jimw86,s out of date Brew Buddy Bitter kit club

[Cleggy]

Thanks to Jim I received my kits this week.

I decided to split the first one into 2 10L batches.

For the first batch I used the following.

900g Brew Buddy Bitter Kit
300g (ish) Honey
Zest of 2 Oranges
1 Vanilla Pod (split, seeds scraped out and roughly chopped)

Brought the above to the boil with 2L of campden treated water.

15g (ish) Progress

Added and boiled for 10 mins.

Into the FV with 500g Light Spray Malt, given a good trashing and topped up to 10L

Safale 04 added

OG 1.044

For the second Batch i went over the top which resulted in my brew night finishing at 1AM

Minimashed - 200g Pale Malt - 200g Crystal Malt - 100g Torrified Wheat (Done on the hob which was a faff to keep the temp in range) in 2L water for 1 hr.
Sparged with original runnings and another 2L water at 80 deg.
Back onto the hob with other 900g Brew Buddy Best Bitter and brought to boil.
500g Light spray malt added.
15g (ish) Progress added to the boil for 10 mins.
Into sink of cold water & ice - down to 40 degrees.
Into FV and topped up to 10L,thrashed and Safale 04 added.

OG 1.047

We'll see what comes out the other end!

I bottled the first one of these on Friday night - it had got down to 1.010.
Primed it with some more honey.
I had been leaving my brews for a day or 2 in the bottling bucket after adding the priming sugar and a couple of my beers had had head problems.
This time i bottled immediately after adding the cooled boiled honey/wort to the bucket.
Maybe it will make a difference

My other brew has been roused as it wasn't coming down past 1.015 hopefully it may have come down a bit further.

Edit - Hasn't moved from 1.015 so i've bottled it. However i think i had too much going on when i did it and may have rushed things so fingers crossed. (Or a lesson learned)

[Cleggy]

Typical scenario - i cant resist opening a bottle after a week, just to check everything is going correctly of course.

Tried one of each and they're not bad at all.
The honeyed one is quite similar to my Fixby Gold so that is a real bonus!
It also has a lovely head on it already.
The one with added mashed grains (first attempt with torrified wheat) has a much deeper flavour, the head is definitely different, more clingy, but its not huge yet.
Will now leave them in peace for a few weeks.

[Cleggy]

Did my second can at the weekend.

Again split into 2 for meddling purposes, this time brewed with different yeasts.

Steeped 200g of Crustal Malt for an hour.
Added 450g jar of basic honey to this (liked the head and consistency the honey gave the first kit) and boiled.
Added 1KG LME and stirred in to remove clumps.
Poured roughly half of this (boiled in a 5l pot on the gas hob) into each FV.
Warmed the can and poured roughly half into each FV.
Rinsed with boiling water and roughly split rinsings.

Meanwhile i boiled 15g Progress hops for 60 mins in roughly 2l of water.
Added 7g of EKG for last 15 mins then another 7g of EKG at flame out and left to steep for 10 mins.

Ran this through a sieve and again roughly split between FV's.

Topped each FV up to 11l and then added Nottingham Yeast to one and T-58 yeast to the other.

OG Nottingham was 1.042 @ 30 degrees (1.044 )
OG T-58 was 1.044 @ 29 degrees (1.046 )

Obviously i need to work on my "roughly splitting technique"

[Cleggy]

Typical scenario - i cant resist opening a bottle after a week, just to check everything is going correctly of course.

Tried one of each and they're not bad at all.
The honeyed one is quite similar to my Fixby Gold so that is a real bonus!
It also has a lovely head on it already.
The one with added mashed grains (first attempt with torrified wheat) has a much deeper flavour, the head is definitely different, more clingy, but its not huge yet.
Will now leave them in peace for a few weeks.

Couple of photo's of how these turned out.

Honey Brew

Mashed Brew

[jimw86]

Guys its been a while but i still have plenty of these bloody kits cluttering up my work space and loft (but what are lofts for). After last time I dont think I can go through the rigmoral of posting out but if anyone can collect some your more than welcome to take them off of my hands.

Jim

[Gosbeck]

I collected 30 of these kits from Jim last night. They will be used for a 'best home brew' competition between 10-12 neighbours and friends that we aim to hold around March. There's a good few pounds riding on the outcome, as everybody is putting in £20, which they would have had to pay for a couple of cheap kits anyway. Everybody will get 2 or 3 kits to allow them to try several different modifications, but first we need to set the rules as a couple of the competitors are all grain brewers and we need to somewhat nulify some of their advantages.

Anyway, Jim was a real gentleman. He helped me load the kits in the car, gave me around 350 grams of Fuggles hops to try in the adaptions, gave me a bottle of his AG Porter brewed with smoked malt (I'll try it tonight) and showed me around his AG set-up. If that Porter is as good as I hope it will be I may well end up going over to the dark side myself - my wife really wants me to go AG!

Anyway, thanks Jim. It was a pleasure and made a long trip worthwhile.

I'll keep this thread updated on how we get on with these kits, but in the first instance I'm going to make one up without any adaptions to see where I think I could enhance the brew.