Going back to kits!!

Sounds crazy doesn't it, since Im an AG brewer. Actually what I intend to do is use a spare pressure barrel which belongs to my son, for kits like the Golden Stag, so Ive always got something vaguely drinkable, and then bottle my AG stuff . Personally Im not snobbish about this and find 'some' of the kits more than acceptable if you need a quick chug when getting in from work.

Funny I done my first kit last month and only just bottled it last week.

Sent from my ALE-L21

A few years back I got a little jaded with brewing and decided to go back to spending ten minutes on (tweaked) beer kits instead of half a day doing all-grain. The resulting slop had me rueing my folly and the ol' mashtun and boiler etc were hastily brought out of retirement. Haven't made a kit since....

I intended to do much the same and keep my pb for kits. Having enjoyed my pale malt smash so much, I've decided to fill the pb with that - which is half the price if you don't account for time...

Robin54 said:

Sounds crazy doesn't it, since Im an AG brewer. Actually what I intend to do is use a spare pressure barrel which belongs to my son, for kits like the Golden Stag, so Ive always got something vaguely drinkable, and then bottle my AG stuff . Personally Im not snobbish about this and find 'some' of the kits more than acceptable if you need a quick chug when getting in from work.

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Horses for courses really.
Having only ever done one can kits i would not go back to those.My extract brews have all been far far better and almost as easy as have my BIAB efforts.
Not having ever done two can kits i can't comment.

chub1 said:

Horses for courses really.
Having only ever done one can kits i would not go back to those.My extract brews have all been far far better and almost as easy as have my BIAB efforts.
Not having ever done two can kits i can't comment.

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I certainly wouldn't do 1 can kits. Strangely the extract brews I did i really didn't enjoy, and DME is so expensive. Like you BIAB is the way forward....I just can't make enough!!!:lol:

Dont give "kits" such a hard time. There are some excellent kits available. If I was short of time I would have no hesitation about doing a kit. Admittedly I havent done a kit for 3 years, but there is nothinh wrong with kits.

johnnyboy1965 said:

Dont give "kits" such a hard time. There are some excellent kits available. If I was short of time I would have no hesitation about doing a kit.

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+1

The kits available now are excellent and have been improving all the time. I brew AG, Extract and kits depending on how much time I have. AG is the best but it takes the longest, Extract and some kits aren't as far off in terms of quality as some on here would lead you to believe...at least to my tastes. :whistle:

johnnyboy1965 said:

Dont give "kits" such a hard time. There are some excellent kits available. If I was short of time I would have no hesitation about doing a kit. Admittedly I havent done a kit for 3 years, but there is nothinh wrong with kits.

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As i said,i have only done ONE can kits, never two so can't comment.
Don't get me wrong, i did a good few kits at first,got me started but wouldn't go back to those.
basically it's whatever floats ya boat:)

On one hand if you spend 10 minutes making up a 1.5kg kit with 1kg dextrose you will not produce an award winning brew.
On the other hand some people are quite happy to spend all day in an outhouse producing 20odd litres of AG beer with equipment that cost several £100s, which is fine, and I'm sure most of the results equal or surpass pub quality beer.
But there's no right or wrong way, in spite of what some folk would have you believe.
It's what you feel comfortable with.

terrym said:

On one hand if you spend 10 minutes making up a 1.5kg kit with 1kg dextrose you will not produce an award winning brew.
On the other hand some people are quite happy to spend all day in an outhouse producing 20odd litres of AG beer with equipment that cost several ��£100s, which is fine, and I'm sure most of the results equal or surpass pub quality beer.
But there's no right or wrong way, in spite of what some folk would have you believe.
It's what you feel comfortable with.

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Agreed, and equallly it's what you enjoy. I've made some some terrible kit beers and some excellent ones. I've also tasted good and bad kit beer made by others.

Personally, since I've moved to all grain I'll never go back to 1 can kits. I love the process of all-grain. I'm not concerned if I'm too busy to brew for a few weeks.

I love spending a Saturday brewing and the excitement of calculating my own recipes by hand in the evenings. I've even made an excel spreadsheet that does my calcs for me now.

I will also note that All grain doesn't have to be massively expensive. I spent under �£200 on my setup( I'm aware that the term expensive is relative). Though it helps if you're not DIY shy.

I've no doubt that some of the mega-premium kits come within spitting distance of a well-brewed AG, but if you're skint ( or as tight as you are astute, like me ), they're a non-starter. One of those costs as much as I spend on malt 'n' hops in 3 months! I can't justify that but if they were cheaper that's probably the way I'd go, at least for some brews.

I don't think it's at all daft to switch between AG and Kits; especially the two-can kits.

Also, as an inexpensive way to experiment I don't mind using One-Can kits.

How else would I have discovered the joys of Chillies (added to a Wilco Pilsner) or Pumpkin and All Spice (added to a Wilco Cerveza) or, best of all kit experiments, the joys of a Coopers Lager that I brewed with 950g of Golden Syrup, cold hopped with Fuggles pellets and lagered at 10 degrees for 10 weeks. It was delicious! :thumb:

Personally, I would never have experimented and put at hazard something that had taken me five or six hours of preparation!

Yep! There is place even for One-Can kits in my armoury! :thumb:

Itona Products 'Kwoffit' lager. Said it before to some ridicule but I'll say it again - the finest lager kit known to all of humanity.

