I want to brew an ESB/IPA style beer with an OG of 1050-1060 and a final ABV of 6%. I was intending to use Coopers Bitter as a base with brew enhancer 1 as a base. Is there an online calculator that will help me work out how much extra brewing sugar I'll need to add/use in total to achieve my target OG? Does brew enhancer contain the equivalent of 1kg of sugar in Dextrose?
My closest large brewing shop is the homebrewshop in Aldershot and they don't appear to sell Dextrose. I have a load of brewing kit left over from university from 30 years ago including a boots pressure barrel which I'll probably have to junk once I inspect it all on Monday. I'll replace it with a barrel with an S30 valve on the cap. I always used to use finings when primary fermentation was complete as it resulted in a much clearer pint.
Would I be better off buying a tin of Coopers Malt (which one?), some quality yeast, brew enhancer and brewing sugar and following one of the threads on here (which one?).
No rinse sanitiser and a spray bottle seems to be the best way of keeping everything clean and disinfected. Is there any advantage in using traditional sterilisers?
As I now approach my 50s I've forgotten all of my brewing experience from my late teens (at boarding school - I'd probably have been expelled if caught!), through to my early twenties at university. Barrels were just easier to keep hidden than litre bottles of beer. My inspiration came from my father who made Boots bitter kits when he first started and then bought kits from a shop in Kingston which was knocked down when the Bentall Centre was expanded.
I'm keen to start again and know from memory that it is pretty easy to improve on the off the shelf kits by making up your own, and by adding in finings and using an auto siphon device to leave all the sediment behind after the first fermentation. I also need a calculator for the quantity of priming sugar to add to the barrel. I'll probably run two barrels - one so I can let the beer to mature for 4-6 weeks in the barrel and another to drink from. If I don't I won't be able to avoid drinking it after two weeks! People used to come and visit me at Uni just to drink my beer!
Tim
My closest large brewing shop is the homebrewshop in Aldershot and they don't appear to sell Dextrose. I have a load of brewing kit left over from university from 30 years ago including a boots pressure barrel which I'll probably have to junk once I inspect it all on Monday. I'll replace it with a barrel with an S30 valve on the cap. I always used to use finings when primary fermentation was complete as it resulted in a much clearer pint.
Would I be better off buying a tin of Coopers Malt (which one?), some quality yeast, brew enhancer and brewing sugar and following one of the threads on here (which one?).
No rinse sanitiser and a spray bottle seems to be the best way of keeping everything clean and disinfected. Is there any advantage in using traditional sterilisers?
As I now approach my 50s I've forgotten all of my brewing experience from my late teens (at boarding school - I'd probably have been expelled if caught!), through to my early twenties at university. Barrels were just easier to keep hidden than litre bottles of beer. My inspiration came from my father who made Boots bitter kits when he first started and then bought kits from a shop in Kingston which was knocked down when the Bentall Centre was expanded.
I'm keen to start again and know from memory that it is pretty easy to improve on the off the shelf kits by making up your own, and by adding in finings and using an auto siphon device to leave all the sediment behind after the first fermentation. I also need a calculator for the quantity of priming sugar to add to the barrel. I'll probably run two barrels - one so I can let the beer to mature for 4-6 weeks in the barrel and another to drink from. If I don't I won't be able to avoid drinking it after two weeks! People used to come and visit me at Uni just to drink my beer!
Tim
