate systems (jacketed fermentors) or fermentors with coils in the beer hooked up to recirculating chiller systems... A good way to start off is to get a fridge from freecycle or second hand somewhere. You can then buy...

Worcester hop shop are currently selling 2014 Citra.

There's nothing wrong with your recipe at all. And frankly you can have as many suggestions as there are people willing to chip in. So with that said I'll throw my two cents in...! If you're brewing a mild keep the hops low - what you propose is good. Personally, I would drop the dark crystal to 350...

TheSumOfAllBeers wrote:A guy in the club has the dispense tap, which has a hook up to an external gas supply, and he says it's a bit crap, really fiddle gas in. The tap itself, and the growler are great though

Be interesting to know how it works with the CO2 bulbs....

http://www.aliexpress.com/item/3-6L-Stainless-mini-keg-Growler-wine-pot-Stainless-Beer-Growlers-Unbreakable-Homebrew-keg-for-beer/32403427464.html?spm=2114.031010208.3.69.eMbhuO&ws_ab_test=201407_2,201444_5,201409_2 and http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Mini-keg-Growler-stainless-3-6L-stainless-Mini-be...

I have a couple of the second growler. It's a screw on lid so once opened the beer will go off fairly fast. In saying that, Rob is supposed to be importing a tap system for it which uses the 16g CO2 bulbs or a cylinder. Something like http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Beer-Spear-With-Tap-Faucet-For-Min...

That's about right. Just as a ballpark figure, 75% phosphoric is 12.05 Molar - so 83 mL of that made up to 1L would be 1 Molar. Does that tie in with the discrepancy you were measuring ? (it's not a massive error - about 5% off advertised) Of course - and I hate to say this, how accurate was your vo...