best kit and kilo

[Moad]

Black rock pale can and 500g of Dex 500g light DME. This was a huge hit with mates, bugs me because I can't get them as excited about my ag beers...yet

 

[superstock]

I do a Coopers Mexican Cerveza for my son and his mates. Straight up per the instructions, BE2 & kit yeast (rehydrated & proved) and COLD water to a wort temp of 18'. I save the INT kit yeast from other cans and if I've got one I'll pitch 2 pkts. Ferment at 18-20'.
I've had some hardened Corona drinkers say it is better than the real thing.
I've also done a Tooheys Draught with 500gms light DME and the kit yeast @ 22', which an elderly man said it reminded him of the draught at the pub when he was young.

 

[Pilchard]

What I have found hard to get by is a TOP end beer drinker .

Top end to me is your best home brewed. Maybe I'm wrong but had a mate around yesterday for a rye beer. Told me it was the most complex I had ever brewed. Then I will be happy





We are looking at something to do worth a goat but you are not there yet. My win your fail on top end brewers. Has someone not taped you for commercial brew yet.yes you can make it but why do you want to

 

[superstock]

Black rock pale can and 500g of Dex 500g light DME. This was a huge hit with mates, bugs me because I can't get them as excited about my ag beers...yet

I agree.

Pilchard, the topic is, best kit and kilo.

 

[menoetes]

You don't need the coffee plunger or a hop sock Oznewbie, you can just place the 20g of cascade hops into a jug and pour 1 litre of boiling water on top of them. Leave it for 5 - 10 minutes then pour the lot into the fermenter with the tin and malt.

If you're worried about the hop matter floating around your beer (I don't, it settles to the bottom after a week or so) you can pour it through a strainer if you like, the liquid 'tea' is the important stuff.

Also, don't be worried about hops introducing an infection to your brew if you wanted to try dry hopping too. Hops are a natural preservative (which is why they were introduced to beer in the first place) and won't infect your beer.

If you end up buying a 60g bag of hops from your local homebrew shop (better value for money than the hop teabags they sell) you could do the hop tea and dry hop if you liked. The hop tea will add flavor to the beer, the dry hop will give you that awesome hoppy smell.

Do whatever you feel comfortable doing at this stage.

 

[Grott]

anyway, until I get my head around the basics of cleaning, sanitising, the process and equipment ...im on the k&k's.

My advice is to get this right and to keep your first few brews simple. This helps in getting your "set up" right for consistency and doesn't over load you with too much to think about. I don't think you can go wrong with the Coopers kits keeping with Enhancer 2 or their malts. Some may disagree with this but I believe a lot of beginners get despondent and quit brewing when they attempt to go "full out" at the beginning, as until you understand the processes and procedures the more you try to do the more the risk. That's my 2 bobs worth and enjoy your beers.
Cheers

 

[abe max]

My favourite kit and kilo was Morgans Blue Mountain Lager, Morgans Caramalt, a steeped ale grain pack with a small boil of Cascade, toped to 23 ltrs and brewed with S04 yeast, always came out nice.

 

[wereprawn]

Using the advice and technique of previous posters, a can or Coopers Mexican Cervesa and some Cluster hops will make something Fourexesque.

 

[gazzagahan]

you can give this a try. It's my go to recipe

Golden Ale

Coopers pale ale kit 1.7kg
Dry light malt extract 1kg
Wheat malt extract 0.4kg
Maltodextrin 0.150kg
Light crystal malt 200g steeped for 20 mins in 4 litres of water.
Add steeped water to boiling pot and add tap water to make up to 10 litres.
Boiled for 30 mins with half the dry malt extract and the wheat extract.
25g cascade hops @ 15 mins left
25 g cascade hops @ 5 mins left
1 teaspoon of Irish moss @ 5 mins left
cooled in bath of cold water.
Pale ale kit and remaining half of light malt extract mixed with maltodextrin in mixing tub. Poured the cooled wort through a sieve and added to fermenter. Made up to 21 litres with cool tap water.
2 packets of US-05 rehydrated and pitched at 24 degrees C.
After 6 days dry hopped with 25g Citra
carbonated and bottled after 10 days when specific gravity readings had stabilised.
This had been my best kit ale yet. The Citra dry hopping is a winner.

