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You might have some points there. In future I will definitely consider pitching at a lower temperature, with a good starter. I mean, I know there is an optimum temperature for fermentation, but it's this problem with pitching at about 30C and then not being able to stop the fermentation running...

Epilogue: it turned out fine in the end, drank it all, but fermentation actually ground to a halt in the end, as Woodfordes are wont to do, it seems. Had to pitch some other yeast I had around - S04 - to get it going again. Was OK in the end, but can't help feeling it wasn't quite its best, bit...

Thanks for the comments guys. Well, it doesn't say anything actually, it just says: OK, so homebrew instructions are famously ****, so what did I expect. I think it's fair to say it did kick off the fermentation quickly, but I am still having trouble getting the temperature down to below...

Just doing the Nelson's Revenge kit, only done the Wherry before, just to have some reasonable sesh beer on hand while I get round to my next AG batch ;). I noticed if you follow the instructions (mixture of boiling and cold water) you end up with a temp of over 30C into which you are...

Do you think stale yeast will actually perform badly, give dodgy flavours etc? Or is it just that it is slow to become active (the latter it certainly is, I have tried, just not sure if it would potentially spoil the batch).

I have a recipe that calls for a small amount of black malt. Don't feel like buying it in just for this, I have some (milled) chocolate malt in the freezer. If chocolate malt is some 200L, and black malt is say, 350L, I am thinking just to put some of the chocolate malt in the oven at 180-200...

I would be interested in hearing if there is a way of prolonging its life. I had a big 500g foil pack of S04. I just kept mine in the foil pack but used a clip to fold the foil down and pinch it closed, like a bag of coffee, so virtually no air got in. But it's at least a year out of date now...

Markmark kindly sent me the basic recipe so will give it a bash - honestly, there is nothing much to it, if I wanted to knock up a quick session beer this is basically what I would do anyway - some pale, some crystal, a dash of black or chocolate and some early and late Goldings. Hard to see...

Aha, if that's the original name, there is one here: http://www.beertools.com/library/recipe.php?view=10220 But this seems a lot different to what you describe - quite specific about the Golden Promise Malt (not that I can get that anyway) and there are some Fuggles in there too... Is that...

So, Timothy Taylor's Boltmaker (bitter) is voted Britain's best beer at the Great British Beer festival: http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-leeds-28769152. Honestly, I have never heard of it, and don't have access to it even theoretically (am abroad most of the time). I see the Ratebeer...

Sounds like a move - unfortunately, having a bit of brewing experience of various kinds I got a bit complacent. The instructions on the Wherry kit say (verbatim) "Add 3.5 litres of boiling water, top up with cold water to 23 litres..." which if you were not paying attention (like me) you could...

Yes, or to quote other people, makes your beer taste like biscuits :). Again, not necessarily a bad thing! Well, my HBS doesn't stock bog-standard LME or DME (they are heavily AG-oriented) so I guess food-grade malt it is - unless I think up something loony to make up the gravity, like actual...

Thanks - oh yes, you're right, I thought the extract was well-dissolved, but after an extra stir we are definitely talking more like 1.036 in fact. I think then I will probably just chuck in 300-400g of food-grade LME and we should be sorted. I know there's no need to lose sleep over the...

Thanks for the replies, oh I know exactly why the OG is low, it's definitely because I added 23 litres of water TO the 3kg extract, instead of making it UP to 23 litres total including the extract - total newbie error, but easy to make, at least so I try to console myself :) I suppose I was...

Oh... bother. I do a lot of various kinds of brewing and even the thing that shall not be mentioned here (legal where I live) but it's donkey's years since I did a kit beer, so I got the Woodfordes Wherry which everyone raves about and... made a newbie error: I ADDED 23 litres of water instead...

Oh, wait, I got it, my homebrew shop supplies a kilo of dextrose free with all its Brewferm kits, but not all the kits require that much, some like the Abbey only use 500g. So yes, depends on the kit but if you are doing 18 litres of the Abbey, i.e. two kits, then 1kg would be right.

Again, not wanting to open another thread - I will also refrain from boiling, I was always tempted to boil extract kits, not really sure why, I thought it altered the characteristics of the actual extract in some way (i.e. not just for isomerisation of the hops or sterilisation), but if you guys...