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Pfeffer

Pfeffer

Regular.
Joined
Oct 17, 2016
Messages
239
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Location
Netherlands
Hi all,

I'm new to the brewing thing and I'm looking to score some tips and tricks on what to buy first. For brewing itself I was already planning to buy one of the cheaper(roughly 60 quid) starting kits containing;

Plastic 30 liter brewing bucket with tap
Plastic fermentation bucket 30 liter with tap, thermometer- strip en waterlock
Bottle filling funnel
Stirring spoon
Capping tool + 100 bottle caps (no clue how to translate that).
Bottle brush + sanitizing solution
Beer density meter + measuring cup

I already have my own lab equipment (bottles, sterilized equipment, gloves, tubes, autoclave, pH/EC testing equipment, personal protection).

Now comes the hard part; I'm pretty picky with my beers, although I may be a bit more forgiving if I brew it myself. I understand some beers might need different temperature ranges compared to others, and my house is currently in a steady 19-20 degrees.

What starter kit should I buy?

The reviews on most of them seem to come from people that haven't brewed them yet and have wordings like "Posh box, looks like a very nice gift". I tried the review section on the forum, but most seem to be of beers that I'm not particularly fond of.

Would anyone able to recommend me a particular brand of brewing kit that it well suited for people with zero experience?

Things I like;

Belgian beers in all sorts of types, like; Duvel, La Chouffe, Westmalle.

Pilsener; Grolsch, Beck's, DAB, Ursus, Bitburger, Asahi, Sapporo

Hefeweizen; Paulaner (especially cloudy ones), Weihenstephaner, Franziskaner, Erdinger, Löwenbräu etc.

I strongly dislike;

Tripel Karmeliet (triple)
St Bernardus Tripel (triple)
Jupiler (Pils)
Krombacher (Pils)
Cervezza types
American Pilseners

Regarding IPAs (there are a LOT of different ones in the San Diego area) it's really a hit or miss. I can also sometimes enjoy things like a guinness.


Meh - Yes, I'm a picky person. Is there anyone who tried some of these kits and might have an idea which ones might work for me? I'd love to try brewing, but I'd hate giving up because I have to fail the first 10 times (taste wise).
 
First welcome.
Next try this
http://www.thehomebrewforum.co.uk/showthread.php?t=57526
Finally most on here are UK based and kits that are available in the UK may not be available in the Netherlands where you say you are based, unless you are prepared to pay a big postage bill.
You could read through these reviews to give you an idea of what is available in the UK.
http://www.thehomebrewforum.co.uk/showthread.php?t=61597
That said Brewferm kits are, I believe, made in Belgium so they may be more readily available in the Netherlands, and there is a good range.
 
There are two options for you: either brew with beer kits, in which case the cheap equipment you mentioned would be fine, or go for an extract or all-grain brew, in which case you would need to get a boiler.

At that temperature you can rule out the genuine lagers, which should be fermented at a lower temperature. That said, you could use a lager yeast which has good results that that temperature, such as the Saflager W-34/70. For this, you could try a Coopers European Lager kit and swap the yeast that comes with the kit, or make your own pilsner wort.

The other styles would ferment well in the 19-20C temperature range. Unfortunately there aren't any good Hefeweizen kits out there, at least in the UK, so if you are picky then your only option would be to go all-grain. On the plus side, this style of beer is ready to drink very soon after fermenting it, so you will be able to taste the fruits of your labour quite early. There are some good Belgian beer kits out there, in particular the Brewferm kits, but these tend to take a long time to condition.
 
Hi Terry,

Thanks for the swift reply, postage isn't an issue at all - I'm in a bit of a luxury position. We have a site in Chesterford (Cambridge) and therefore I can quite often be found in the UK. There's also a twice weekly courrier going there, so no worries on that. US products are equally easy to go and "pick up". Brouwland (that is brewferm) is actually only a 45min drive from where I live.