 

[oznewbie]

There are some nice receipes/ideas here guys

Next im going to go for ....



1.7 kg Coopers pale ale
1.5kg coopers malt extract
20g cascade hop tea
20g cascade dry hop on day 4
us-05 yeast
lower temp 18-20*c via swamp cooler method
carbonation drops 2x each tallie.

2 week ferment.
3 week bottle
fridge.

wish me luck.

thanks, all ideas/suggestions taken onboard.
(This is taken from the most recommended suggestions and im comfortable with the process)

again .... thanks

(Next is cider, strawb/lime apple cider. Lol)

 

[panzerd18]

At the moment I'm trying 7-10 day bottle conditioning at 22 degrees, then three week chilling in fridge.

I've found for strong beers such as ales, you need to wait awhile for the beer to mellow out and combine. Could take a month or more to start tasting very nice.

 

[oznewbie]

Il try and hold off as long as possible. Il sneak a wee bottle every week or two

 

[sluggerdog]

Coopers PAle Ale kit done with the correct brew pack an fermented under 18*c is prob the best of the lot.

+1. Coopers Pale Ale seemed to be the best kit I used. It ended up being the default base kit for the last 10 batches (all different styles) I made before stepping upto extract and all grain.

 

[Dave70]

Pat had a kit beer on tap over at Absolute Homebrew that I couldn't believe was a kit beer. Not in the 'I cant believe its not butter' sense, where you can believe its not butter, this was a ripper.
Could have been a Williams Warn kit or a new line he's now stocking not listed on the site, cant recall. Have to be the best kit beer I've tasted. Well worth chasing up in my opinion.

 

[Ducatiboy stu]

The biggest prob with kit beers is brewers ferment them to high, get them under 18*c and most of them turn out great

 

[mofox1]

There are some nice receipes/ideas here guys

Next im going to go for ....



1.7 kg Coopers pale ale
1.5kg coopers malt extract
20g cascade hop tea
20g cascade dry hop on day 4
us-05 yeast
lower temp 18-20*c via swamp cooler method
carbonation drops 2x each tallie.

2 week ferment.
3 week bottle
fridge.

wish me luck.

thanks, all ideas/suggestions taken onboard.
(This is taken from the most recommended suggestions and im comfortable with the process)

again .... thanks

(Next is cider, strawb/lime apple cider. Lol)

At the risk of information overload, don't be so strict on the ferment times.

It'll take as long as it takes. Use a hydrometer (less than $10 eBay/home brew stores) to measure the density, or specific gravity, of the beer after a couple of weeks. Fermentation has stopped when the hydrometer reading has been constant for 2-3 days. For most "normal" pale ales the value will be around the 1.008 - 1.016 mark.

If you bottle too early you'll end up with bottle bombs, and it's not going to matter how good they taste if that happens.

 

[MrChoat]

There are some nice receipes/ideas here guys
Next im going to go for ....
1.7 kg Coopers pale ale
1.5kg coopers malt extract
20g cascade hop tea
20g cascade dry hop on day 4
us-05 yeast
lower temp 18-20*c via swamp cooler method
carbonation drops 2x each tallie.
2 week ferment.
3 week bottle
fridge.
wish me luck.
thanks, all ideas/suggestions taken onboard.
(This is taken from the most recommended suggestions and im comfortable with the process)
again .... thanks
(Next is cider, strawb/lime apple cider. Lol)

Good luck with the strawberry lime cider, unless you're kegging there isn't really a good way to sweeten it up to rekorderlig style.

You can back sweeten with bickfords cordials at the end of the ferment, but the sugars will ferment out in the bottle likely causing bottle bombs. You can try to sweeten with lactose, but then the flavours of the strawberry and lime don't come through and you wind up with a sweet apple cider.

The closest I have got so far, was as follows.

Black rock apple cider kit
1kg frozen berries from aldi
300g brown sugar
Bickfords lime cordial
Bickfords raspberry cordial

I boiled 3 l of water in a pot. Added 1/3 of the apple kit syrup, and the frozen berries. Boiled gently for 10 min to get any nasties out of there.

