Recent content by MostlyHarmless

It worked out quite well as a wine.** Best drunk adolescent...not young, as needs time to mature and soften a bit, but as it ages the elderflower taste fades off.

Thinking on it, it's another one of those time vs quality compromises isn't it... I could brew all grain for best taste, but it's time consuming so I go for an inferior drinking experience from an extract-based kit. Likewise, it's a pain in the rear to prepare and fill loads of bottles, so I...

Thanks for the quick replies...looks like the full sachet will be going in :cheers:

I bought a Tom Caxton Real Ale kit last week and I'm planning on getting that started sometime soon (just a one-can kit, so probably going to use some Muntons Beerkit Enhancer rather than normal sugar). The kit comes with an extra sachet of Hop Enhancer. The instructions say to add half of...

what's its life story since going into the barrel? Always in the warm, always in the cold, warm then cold??

I was bottling some TC and was going to use a 2 or 3 Becks bottles as I was short of pint cider/ale bottles....I was damned if I could get the crowner to fit the caps onto the Becks bottles - must be a funny shape or something.

I had a kit red which had a bit of a taste like you describe. I left the bottles for a few months, and when I came back to it, it was much improved. Time heals.

No preservatives in Ribena to stop the yeast from working (although some other fruit juices do need to spend a bit of time in a pan on the cooker to get rid of the preservatives)

That's why I said "theoretical maximum" - I'm expecting to end up with a gallon of an over-sweet brew of about 20% ABV, full completely sozzled yeast

Thanks for the speedy replies! Good to know it's nothing nasty.

A few weeks ago I bottled up 3 gallons of Youngs Harvest Barley Wine. I mostly used clear bottles, and through them I can see that the beer is perfectly clear. I had a bottle in the fridge, and when I took it out I noticed that it looked a bit hazy (not condensation on the bottle, as I gave it...

No problem with "from concentrate" AJ, but make sure it doesn't have any preservatives in. Could be worth adding a bit of pectolase - especially if using cloudy juice - to prevent pectin haze.

You can use pectolase after fermentation to remove haze. I recently did that on a wine that I'd neglected to add pectolase to at the start...worked OK, but needed a double dose.

Thanks for rpelying Moley No OG reading - if I'd taken one at the start then I would have realised how wildly out I was. I used 2 litres of Ribena, which is about 25g of sugar per 250ml (when, and this is the important bit that I think I missed, diluted down 4:1) so I reckon that undiluted...

If you want to sweeten it and flavour it, how about throwing some sweeties in there? I once got a "recipe" which involved nothing more than cheap vodka and a handful of Murray Mints....