Ive just done an AG lager and bought some new gear for it from the LHBS. While I was there I spotted a young's AIPA kit and thought "what the hell", it will serve for a nice quick n easy stock replenisher to tide me over until I can be bothered to do my next AG pale

chuffer said:

Ive just done an AG lager and bought some new gear for it from the LHBS. While I was there I spotted a young's AIPA kit and thought "what the hell", it will serve for a nice quick n easy stock replenisher to tide me over until I can be bothered to do my next AG pale

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Spot on Chuffer:thumb:

I made kits 20 odd years ago as that was only thing available to us and I enjoyed the wine more than the beer as the kits were hit and miss.
Now on the other hand the kits are even better than some beer they sell over the counter and in the right hands can be tweaked to attain award winning beers.
I personally at the moment can say at some time I will get a kit or two on the go but I'm finding that there is more room for experimenting with AG and that's what I'm enjoying at the present time.🍺

Sent from my ALE-L21

Gunge said:

Itona Products 'Kwoffit' lager. Said it before to some ridicule but I'll say it again - the finest lager kit known to all of humanity.

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Searching for Itona Kwoffit Home Brew Kits (unsuccessfully I might add) I came across a 2002 AGM of the National Association of Wine & Beermakers (Amateur) 44th AGM.

It contained this recipe to celebrate the Queen’s Silver Jubilee of the same year and I thought it light be worth a punt sometime this year to celebrate SWMBO’s and my own 75th Birthdays next year.

It has the advantage of being "Wine strength" and keeping so long that if I’m still knocking around when I’m 80 there should still be a few bottles okay to drink! :thumb:

The original recipe was in Imperial Units so I have taken the liberty of changing it to Metric (hopefully without ruining it) and some of the SG's used were different to what I'm used to but I think I have them correct.

Enjoy! :thumb:


"David Line’s Silver Jubilee Ale

Total Product 9 litres

OG 1.095

3.0kg Crushed Pale Malt
1.0kg Crushed Lager Malt
500g Soft Brown Sugar
85g East Kent Goldings
30g Styrian Goldings or Bramling Cross Hops
CWE Formula 67 Yeast (A wine yeast!)

If you have chalky water it must be pre-boiled and the soft water racked off for mashing. Add one teaspoonful of gypsum to three gallons of mashing liquor.

Raise the 14 litres of treated water up to 55°C and stir in the crushed malts ensuring no dry spots. Apply gentle heat and stirring continuously raise the temperature of the goods to 68°C and switch off.

During the next two hours occasionally return the temperature to 65°C.

After two hours transfer the grain to a large straining bag and allow the rich sugary wort to drain off naturally. Gently rinse the grains with 4 litres of water (at about 75°C) which should allow you to collect just over 13 litres of wort.

Add the hops and sugar and boil the mixture for at least an hour or until the volume has been reduced to 9 litres.

Let the wort settle for 15 minutes after the boil before carefully straining off the clear wort from the bed of hops and protein break debris into the fermenting bin.

When cool the wort should have a gravity of between 1.090 and 1.100 to give the brew the alcohol potential of a table wine. Pitch the wine yeast and ferment for a week or so until the vigorous activity abates. Complete fermentation in two one gallon jars. Just like normal wine procedures rack the brew off the heavy sediment into fresh jars. The ale will eventually fall bright leaving a thin deposit of yeast on the bottom.

Add two teaspoons of white sugar dissolved in a little warm water to each of two 5 litre jars and rack the beer into them, ensuring a little yeast is carried over. Wait for fermentation to restart before bottling in 500ml bottles.

Amateur Winemaker even produced special labels for the brew with a recommendation that the bottles should be finished with a silver foil capsule over the crown cap and bottle neck.

I made this ale in 1977 and had put away a few bottles intending to keep some for the golden jubilee. However whilst it was perfectly sound at ten years old it started to get lively after that so the remainder was drunk up in 1990. But that is not bad for a home made ale.

It almost seems wrong to mess around with such a great recipe but Dave Line was keen to keep the colour of the ale light, hence his use of lager malt.

I think that Ale for a Golden Jubilee should be darker than for Silver, so I am replacing the 1kg of lager malt with an extra 750g of pale malt and 250g of amber malt.

I will also use a Gervin C Wine yeast.

However I don’t expect anybody to repeat that recipe in 25 years time."

Reference:

http://www.nawb.org.uk/documents/n&v2002feb.pdf

The debate about kits or AG will always exist. I dont think thinsg are as straight forward as this is the right way because some people brew for different reasons.

IMO kits are variable I have had some good kits and some poor ones , but you can knock them together in 20 mins and be done with it. And of course you can still boost them with tweaks. Doing this can produce some really good beer with minimal effort

AG is kind of on a different plane of why people brew I feel (maybe I am wrong) , it doesn't take all day I usually do it sub 5 hours and during that time I can get a lot of other stuff done around the house.. A lot of us do it for the passion of the hobby and the ability to have control over our recipes and venture into something from scratch and make new recipes with ingredients to see how they all fall together. the results are typically excellent but some people do not have the time or even the desire to be as involved in that.

Personally I only brew one large batch a month and fitting in the time for that isn't a problem whatsoever. (I on occasion so smaller batches on my hob on small days off).. But I I consumed more and needed to make 3 batches a month I would have to possibly review it

Kits, BIAB, partial mash, full AG...its all down to what you want to do.
Is the finished AG better than a quality kit? Not really...Its more convienient to do a kit, and if you want a decent beer to drink, then go for it.
What I find enjoyable with AG is thinking about and designing my own beers...eg..will this hop and malt bill work together.
Cost does come into the equasion (sp) and AG is cheaper, but not if you take "labour costs" into account:-
Example..If your a QC earning £500.00 per hour and your brew takes 4 hours, its a very expensive beer, but in the real world and earning "normal" wages, it can still be expensive. But what you have got to remember is that its a hobby, not a living and as a hobby producing a decent brew can be very cheap, it just depends on how far you want to take it.
Regards Johnnyboy