Added 300g of sugar to the clean fermenter, followed by the rest of the tin and the boiled goods. I didn't strain anything. Topped it up to 23l, added two bottles of cordial, which I worked out to be equivalent to 700g of sugar.

The flavours and sweetness all fermented out after 14 days in the primary. I then racked it to secondary for 7 days, trying to find a way to sweeten and flavour it in the meantime.

I then killed the yeast(a big no no if you're bottling) by raising the temp to 75°c in a big pot. I then no chilled it in a cube. I figured if the yeast is done and the sugars are done there's little risk of any infection.

Now that the yeast couldn't eat any more sugar I cold crashed the cube, and added another two bottles of the bickfords cordials to sweeten and flavour. These bottles are roughly 50% sugars.

I then kegged it, force carbed and a week later was drinking it.

It isn't exactly recoderlig. I'm pretty sure that recoderlig is a really sweet wine that's mixed with a cider.

What I did make is a nice cider that isn't too sweet, if I were to try again I'd try with lactose and artificial flavourings, just to see the difference, and I'd filter it to get a bit of the cloudyness out.

As for bottling, I've no idea how to sweeten and carbonate at the same time other than using artificial sweeteners and flavours, which aren't in the product I was trying to replicate.

They probably force carb after pastuerising and sweetening, and force the already carbed liquid in to the bottles.

Also I wound up with a cider at about 6.2% abv. Its good and fun but I'd probably drop the brown sugar next time to get it closer to the 4.0% that the girls are used to.

 

[oznewbie]

Yea the cider is for the misses.

Im thinking a cider kit, and a sstrawberry and half a lime siprit essences the hbs sells?

Or

1x Blackrock Apple Cider Can
2x Berri 2.4L Apple Juice - No preservatives/additives
1.5kg Strawberries
8x Pink Lady Apples
2x Limes
1kg Dextrose
Grab a 5L pot and a clean Fermenter. Bring 2L of water to the boil. Add the can of Blackrock apple cider can to the water in the pot. Slowly add the 1kg of Dextrose while stirring so that it doesn't clump. Let that stay on a low heat while you peel the apples, core and quarter them. Pour the apple juice into the fermenter. Get the yeast into a small cup of water to activate it. Add the quarters to the juice in the fermenter, strip the stems/leaves off the strawberries and add them in whole(il maybe cut and mush them?). Peel the limes and cut into quarters, add these also. Pour the pot into the fermenter and top up the water to 22L - add the cup of activated yeast. Initial SG reading should be around about 1052. I added the yeast at 23 degrees, and is now at a constant of between 18-19 degrees.

Or just a cider with cordial added into the glass. Lol. That's what it tastes like to me anyway

 

[oznewbie]

Yea the cider is for the misses.

Im thinking a cider kit, and a sstrawberry and half a lime siprit essences the hbs sells?

Or

1x Blackrock Apple Cider Can
2x Berri 2.4L Apple Juice - No preservatives/additives
1.5kg Strawberries
8x Pink Lady Apples
2x Limes
1kg Dextrose
Grab a 5L pot and a clean Fermenter. Bring 2L of water to the boil. Add the can of Blackrock apple cider can to the water in the pot. Slowly add the 1kg of Dextrose while stirring so that it doesn't clump. Let that stay on a low heat while you peel the apples, core and quarter them. Pour the apple juice into the fermenter. Get the yeast into a small cup of water to activate it. Add the quarters to the juice in the fermenter, strip the stems/leaves off the strawberries and add them in whole(il maybe cut and mush them?). Peel the limes and cut into quarters, add these also. Pour the pot into the fermenter and top up the water to 22L - add the cup of activated yeast. Initial SG reading should be around about 1052. I added the yeast at 23 degrees, and is now at a constant of between 18-19 degrees.

Or just a cider with cordial added into the glass. Lol. That's what it tastes like to me anyway

 

[oznewbie]

Yea the cider is for the misses.

Im thinking a cider kit, and a sstrawberry and half a lime siprit essences the hbs sells?

