Home brew? Homebrew? Winemaking

Hope it's not too spammy to link to an advert of mine on Gumtree?

http://www.gumtree.com/p/for-sale/coopers-homebrew-beer-making-equipment-and-some-ingredients-15/1089461271

Cheap and cheerful first hombrew setup. Selling because we're moving to a smaller flat. £10 for a forumenger?

(if consensus is that linking to Gumtree is not ok, will delete the link straight away)

Sold now, thanks villaru

Got myself a starter kit for my birthday with two fermentation vats and a load of bottles. Also got a thermostatic aquarium heater as my house is quite cold just now.

First beer I'm going to try is Festival's Razor Back IPA.

Don't put the hot heater in the cold beer bucket... From personal experience this is a bad thing.

Have fun though, sign up to a home brew forum for tips and ideas as well.

Thanks! I put the aquarium heater in a larger bucket of water which the fermenting vessel sits in.

Currently drinking some Razorback IPA which tastes brilliant.

I have a strong stout brewing just now which I'm going to dry hop with Simcoe. Should be done fairly soon.

I popped along to the London Beer Lab's brew day yesterday (christmas present from Simon). It was great, very informative even if you are a seasoned brewer. Plus you get to drink beer at certain intervals. Me and another guy got there a little bit early so we helped the head brewer with his experimental speculoos beer. Yes as in the addictive biscuits. We also made a wheat beer, biere de garde, a dark cascadian ale and an english pale ale. Their mashtun/boiler system is amazing (20l Braumeister electric kettles) however I did gawp when I found out they were £1,200 each.

We get to go back in about 3 weeks time to help bottle what we brewed and take it home.

They hold homebrewers meetings every month which I might pop along to.

Anyone want a keg? I bottle my beer and have never really got on with the keg. It's been used twice, I think I have the bulb holder somewhere. Free to a good home if collected from SE17.

Is one of these http://www.the-home-brew-shop.co.uk/acatalog/5_Gallon_Plastic_Barrel_Bulb_Co2_PIN_VALVE.html#a100793

Sounds good. I'm booked to do the all grain course at London Fields.

Simcoe Stout has finished bottle fermenting, so time to try it out....

Apologies in advance, as I'm sure this kind of noob question must be one of the worst. I have watched numerous videos and looked at various kits and am pretty bogged down as to what would be a good starter kit to make some homebrewed beer, preferably ale rather than lager. My brother is getting married and is a big ale fan - I wanted to give him some beer I'd made as a wedding present. If anyone can suggest a decent/reasonably priced kit to start with I'd be much obliged. Thanks

Ghostface.

Buy one of these to brew with

This is a great Double IPA kit

^ Thanks for so quick a response. As I want to give my brother the beer in bottles, rather than in a barrel would I be able to get away with this?
http://www.the-home-brew-shop.co.uk/acatalog/HomeBrew_Starter_kit_for_use_with_Glass_Bottles_Equipment_Only.html#.VSlgOYXbIUo

I'm really skint at the moment, so any money saved is a boon!

Sure you can. However I'd get hold of about 40 brown glass bottles beforehand. And start early, bottle conditioning makes beer even more tasty!

It's proving a good excuse to come home with a bag of Tyskie most nights...

Brewed an IPA a few weeks ago. Was meant to be a pale ale but I somehow managed to brew it short by 4 litres so it ended up coming out at 7.8%. Used Pacifica hops in the boil and dry-hopped with Rakau. Bottled it on Saturday and it tasted quite tropical/apricotty. Going to call it oh hey little brew after the beached as whale seeing as the hops are from NZ.

Have got my hands on some funktown ale yeast, going to experiment with some quinces and try to get the sourness out of the yeast.

Have started drinking the beers from the london beer lab day. The wheat beer tastes exactly like Duvel, which is nice. The Black IPA is amazing but the Biere de Garde is a bit funky/cloudy so think something else got in there. The Speculoos beer needs longer in the bottle, I'm not a fan of it at the mo.

Rob - how's the stout? I've tried making a few now and they keep coming out too thin bodied. Have mashed at a high temp and added oats but nothing has helped. I think I may have to treat my water as it is too acidic but I can't be faffing with that.

Oh, if you're referring to the stout I made above, then it's very nice indeed. Quite dry; drier than I expected, but it makes it better for drinking more of. Simcoe really cuts through the stout flavour as it is very pine-y. I added 50g for a 10L batch. Body is fine, and holds a nice head. This has improved with conditioning though. After a couple of weeks only, it was more sparkly, ie. less head retention which made it feel thinner too.

Next time around I'd like to skip the dry hops and go with something like 200g molasses, dried cherries and vanilla. I reckon I'll need to add some oats though, as the molasses will thin it down as most of it turns to booze.

My porter is starting to get some body now thank god.

I cracked open a bottle of the IPA I bottled last week as I had suspected I may have over primed it and was worried about them going boom. Upon opening it did gush so have now moved them to the garage where it is cooler and where they can't hurt anyone/thing if they go boom. It tasted great, got an apricot marmalade taste from the Rakau hops.

I brewed a wit bier yesterday using the rest of the Rakau hops, some quinces and the Funktown Ale yeast I got from the yeast bay. Hoping the Brett in the yeast will do its thing and give it some funky flavors to go with the floral flavours of the quinces. Just going to leave it to ferment for a while.

Sampled the quince wit bier yesterday, it has a lovely tang to it from the quinces and brett. It has finished primary fermentation and is coming out at 6.3%. Have now stuck it in a secondary to let the brett develop.

Did the London Fields all-grain brewing course at the weekend. It was pretty cool. Pale ale from that is fermenting currently.

Realised that I've generally been fermenting my pale ales too warm (22c) as they have a slight Belgian twang to them. Room temp is currently around 18c, so I'm going to try fermenting without the heater.

i did the LF course a month ago. The beer we brewed tasted awful. It may have been infected even though I don't think so because we took the beers in two containers and is a bit of a coincidence if both containers got infected. It tasted like cider. awful

On the other hand I made a copy of the kernel double citra and it is amazing

Made a batch just over a month ago (been doing just all grains and have recently bodged-together a mash tun) that had so much hops in it, it turned green.

Luckily the colour went back to more beer-spectrum and it tastes like gamma ray. Pretty pleased!

Looking to do my first brew soon (IPA or Stout)
So if anyone has any kit they want to get rid of, hit me up
also any tips for a home brew newbie?
Thanks

Clean everything

Clean everything

This so much.

It's a bit like decorating: 90% prep (cleaning, sterilising) and then 10% actually doing the fun stuff.

@TPR I think Tesco may have a sale on just now. They will deliver to your local shop, even the metro stores for collection. Coopers Stout is a safe bet. So is Woodforde's Wherry. I'd get two fermenting vessels (one for if you want to rack the beer before bottling). And the other usual stuff like a hydrometer, syphon, bottles, sanitiser, etc.