Jim's Beer Kit

I think it depends on the style of beer you are making and how long you intend to keep it for. I tend to use Safale 04 which clears very quickly and flocculates well. My beers are normally clear coming out of the primary after 5-9 days. So luckily I don't have to wait for that before bottling. For m...

Maybe you're right but I prefer to sanitise the mash tun. I only have time to do 5 or 6 brews in a year. When I get the mash tun and boiler out, there are often spots of mould growing in place and a musty smell. I just feel easier scrubbing that all off and letting the santiser do its work for 30 mi...

Funnily enough the only times I've ever had a problem with infected brews was back in the days when I used one of those bags to do my mashing in. I used to find that no matter how hard I tried I could not sterilise them properly and they would only be good for 3 brews before needing to be changed. I...

Too cold perhaps? The way I see it, you've got nothing to lose by waiting. Just keep it sterile.

btw, why do you keep S04 in the fridge? I'm not saying it's wrong, I know that you should keep 'live' yeast cool but I just never heard that you should do the same with dried yeast.

Russell.

Hi All, I just made an IPA and whilst rummaging around in the cupboard where I keep my hops I found that I have a load of different sorts of hops all of which are out of date, some by more than a year. I had enough fresh, in date, hops to make the IPA but just for good measure and on the basis of "y...

I fiddled about with this a lot myself until I decided that what was important to me was the efficiency of my whole brewing process. I wanted to know what OG I'd get for a certain grain bill. So I brewed one of Graham Wheelers recipes and measured the OG of the wort after cooling and immediately bef...

Hi All, it's getting cold outside and lacking a temperature controlled fermenter my thoughts are turning towards trying to make a lager, something along the style of Pilsner Urquell. I'm thinking of putting my FV in the shed or garage where the temperature varies between 5 and 14C at the moment. Thi...

I did a honey beer earlier in the year. It's one of the smoothest beers I've ever made. I added the honey to the boiler just before switch off. The Honey taste is subtle and just what I was seeking. I too used a very local honey from bees that forage on my allotment site. for 25 litres 4400g Pale ma...

Hi Nick, I live in Wokingham so I suspect have the same/similar water to when you were in Reading. I also use S04 yeast bought from the same HB shop and stored in the same way. So those probably aren't factors. I don't aerate as heavily as you. I find that the drop from the boiler to the FV when run...

Double mashing...there are other names for it I think What I do is a normal mash for 90 minutes at 66C. Then completely drain the mash tun. I then close the tap, add more treated water to keep the the temperature at 75C or so, close the lid and leave to mash again for 15-20 minutes. Drain that and p...

used to be 63% when I sparged no matter how long I took. A few months ago I decided to switch to double mashing just to save a bit of time and my mash efficiency has lept to 73%.

Russell.

Hmmm...WLP570 eh? I had suspicion that it would be down to using a liquid yeast. I've not had much success with the Wyeast ones I got from my local homebrew shop. In fact I gave up after only getting 1 successful brew out of 7 last year. So I'm sceptical about them. Maybe I'll give it a go again wit...

Anyone got a good Duvel recipe? I'm not convinced by the one in "Clone Brews". Pear extract in a beer?

I'm thinking that it's probably quite a simple brew. Perhaps 85% Belgian PaleMalt and 15% sugar. With Stryian Golding and Saaz for hops.

Any thoughts gratefully accepted.

I've played around with secondaries and fermentation times and I've found that for a 'normal' gravity beer with OG of 1030 to 1050, the head on the fermenting beer collapses into the wort after about 5 days. At this point the beer is clear and drinkable although it's a few degrees above FG. I don't ...

for what it's worth, I made a big IPA last year with 300g of Goldings. After chilling etc I put the drained hops in my old mash tun overnight to allow any remaining wort to drain out. There was about 2 litres of wort present the next morning which I added to the fermentation vessel. I've repeated th...