Home Brew Forum

After Keging my latest brew It was time for the Christmas brew to be sorted so kitchen take over time funny thing is SWMBO wanted to help Sorry for pic quality they were taken with my camera phone

I must admit this was mostly taken from the kit brewing forum as Chris the Fish gave me the inspiration for this.

I'm going to get some sticks of cinnamon and boil them with sugar to impart the cinnamon flavour a little when the kit has brewed and been kegged for 6 weeks. when i bottle I shall drop the cinnamon sugar solution into 1 of the bottles and taste it to see how it fits before making a decision.

So on to the Kit or should I say Kits



Black stuff in the FV



After rinsing the cans out with boiled water and adding the brewers sugar and DME I start bringing it to the boil whilst steeping the flavour pack much going on here.



Hops to add much hopynes here



Low boil for 15 - 20 min ish



Add the water and aireate



Take a reading gesh 1076 very Christmasy hehehe



Yeast has been doing its thing for a while nice head bung it in and leave for a few weeks



This will be left for 7 days before I check it when its ready I shall keg it for 6 weeks then it will be bottled for final conditioning up to Christmas. I tasted the brew and it was sweet to be expected also very hopy and very bitter which the conditioning should knock most of the bitterness out of it, seeing as I have used 2 cans it will be full bodied and just what's needed on those cold winter nights. Unless its all gone badly wrong and its too bitter in which case it will be left for longer before drinking.

2 hours after bunging the yeast in its got an inch of foam on the top and is bubbeling very well.

Santa will be "isse* and won't be able to get back up the chimney

looks good, makes me want to whip up another brew tomorrow!

Great pics DF, hope it turns out to be a good'un

just caught sight of this, glad youve made a go at this, looks like it is going swimmingly!

one thought tho, did you measure the sg as soon it was all put together?, if so your probably selling yourself short. When i put a sample in the jar i stick the hydrometer in and then leave it on the side for a few hours as i find if i take a reading straight from the warm wort it gives me a few points less than if i take a reading at room temp.

Try it next time you brew and you'll see what i mean - its probably closer to 1080 if it was 1076 when warm.

Keep us posted, im interested to hear how this goes and if my attempts were a fluke!!

This is currently still in the fermenter and bubbeling I checked its gravity yesterday as it had been in just over week and it is down to 1012. Tasted the bit I had in the measurer and the overly strong bitter hop taste has mellowed alot. Im going to wait until Wednesday when I shall be droping this into a second fermenter for a day before botteling now I have bottles to put it into.
So far so good with this though I have a feeling it is going to turn out a proper christmas drink at a silly streangth.

Oh I have 3 cornies on their way now so when I went ot leyland home brew on saturday I picked up items for 5 brews 2 being a lager so cornies for them wife did not mind about the cornies after I explained that you need pressure for the gas to get into lager and botteling is a pain

This has been bottled for 2 weeks and I just had to give it a test before takeing a cpl of bottles to aleman for his judgement on it, The yeast has settled nicley and the bottle I have opened made a very small hiss but the stout itself is nice and tingley in the mouth no head on it though but I did pour it very slowley out of the bottle. Tastes good.

Any further updates on this? hows it going?

Chris The Fish wrote:Any further updates on this? hows it going?

I have had the odd bottle over the past few weeks, It tastes pretty good but in need of more time to mature.

Beats a mince pie!