Jim's Beer Kit

I have almost got all my equipment ready for my first step to the dark side :D ,just waiting for my IC to come from hop and grape and its ready for the first brew.So I have a couple of questions about water treatment. 1. To save to much ball ache on the first brew I was thinking about using Asda sma...

I had much the same experience with a great eastern ale that I brewed last year that tasted very bland after being in the barrel for six weeks,so I added a hop bag out of a flavapac with the half pint of boiling water that it soaked in.Then I gassed the barrel back up and tried the beer again after ...

I often have the same trouble with my cylinders and have found that if I apply a bit of pressure on the pin with my thumb and lift my thumb of as soon as you hear gas escaping then dunk it in warm water again it seems to stop it,dont know why but it seems to work for me.Another point is are you only...

I have brewed several of the kits,Brupaks are my favourite brand although 2 of the brewers choice kits where like barlfire said the worst I have done.The first one was the brewers choice czech pils which had a bit of a malt tang and hardly any hop flavour or bitterness,the other was the brewers choi...

Hi, After trying quite a lot of different/various kits,I decided to splash out on the top of the range Brewpacks Holme Valley kit which was pricey at around the £23.50 mark to see if more expensive is really better. This has finished fermenting from 1.052 to 1.008 , giving appx 5.9% which i,m impr...

ALL homebrewed alcohol is 100% safe to drink,all these tales about going blind do go back to the prohibition era when the "shinners" would not care what was run through the still to maximise the profits.Beer would contain miniscule amounts of methanol and you would consume more methanol eating a bag...

Its 50/50 Light DME and Dextrose.

[quote="boingy"]Definitely don't bin it.
It's worth another packet of yeast to see if you can salvage it.[/quote

Going to get a pack of S04 at the weekend and add a teaspoon of nutrient and see what happens.

The full barrel,have only tried a mouth full,sorry never took the OG I must have been asleep when I brewed this one,suppose if its going down the drain ive nowt to loose by giving it a go.

I have a brupaks brewers choice special bitter kit that has been in the barrel since the 15th June,this was brewed using option 3,a 1.5kg tin of brupaks malt extract and it tastes really sweet,no bitterness at all ive just checked the SG and its 1016 so somehow managed to cock it up :oops: .So I was...

I have done several of these kits,the bitter kit I have found to be really good :D apart from the last one which was brewed using option 3,the 1.5KG Brupaks LME.This has been in the keg for about 8 weeks now and it tastes like barlfire says about his IPA :cry: .Think I might put this back in a FV an...

I aerated my brew like there was no tomorrow! The airlock is one of the U-bend designs with two chambers which both started half full of water. The pressure seems to be building up in the FV though because now one chamber is about 1/5 full and the other chamber about 4/5 as if the volume of air in ...

I just think to myself shouldnt somone tell smiths that beer is supposed to have hops and malt in it

Im not being funny but johns smiths smooth is similar in taste and consistency to that yellow piss you were drinking before!! BUT to answer your question, do a best bitter kit, and put into plastic pop bottles you dont need a pressure keg as long as you have primed it right. HTH B.. I agree on that...

Will you be filling any head room in the barrel with CO2? Think I will give it a 1 second blast of gas just to make sure its protected right from the start, it says in the Graham Wheeler book that I have that he reckons it is a good idea to mature any beer intended for bottling in a barrel for a wh...