FAQ for Advanced Kit Brewing
This is a work in progress. Once it is finished it will be pinned at the top of the forum.
Please read the Newby FAQ, much of the information there is important, no matter what level of brewing you are at.
Review of What Really matters in Brewing
The most important points of brewing are sanitation and fermentation temperature control. Every surface that contacts your beer must be clean and sanitised. Yeast is the soul of beer. Many styles depend on yeast characteristics for their flavours. The way to proper yeast flavours is temperature control. The third most important point in brewing is recipes and ingredient selection. Finally, a good dose of care and patience is needed.
Included in the beginners FAQ is some excellent ideas on cheap and easy temperature control.
brewery cleaning
Brewing Techniques: Methods of Sanitization and Steriliztion
Racking, cold conditioning and secondary fermenting
To rack - transfer from one fermenter to another without splashing and leaving the yeast sediment behind in the original fermenter. The headpsace should be as small as possible so that the beer will not be spoilt by oxygen.
Secondary fermentation - after the fermentation dies down, there are still suspended yeast working in your brew. They are not producing alcohol and carbon dioxide but they are still changing some moelcules in your beer. This continues for some time, at least a week.
Cold conditioning. After a brew is racked to a fresh container, and after secondary, it can be cold conditioned by placing somewhere cool, usually a fridge. This helps drop the yeast out and also cleans the flavours up in your brew.
What is this Secondary?
Most kits benefit from staying in primary fermenter for 14 days rather than being rushed into bottles as soon as the airlock stops bubbling. If you have the time and the extra fermenter with no headspace, rack it, otherwise leave it quietly in primary.
Bulk priming
Most people start out priming using the little sugar measure or carbonation drops. If you would like to use DME or honey, or if you are filling a range of different sized bottles, bulk priming may be for you. Basically you make up a solution with some water the the correct amount of priming sugar for the whole batch, simmer for a few minutes, cool, pour into a cleaned and sanitised fermenter then rack your brew ontop of it, then stir gently and bottle.
*** link
No rinse sanitisers
Once a brew item has been cleaned and rinsed, the level of sanitation is back to the rinse solution, be it good or bad. Many brewers go the extra step to use a no rinse sanitiser. It is an effective bug killer at the recommended concentrations and contact times.
Why sodium metabisulphite is not suitable.
This used to be very popular with beer brewers. It is cheap and readily available. It's use came across from the winemaking field. To work effectively it needs a low pH as found in wines, and is not an effective sanitiser, rather it is an inhibitor. It also upsets asthmatics. There are better products available.
Iodine
Readily available, cheap and very effective.
Bleach
Must be used in low quantities or it will affect the finished beer. Better producst are available. It does make a great cleaner but must be rinsed thoroughly.
Phosphoric acid
Using phosphoric acid
Readily available, cheap and effective.
Silver and hydrogen peroxide
Very effective, odourless, colourless. Not as cheap as iodine or phosphoric acid.
Boiling water is not really suitable as a sanitiser. It does not stay hot enough for long enough to be effective, unless you can submerge the item for a few minutes in a pot.
Using extra specialty grains and hops in kits
Specialty grains add extra flavour to your brew. They only need steeping at 40-60 degrees rather than mashing which is more complicated. It is a great way to improve your beers.
Some suitable quantities and styles for different beers are:
100 gms roast malt in a stout or dark ale, can be called black or patent malt
150 grams of chocolate malt in a dark ale or stout
200 gms of crystal malt in any pale ale, dark ale or stout
150 gms carapils in a lager
This is for a standard brew of volume 23 litres and you will also need your standard kit and kilo of additives. All grains should be cracked, steeped in a litre of warm (40-60 degC) water for 30 minutes, strained, NO SQUEEZING THE GRAIN, grains thrown away, remaining wort simmered for 15 minutes and added to the fermenter with the rest of you kit and kilo.
Do not exceed these quantities of grain. If you brew this and like it, then, increase by 50%. This is definitely an area where too much will spoil a good thing.
While simmering, you can also add extra hops. Add some extra DME and a litre or two of water, 15 gms of your favourite hop and simmer for 10 minutes.
Add another 15 gms of hop and simmer for 10 minutes.
Add another 15 gms of hops, simmer for 2 minutes, cover with lid, turn off, chill in sink by standing in a few litres cold water, change the water to chill the saucepan, strain contents to fermenter and add your kit and kilo.
Do not use high alpha hops such as Pride of Ringwood, super alpha or cluster. Boiling 15 gms of high alpha hops for 20 minutes will impart too much bitterness. Use hops such as Fuggles or goldings in ales and hallertau, tettnang or saaz in lagers. If you wish to use POR, delete the first hop addition that is boiled for 20 minutes.
Adding some specialty grain and hops will really improve all kits.
Do not use base grains such as pale ale, schooner, sloop, smoked, amber malt, Munich, Vienna, wheat, lager or pilsner. These need mashing at 65 deg C rather than just steeping at 40-60 degrees. If you try and steep these grains, you will only get starch which will not help your brew.
