Hi all,
I've been reading a few of the posts on this forum recently and I've got a few questions which I think will help me make better beers in future. Just for background, I've made two beers to date (both using the Festival Golden Stag kit) one is a couple of months old now and the other one has only just been bottled.
The beer which has finished its brewing process is very nice, much hoppier than I expected and also cloudy unless poured very carefully. The Golden Stag kit comes with a packet of dried hops which you add five days into (an estimated) ten day brew. I left mine brewing for about 14 days as the gravity hadn't stopped dropping until then, meaning the hops had nine days in the beer rather than five. Would this be a reason why it tastes very hoppy? Testing this is the reason I brewed the same beer again. I'm thinking about doing the Festival IPA next after reading good reviews on this site; this has two packets of hops to add at different times. Why do you add them at different times and how does time affect the flavour of hops?
Secondly I want to understand about clarity of beer. I don't mind cloudy beer - I know it changes the flavour, but I quite like that flavour so I probably pour the whole bottle (inc sediment) about 50% of the time. However, I know other people think cloudy beer gives you hangovers / bad stomach etc, so I'd prefer to make clear beer if possible as I give half of it away. I've read on this site that leaving the beer in a secondary fermentation phase somewhere cold clarifies the beer. Is this before or after you add the sugar to make it fizzy? Before I assume. When decanting into a second bucket to allow this secondary fermentation, I assume you would filter the beer to remove the majority of the detritus?
In both my brews I have gone straight from the first fermentation to the bottles (using a second bucket to evenly mix in the additional sugar). The bottles are now in the garage to age. This means they've probably been at between 10-20 degrees during this ageing process, but now the cold weather is coming in, I assume they'll drop to 8-15 degrees. Is this colder temperature going to aid clarity? Should I really be storing them in the fridge?
Any answers to my multitude of questions would be appreciated, and I'm sorry for writing such a page of text for a starting post!
I've been reading a few of the posts on this forum recently and I've got a few questions which I think will help me make better beers in future. Just for background, I've made two beers to date (both using the Festival Golden Stag kit) one is a couple of months old now and the other one has only just been bottled.
The beer which has finished its brewing process is very nice, much hoppier than I expected and also cloudy unless poured very carefully. The Golden Stag kit comes with a packet of dried hops which you add five days into (an estimated) ten day brew. I left mine brewing for about 14 days as the gravity hadn't stopped dropping until then, meaning the hops had nine days in the beer rather than five. Would this be a reason why it tastes very hoppy? Testing this is the reason I brewed the same beer again. I'm thinking about doing the Festival IPA next after reading good reviews on this site; this has two packets of hops to add at different times. Why do you add them at different times and how does time affect the flavour of hops?
Secondly I want to understand about clarity of beer. I don't mind cloudy beer - I know it changes the flavour, but I quite like that flavour so I probably pour the whole bottle (inc sediment) about 50% of the time. However, I know other people think cloudy beer gives you hangovers / bad stomach etc, so I'd prefer to make clear beer if possible as I give half of it away. I've read on this site that leaving the beer in a secondary fermentation phase somewhere cold clarifies the beer. Is this before or after you add the sugar to make it fizzy? Before I assume. When decanting into a second bucket to allow this secondary fermentation, I assume you would filter the beer to remove the majority of the detritus?
In both my brews I have gone straight from the first fermentation to the bottles (using a second bucket to evenly mix in the additional sugar). The bottles are now in the garage to age. This means they've probably been at between 10-20 degrees during this ageing process, but now the cold weather is coming in, I assume they'll drop to 8-15 degrees. Is this colder temperature going to aid clarity? Should I really be storing them in the fridge?
Any answers to my multitude of questions would be appreciated, and I'm sorry for writing such a page of text for a starting post!