Tuesday Home Brewing Update.

Okay, I've decided to do a regular weekly feature on home brewing. It seems to me that there's a real lack of plain talking (no jargon) brewing blogs or help sites out there and it may be useful to anyone interested in brewing to follow the exploits of a complete novice. Especially as i've noticed that there's a lot of snootyness from some brewers on the forums online. I've searched many times online for answers to what i assumed where simple questions, only to be forwarded to forums where someone has asked the same question and either been mocked or been hit with daunting jargon. I'll also be interested to field any questions people may have and even more happy to listen to any advice seasoned brewers may be able to impart.in simple terms,

So as you might've read already, I've started my first home brew adventure by using a simple start-up equipment set i got for christmas from my wife and a golden ale brew kit i ordered from the Wilkinsons sale online. I've been through the fermentation process and my beer is currently, conditioning in my barrel and is a week away from being ready to bottle up and drink.

Out of curiosity, i opened the tap to take a little sample of my beer last night to taste to check on it's progress. I'm not sure if doing this will affect the finished product and that it would be better to leave it alone, but anyway the signs were encouraging. The beer is indeed a nice golden colour and the taste was not too bad - a little bit chemically tasting still (I'm assuming that's because it still needs a week to condition), and a little bit flat but definitely drinkable and definitely beery. Woo hoo - i haven't completely ruined it.

The flatness is something that i expected because i know that co2 needs to be added to the barrel to encourage carbonation but i had no idea how to do that. Sadly, my starter equipment kit, was a little bit lacking in labelling and explaining what each element does. A search online and some reading finally showed me that the little red nozzle thing and silver weighty thing that were in my kit was a tap and gas canister for the very purpose of carbonating my barrel (there being a screw on the barrel lid to attach the tap and canister too). Unfortunately, no instructions were present on how to put the thing together and in playing about before attaching to the barrel - i managed to let the gas out of the canister. I did work out though that it all come together by screwing straight into the barrel lid. What I'm unsure of whether the entire contents of the canister (which is not much to be fair) are to be released into the barrel at once or if it can be done in stages. This is because I've read blogs suggesting that co2 needs to be added at various stages when bottling your beer and also the barrel has a warning not to exceed a certain amount of pressure. It's be annoying to come this far and go gung ho adding co2 and lose the entire batch though an exploding barrel. Good i wish I'd paid attention at science in school.

Anyway, i am visiting the Brew Store at the weekend for a look around and ill pick up another canister then and try the carbonation before bottling on Tuesday - as i feel the beer would be lacking without it. The brew store is the largest shop for home brew equipment and ingredients in Edinburgh and as my hobby takes hold i think it's going to become almost a second home for me. So next week ill be able to let you know how the finished beer pans out. Exciting times.

There's a secondary purpose to my Brew Store visit at the weekend and that is to source ingredients for my first non-kit brew. I've got a brewing book (which my wife also got me at Christmas 2012) with some recipes and that also gives descriptions of the taste characteristics of different malts and hops. So using a Weizen recipe from the book as a base, I've concocted a recipe for a wheat beer that should have a balance of caramel, spice and bitter flavours and that recipe is:

42g Hallertauer Hops - A Bavarian hop, used in many German beer styles. Has a mild spicy flavour and gives a pleasant aroma.

9g Chinook Hops - Piney, Herbal and spicy flavours with hints of grapefruit.

11g Munich Wheat Beer Brewing Yeast

140g Caster Sugar (for conditioning)

1.5kg Wheat Liquid Malt Extract - Well it is a wheat beer

1.35kg Amber Liquid Malt Extract - ~Biscuit, bitter and toasted flavours.

1.35kg Vienna Malts (grain) - Subtle grain flavours and caramel aroma.

1 tbsp Gypsum - Is used for raising the acidity level of the water


The process for this will require a longer fermentation and conditioning period so that beer will be ready 2 months from brew day, instead of the 3 weeks that a kit takes. So in order to keep beer supply constant, i shall be likely getting a second barrel so i can continue making kits while this brew is conditioning.

I'm also currently researching ways of adding different flavours to the beer, such as fruit flavours or I'm interested in perhaps adding a slight aniseedy hint to a beer so something may be added to that recipe in the future to give more depth.

It'll be intriguing to see how it turns out and of course I'll give full details of how i go about the whole brewing process for this - so you can see my mistakes so you can avoid them.