Do not boil grains unless you are doing a decoction which is advanced mashing. Boiling extracts tannins which is nasty. Steep the specialty grains, strain and then boil the resulting solution.
Link to
specialty grains
What hops go with what beer and how much?
For English ales fuggles and Goldings are great. For lagers, tettnanger, hallertauer, saaz and hersbrucker.
For American ales, cascade, chinook and centennial.
A good starting point is 15 gms as an aroma addition and 15 gms as a flavour addition.
Dry hopping
http://byo.com/departments/1105.html
Partial Mashing
A way for adding extra grain flavours in your beers is to do a small all grain mash and use that in either an extract brew or over the top of a kit brew.
http://www.aussiehomebrewer.com/forum/inde...0mash%20starter
The most important bit of gear for the masher is a decent thermometer. One that is accurate, especially around 60-75 degrees.
Extract Brewing
Extract brewing is using unhopped extract and hops to control the amount of bittering, hops flavour and aroma in your beer. You will need a large pot. John Palmer covers this in detail.
What strength is my Beer?
A standard kit and kilo produces a beer about 5%.
At the start of your brew take a hydrometer reading. At the end take another. Convert them to numbers by removing the decimal point. Subtract the final gravity from the staring gravity. You will have a number between 30-50. Divide it by 7.4.
What else can I do with my brews?
Join a club in your local area. Have a chat to your local HBS they will know if there is a club active. If not, you may like to start one up.
HBkitreviews.com
Read the links section on AHB
Read all the airlocked articles in each of the different forums.
Rehydrating yeasts
To help make a dried yeast adapt and be ready for the job ahead of fermenting your wort you can rehydrate your yeast. Use boiled and cooled water in a sanitised jug or cup, cooled to 30 degrees, sprinkle the yeast on the surface, cover with clingwrap, leave for 15-30 minutes and add to your brew. Do not use any sugar or malt in the rehydrating solution.
It is very important to have the warm water at the correct temperature.
**link to site
Liquid Yeasts
Many styles of beer depend on characteristics produced by the yeast during fermentation. To create an authentic version of these styles requires very specific yeasts, most of which are only available as liquid strains. Drying yeast is very stressfull on the cells, and only a few strains are suited. Using liquid yeasts increases the cost of a brew. To become familiar with using and culturing liquid yeasts, Australian brewers are lucky to have a cheap easy source found in Coopers bottles of beer. With care, the yeast sediment can be brought back to life and increased in numbers by stepping up into a quantity suitable to pitch to a fermenter full of beer. What a great way to kick off an Aussie pale ale of your own.
There are now a good range of different yeasts available in dried form.
A Detailed Guide to Yeasts from Wyeast
Dry Enzymes and Low Carbohydrate Beers
The use of a dry enzyme is popular with some kit makers to try and replicate some of the popular commercial beers. John Palmer in his book discusses how different enzymes work in the mash. A dry enzyme works at ferment temperatures and breaks some of the long chain malt sugars into shorter chain sugars that the yeats can then work on.
As your tastebuds mature and you start to enjoy full flavoured beers, the dry beers taste bland and thin.
Many people suggest, rather than drinking low flavour low carbohydrate beers, it is better to drink less of a better product.
Should I Boil My Kit?
Sometimes, a brewer will ask this question. They have come across an item suggesting that the kit should be boiled. This is not usually a good idea. The isohop extract used to bitter hops may be changed in flavour when you boil it. Also it adds a greater level of complexity to your brew. One of the benefits of kit and kilo brewing is how quick and easy it is.
If you wish to experiment with boiling your kit, consider extract brewing instead where you control the bitterness hops plus the flavour and aroma.
Don't forget, whenever you add any extract to a boil, remove the pot from the heat source first, add the extract, stir thoroughly to dissolve the extract, then place back on the heat. The extract will sink to the bottom and scorch if the heat is on.
I Am Unhappy With My Beer
Sometimes, after following rigidly the basics of sanitisation and the maintainance of correct brewing temperatures you may still find your brew having an, "aagh taste". Several solutions to this have been offered in the links below. Before reading through the links below, ask yourself if your beer tastes bad right from the start (before even adding yeast) or if the bad taste occurs later. If you know local AHB'ers ask them to taste your beer. If not, write a post asking an AHB tasting group to taste your beer. You will have to post-pack a bottle to them.
My wort tastes like crap
Help All My Brews Taste Belgian
There is Tang in My Beer
Kegging
Further Reading
If you have not yet discovered
How To Brew by John Palmer, sit down, and take a few hours to go through his excellent site which is also available in book format. It covers the basics as well as moving into all grain and extract.
The links section on Aussiehomebrewer is full of excellent sites to keep the beer brewer surfing for days.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Because of the great number of links in this FAQ, some may at some stage show as broken. If you find a link that generates an error page, please send me a PM.
, POL is really chasing info for the new brewers, kit and kilo stuff with additions, to give them a section to find all the info they require in an easy and straight forward manner. Although I am sure POL will use all your links in an intermediate section as well, It's stuff on first starting to brew that is needed now.
