Jim's Beer Kit

Don’t forget malt extract can be considered boiled wort. And I remember you telling me to be careful of adding alkalinity that won’t be reduced with boiling and carrying over to the fermenter. Yes, well maybe not precisely, but evaporated at low pressure at a temperature lower than that needed at a...

This would not have happened but for a tin of Coopers Dark Malt Extract bought for some forgotten project was to be used in a Fullers Brown Stout recipe of 1897 by Ron Pattinson. His recipe didn't include extract, but extract made a 1075 OG brew easier (with a couple more points) reducing both grain...

Eric This raises a good question. Would you still adjust alkalinity, with say AMS, if you are just making up a kit? Not mashing. I would think there would be merit in using AMS to eliminate most of any alkalinity in hard water. I didn't when using extract, but such thinking was beyond my capabiliti...

It will be interesting if you can distinguish any difference there might be. it is the norm for wort to be at around pH 5.2 when fermentation begins, and during the fermentation process, yeast will acidify the green beer to somewhere around pH 4. I would expect baking soda added to the wort would ra...

Right, I did get it wrong, thinking other than gypsum, your additions were made after fermentation rather than before. So, I retract my comments about all of your additions, except for the baking soda. Baking soda is usually an addition if mashing a dark all grain recipe in soft, distilled or RO wat...

It took me time to understand your method, and as your beers are phenomenal, there might be little I can add to aid your process. It's a very long time since I last brewed with all extract. My next planned beer will include extract, but only because it will be high gravity, as using all grain makes ...

The water in Faversham will be highly alkaline if drawn from the chalk that abounds in Kent. Untreated, such water is unsuitable for brewing beers like Spitfire, Bishop's Finger and indeed almost any of the beers we drink today. Murphy and Sons have for over a century supplied chemicals and advice t...

It appears the problem might be the character sets used in Windows 11 being different to earlier versions. The two top lines of the display, and in windows for both Fermentable Ingredients and Hop Varieties have different characters to the set used for the rest of the display, and potentially requir...

Maybe a daft one, but have tried adjusting the zoom?

Beerengine.jpg (228.38 KiB) Viewed 654 times

It has been common practice by British commercial brewers to add caramel to a pale beer and name it XYZ Mild. https://www.murphyandson.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Caramel-TMF-Rev-4-CD.pdf From the above datasheet it can be derived that 6ml of their caramel (also sold by Brewpaks) in 10 litres o...

Sounds like a poor seal. Suggest you try a smear of petroleum jelly.

Jocky wrote: ↑

Sun Jan 07, 2024 11:41 pm

Early bottles were definitely murky. Not good.

But I had some a year and a half later and it was excellent.

Thanks for this. If seen again, I'll give it another try. Initially it was just like a poor attempt at homebrewing.

Many calculators seem written by those more familiar with spreadsheet architecture than the relevance of ion content in brewing liquors. You don't advise what type of beer you wish to brew, nor any details of the water you use, both of which are vitally important in deriving what needs doing. Only r...

Interesting comments with substantial variance. The two bottles I had were substantially similar, they poured murky brown with a murky brown taste.

Cobnut wrote: ↑

Thu Dec 28, 2023 11:48 am

A member of our local HB club brought along some of this beer a few years ago. Can’t say I was overly impressed TBH.

Bought a couple of bottles not long after its introduction. Those were poor by any standard, in need of significant improvement to produce a desirable product.