hehehehe lots of advice.
First kit yeast. At 20c dry yeast loses 20% of its vitality in a year, in the fridge it only loses 2%, so a kit that has gone through a hot Austalian summer might be half dead! Boiling the kit yeast, not in the contents of the kit, I never suggested that, but in the contents of the "booster Pack" i.e. the malts/sugars you add to the kit does provide good nutrients for the pack of real yeast you pitch. Best idea is, when you see a shop has fresh kits, buy a bunch, rip the lids of and put the yeasts in the fridge. Then pitch two packets per brew. But most kit yeasts are not much good, IMHO
Rehydrate dried yeast, at 30C for DCL yeasts and 40C for Danstar yeasts. Sprinkle the yeast on top of 10 times as much water by weight as the yeast (i.e. 120ml for a 12g packet) let stand for 15-20 minutes then stir and pitch into the beer. This is not a starter, BTW, never make a starter from dried yeast, you are going backwards.
Aeration. I don't much believe in shaking or whipping the beer. I drop it from one fermenter into one a metre below it--sanitise your bottling tube (minus valve) and insert into the tap of the top fermenter, forms the wort into a nice thin stream. For high grav worts (OG 1050+) I insert my aerating tube into the tap (bottling tube with 4 holes drilled around the circumference 2" below the top, another 4 holes 1/2" below that and a third set 1/2" below the second. I can adjust the rate of flow so I can actually HEAR air getting sucked into the wort falling pasted the holes!
23g of dry yeast is needed to fully ferment 23L of beer, but you can get away with 12g and good aeration.
Hydrometer samples I take using a turkey baster, a guy on the UK Alelist drills a hole in his fermenters and fits a second tap to take hydrometer samples. If you draw off a sample through your tap then you leave wort behind that will dry out and provide a haven for bugs. Bottle or rack through that tap and infect a complete batch. Take your reading, taste the wort or beer, chuck the rest on the garden, not back into the fermenter!!
I suggest you join CAMRA (www.camra.org.uk) and buy "Homebrewing" "Brew English Beers" "Brew European Beers" all by Wheeler & Protz and "IPA" and "Stouts and Porters" by LaPensee and Protz and "Real Ale Almanac" by Roger Protz. You won't be able to make much use of the last 3 initially but it is a cheap way to get them all.
Jovial Monk
