Some of you may or may not have seen my introduction post before xmas where I was contemplating starting out.
Well, Wednesday night I took the plunge and ordered a beginners kit which arrived today.
I'm not new to the idea of brewing but I'm new at actually brewing something propper and non experimental that tastes drinkable
My kit is only basic comprising of a 23 Litre fermenting bin with airlock and lid, the basic chemicals and sterilisers, campden tablets, brewing sugar and some finings incase. I also ordered some extra brewing sugar, some sodium metabisulphate and some other bits and bobs like a fine straining bag, paddle and syphon with filter. Just enough really to get me started.
The first beer I have chosen to test out my equipment on is a Coopers English bitter kit (syrup form) because I was advised by a friend to start with a kit to get the feel. Most of the brew time was spent cleaning and sterilising the equipment before hand and man, you certainly earn a beer after humping around buckets and barrels swilling and shaking lol.
I kicked off the brew late this afternoon and heres how I went about it.
Sorry no pics of the progress, but I'll grab a snap or two of the wort in the fermenting bin a little later.
First off went the sterilisiation as I've said, which took an hour or two to completely sterilise and rinse everthing I was going to use including saucepans, spoons and jugs etc.
Once I'd done that, I started to fill my fermenting bin to around the 18 litre mark with a combination of boiled and tap water getting as close to 24 - 26 degrees as possible (the recomended range of the syrup beer kit). I've got a stick on crystal thermometer on the bin, not the most accurate I know but it will surfice for a beginner untill I decide whether or not I wish to carry on brewing (which at this stage, I think I will because I've enjoyed it).
Next I started to tend to the syrup kit using 2 litres of warm water to dilute the syrup before adding it to my fermenting bin.
To this, I added 1Kg of brewing sugar (dextrose) and mixed vigorously before adjusting the mixtures temperature using warm and cold water until I was near yeast pitching temperatur. It was at this point I added a campden tablet as per the recomendations of the brewing equipment kit I purchased to de-chlorinate the water before adding the yeast.
After waiting 10 - 15 minutes, I took a gravity reading by floating my hydrometer in the fermenting bin and the reading was 1.034.
Not sure what to make of that as the kit says that the average starting gravity is around 1.040 and as I said, I'm still quite new to this.
To pitch the yeast, I took 500ml of the mixture from the fermenting bin and mixed in the yeast allowing it to stand for a few moment before returning the mixture and yeast to the fermenting bin for another vigorous mixing.
Now I've gone a little unorthodox here so I don't know how people will see this, but I've not really got a space for brewing other than on the kitchen side so to maintain temps in the fermenting bin, I invested in a 200w fully submersible aquarium heater (which was also heavily sterilised) to help keep the temps constant during fermentation. It may or may not work out but it's something I thought I'd try.
The actual process of preparing the wort and finally shutting the lid on the bin took about half an hour. I tried to keep the process short to avoid any chance of contamination. Hopefully, my efforts will be rewarded with a reasonable beer for a first effort at producing a middle of the road beer.
I'm not after anything mega special for a first attempt, I'm more looking to refine my brewing skills and to be rewarded with something drinkable at the end.
I hope to get a few shop kits under my belt to help refine how and where I brew before going in to mashes and what have you.
I'm well pleased so far to say the least and the smell of the brew... Mmmmmm I can't wait.
One thing I did over look in my buying haste was the malt the syrup kit recomended. So I did a bit of googling and saw someone did the same with that kit and found 1Kg of brewing sugar surficed to make a nice beer.
If it tastes as good as it looks and smells, I'm well in. Worst case scenario, I'm left with 23 litres of undrinkable drain wash lol.
Perhaps I need to read a little better next time around.
The Mrs bless her wants me to look at doing some schnapps (excuse spelling) some time too. This is not something I've looked in to yet but it's tempting.
All in all I'm very happy and I can't wait for that airlock to start bubbling away.
Well thanks for reading all.. I'm off back to stare at my bin hehehe..
I'll get some shots and post ASAP.