Or

1x Blackrock Apple Cider Can
2x Berri 2.4L Apple Juice - No preservatives/additives
1.5kg Strawberries
8x Pink Lady Apples
2x Limes
1kg Dextrose
Grab a 5L pot and a clean Fermenter. Bring 2L of water to the boil. Add the can of Blackrock apple cider can to the water in the pot. Slowly add the 1kg of Dextrose while stirring so that it doesn't clump. Let that stay on a low heat while you peel the apples, core and quarter them. Pour the apple juice into the fermenter. Get the yeast into a small cup of water to activate it. Add the quarters to the juice in the fermenter, strip the stems/leaves off the strawberries and add them in whole(il maybe cut and mush them?). Peel the limes and cut into quarters, add these also. Pour the pot into the fermenter and top up the water to 22L - add the cup of activated yeast. Initial SG reading should be around about 1052. I added the yeast at 23 degrees, and is now at a constant of between 18-19 degrees.

Or just a cider with cordial added into the glass. Lol. That's what it tastes like to me anyway

 

[oznewbie]

Yea the cider is for the misses.

Im thinking a cider kit, and a sstrawberry and half a lime siprit essences the hbs sells?

Or

1x Blackrock Apple Cider Can
2x Berri 2.4L Apple Juice - No preservatives/additives
1.5kg Strawberries
8x Pink Lady Apples
2x Limes
1kg Dextrose
Grab a 5L pot and a clean Fermenter. Bring 2L of water to the boil. Add the can of Blackrock apple cider can to the water in the pot. Slowly add the 1kg of Dextrose while stirring so that it doesn't clump. Let that stay on a low heat while you peel the apples, core and quarter them. Pour the apple juice into the fermenter. Get the yeast into a small cup of water to activate it. Add the quarters to the juice in the fermenter, strip the stems/leaves off the strawberries and add them in whole(il maybe cut and mush them?). Peel the limes and cut into quarters, add these also. Pour the pot into the fermenter and top up the water to 22L - add the cup of activated yeast. Initial SG reading should be around about 1052. I added the yeast at 23 degrees, and is now at a constant of between 18-19 degrees.

Or just a cider with cordial added into the glass. Lol. That's what it tastes like to me anyway

 

[oznewbie]

Yea the cider is for the misses.

Im thinking a cider kit, and a sstrawberry and half a lime siprit essences the hbs sells?

Or

1x Blackrock Apple Cider Can
2x Berri 2.4L Apple Juice - No preservatives/additives
1.5kg Strawberries
8x Pink Lady Apples
2x Limes
1kg Dextrose
Grab a 5L pot and a clean Fermenter. Bring 2L of water to the boil. Add the can of Blackrock apple cider can to the water in the pot. Slowly add the 1kg of Dextrose while stirring so that it doesn't clump. Let that stay on a low heat while you peel the apples, core and quarter them. Pour the apple juice into the fermenter. Get the yeast into a small cup of water to activate it. Add the quarters to the juice in the fermenter, strip the stems/leaves off the strawberries and add them in whole(il maybe cut and mush them?). Peel the limes and cut into quarters, add these also. Pour the pot into the fermenter and top up the water to 22L - add the cup of activated yeast. Initial SG reading should be around about 1052. I added the yeast at 23 degrees, and is now at a constant of between 18-19 degrees.

Or just a cider with cordial added into the glass. Lol. That's what it tastes like to me anyway

 

[pipsyboy]

So is it for the missus?

 

[MrChoat]

I'd give the essence bottles a miss. I did try them first, but in 20l of cider the tiny bottle doesn't go far. I think each bottle is good for a litre, so it'd get expensive in a hurry to get the required flavour.

The second recipe looks good.

The way I've been serving mine since strawberries are so cheap right now, isis to get 3 strawberries, muddle them in a glass, half fill with ice and top up with cider. Add a mint leaf on top and they go down way too easy.

The only thing is it clogs up my beer lines with berry bits. I'm gonna have to get a Pluto gun and dedicated disconnect so that it never fruits up my beer taps.

 

[oznewbie]

So is it for the missus?

lol, yeah man. Phone glitch