Muntons IPA was my first kit bought and second one made after a 25 year gap from homebrewing 
The first up was a Coopers lager that came with the rest of the stuff that came with my 55th birthday present.
The Coopers lager is an OK kit, one i will repeat many times, I'm sure - it is really brilliant compared to the sort of supermarket lager I have been drinking for very many years.
But this Muntons 2x1.5 kit turns out to be a real sensation :party: I brewed the kit to the "plus 1kg of sugar" option. This is the Officers strength brew that turns out at around 6% - an extraordinary strength for a beer to my thinking.
The early sampling was not good - it had a strange spicy taste I could not really place at bottling time, which was a week after pitching. (I now think this was a bit soon!).
Four weeks on, the brew is superb. Malty, flavoursome, rich, warming, satisfying and best of all, I have another kit in the cupboard.
This is just so much better than the stuff I brewed then, with half dead hops and surface seeking yeast, in a huge great pan, annoying the rest of the family with the all pervasive hoppy smell, all those years ago, I could almost cry.
Anyway, nostalgia apart, this is a great brew - I recommend the "kit and kilo" approach - just this once - for the Raj :lol:
The first up was a Coopers lager that came with the rest of the stuff that came with my 55th birthday present.
The Coopers lager is an OK kit, one i will repeat many times, I'm sure - it is really brilliant compared to the sort of supermarket lager I have been drinking for very many years.
But this Muntons 2x1.5 kit turns out to be a real sensation :party: I brewed the kit to the "plus 1kg of sugar" option. This is the Officers strength brew that turns out at around 6% - an extraordinary strength for a beer to my thinking.
The early sampling was not good - it had a strange spicy taste I could not really place at bottling time, which was a week after pitching. (I now think this was a bit soon!).
Four weeks on, the brew is superb. Malty, flavoursome, rich, warming, satisfying and best of all, I have another kit in the cupboard.
This is just so much better than the stuff I brewed then, with half dead hops and surface seeking yeast, in a huge great pan, annoying the rest of the family with the all pervasive hoppy smell, all those years ago, I could almost cry.
Anyway, nostalgia apart, this is a great brew - I recommend the "kit and kilo" approach - just this once - for the Raj :lol:
