Woodfordes Microbrewery Kits

[ians2]

As I have received help from this forum, I thought that I would impart some of my experiences to help others using the Woodfordes Kits and King kegs.

I realise that their has been some debate across this forum re: Woodfordes Kits and King Kegs and I hope the following helps somebody.

I have successfuly (in my eyes) made up one of the Woodfordes Microbrewery kits (drinking now, tastes great).

The Microbrewery kit includes Woodfordes Wherry and I followed the instructions to the "letter". However I did the following:

1) Gave the tap one extra rotation, so that it was extra tight, this extra rotation does not distort the seal but I think helps as a friend had a small leak around the tap from his King Keg but was able to rotate the tap (the nut on the back held) and this stopped the leak and he had no further problem.

2) Lots of Vasaline around the lid threads and on the rubber seal, to help the seal on the lid and allows you to tighten it up.

3) Bought extra "mini Gas canistors" which was as well, as the ones provided in the Kit seemed very "empty", the bought ones seemed to push alot more gas into the Keg. I might be wrong on this..and obviously the 8 gram injectors only need to be used when preasure is lost after drinking half a Keg.

4) Having seen this on youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTwUgtY1oco

I did the same, cut a suitable length of hose, heated the end in boiling water and pushed it over the tap nozle, greatly helps pouring and comes off easily to clean.

With everything done in the one Keg i.e. fermenting, conditioning etc. I was very very pleased with the results. However I decided to do one of the Kits in a fermenting bin first and then transfer to a King Keg (priming required I used a suggested 80gram of sugar).

This I think is a better method, on transfering the beer into the Keg, it was very clear and actually tasted "okish" at that stage. It also means it is now not going to "condition" on top of the yeast cake. Only time will tell how much better flavour it is, a couple of weeks is needed to finish this one off.

Hope the above helps somebody, who is as "green" as me to this.

[stevezx7r]

Sound advice Ians2, I think a lot of the problems people are having with the Woodfordes kits is with the final gravity not getting to where it should be ~ 1010, it is stopping at 1020.

I've not made one of these so can't really comment further than that though.

[ians2]

Hiya, having read through the forum on Woodfordes kits sticking I am not sure if I have been effected by this or not, did not check during my brewing process.

Although based on taste v.happy.

I will check though on my next kit.

Rgds