Jim's Beer Kit

I would have gone for the EKG had they been green, but not really keen on the oxidised brown colour as I can't see it being a good thing?

Had a hop delivery at the end of last week so decided today and tomorrow would be good days to brew. It was all going so well........ Mash on for a blonde ale at 66 degrees for an hour Sparge done and wort transferred to boiler and getting up to temp Unopened/vacuum sealed Challenger hops taken from...

You can make wine out of almost anything, I remember a neighbour made oak leaf wine once. That tasted like crap too. I've tasted a couple of oak leaf wines (my dad made it years ago and Cairn O Mohr do a spring oak leaf) and they are delicious, though I believe that the leaves can be bitter from ta...

.....has anyone had any experiences with brewing cucumbers??? I have a friend that regularly uses cucumber in his wine (carrot and cucumber is one of his faves) and he reckons it is similar to watermelon. I've yet to try it (drinking or making) so I'm intrigued to see how your wine turns out, keep ...

Also there is scope for some user interpretation error from the kit I was waiting for the liquid to turn pink but have just re-tested and taken a reading at the point before (where it turns a grey/purple colour) and it has given me a figure of 39.5 CaC03 so I will use this as a reference point for ...

I have two top-tap King Kegs which I still use on occasion. I changed the taps for THESE which was well worth the expense

vacant wrote: ↑

Thu Oct 12, 2017 8:40 pm

That difference looks significant (approx 30 vs approx 40) Could it be explained by three drops of reagent rather than four?

99.9% sure it was 4 drops (always room for doubt though!)

Thanks Eric. Unfortunately I didn't keep the test sample. I took the reading when it had turned pink with the first drop after the blue colour and it appeared stable. I'll leave it longer next time to see if it returns to blue.

Cheers

Hi, I've now got a water report from Wallybrew and it gives a figure for alkalinity of 39 CaC03. I took a Salifert test on the same water as I bottled it which gave me a figure of 28 CaC03. I did the 4ml water/4 drop test and the syringe reading was 0.88 which gives the meq/l figure of 0.56 (then x ...

Jim wrote: ↑

Tue Aug 15, 2017 4:33 pm

If you were using normal beer bottles you'd have to seal the tops somehow to do the same (clingfilm??).

I use THESE or a square of foil if they are all in use.

I always leave my beers in the fermenter for two weeks. I take a reading after about a week (it's usually finished unless it's a monster) and then leave it another week before either cold crashing or bottling (checking gravity is stable first, obviously).

I personally would wait it out, especially considering the high original gravity

If you want more head retention, the obvious choice would be to add some torrified wheat (5% or so)

That's pretty grim!

Enjoyed the comments too (and anyway, North Yorkshire is the largest UK county, not West..... )

Well done!