I read that topic already and summed it all up. So the start kits seem pretty complete. I also did two brews earlier (of which one failed), so I'm already familiar with the basics. The one brew that did work out was, lets say "of inferior taste" compared to store bought beers. Fair enough, they might have a little more practice than I did - but to keep the moral up I'd love a brew to work out well(ish).

I read through some reviews that sounded appealing (mostly triple ones, as I prefer drinking those - the list is rather intimidating if that is what I need to try to find the right kit). But I think triple might be a less suitable one to try right now (due to the rather high fermenting temperature). My lab experience says that yeast does not appreciate large fluctuations in temperature. Would there be more suitable beers to try this time of year? Or would fermenting still work properly if I can keep a steady 17-20 degrees for Triple?

I'm not sure how well brewing yeast holds up with temperature fluctuations, so I might be a bit overly cautious (pardon me for that - habit).

Edit:

Thanks Ian, that sounds like something I can work with. I think Hefeweizen is also one of the more forgiving ones. I do have boilers as I also do some mushroom growing (mostly oysters varieties, wine cap stropharia, shii take etc) on the side. So that might still be worth a shot.

It sounds it might be wise to try one of the brewferm kits first to pick up some experience though. Conditioning might be a bit of a pain, but that's something I can live with.


Thank you both for the input :)
 
It's very hard to compare canned kits to shop bought products, if you want the best possible product you will probably be wanting to go all grain eventually, brewing thru beer kits to get to one or two you like could take a while and be expensive if you end up throwing out the bulk of it. Take a look online for recipe's/clones of the beers you like and what reviews of them are like for allgrain or partial mash/extract. All grain is more expensive to start out in but over time if you keep at it the payback in cost reduction can be quite a bit.
 
Instead of a starter kit you could just take a note of all the things it comprises, and then go to a home brew online shop and pick the bits yourself, and then you have the luxury of picking a kit that you like the look of (with the help of google and "<kit name> reviews").
 
Pfeffer
Given what you have said, in particular about your being picky, I suggest you buy a some very basic equipment and one or two Brewferm kits and try these and then develop your technique. If things work out you can then try an extract brew to a recipe of your choosing. This doesn't need any extra equipment other than a pot, perhaps not that if you brew in small quantities. The advantages here are that you can do this quite cheaply, and get a good basic understanding about making your own beer. The disadvantage is that you don't make beer to your liking and so you give up too soon.
If things work out you can then decide if you want to change to AG. The advantage of this is that you can probably brew beer more to your exacting standards. The disadvantage is that if this still doesn't hit the spot you will have potentially wasted yet more money.
 
Thanks for all the input, I've decided to start a small batch of brewferm (might try both the triple and the diabolo) to keep the investment low. I already have some large boilers, I'd just need to make a malt pipe for filtering. So I'm afraid I already made that investment for other hobbies (growing edible fungii), which might the additional step less expensive. I don't mind throwing in a couple of hundred quid for something that I enjoy a lot, but I hate wasting 100 quid on something that I don't like.

I'll give some kits a try, and in the worst scenario I threw away a 100 quid that I could've spent on a batch of Duvel/la Chouffe.
 
Let us know how you get on in due course, hopefully you won't waste any money and will continue brewing
t.gif
 
Yeah, keep us up to date. I'll just say that if/when you have a bit of experience and go all-grain, you will be able to make better beers than are available commercially,
 
Pending the receipt of my shiny new toys, can anyone give a rough estimate on how much time I need to reserve to brew a brewferm tripel or diabolo? (Hands on work with the extract, not counting fermenting etc).

I'll be receiving it on a work day, so I'm trying to determine if I can start my brew same day instead of waiting until the weekend.
 
Pfeffer said:
Hi all,

I'm new to the brewing thing and I'm looking to score some tips and tricks on what to buy first. For brewing itself I was already planning to buy one of the cheaper(roughly 60 quid) starting kits containing;

Plastic 30 liter brewing bucket with tap
Plastic fermentation bucket 30 liter with tap, thermometer- strip en waterlock
Bottle filling funnel
Stirring spoon
Capping tool + 100 bottle caps (no clue how to translate that).
Bottle brush + sanitizing solution
Beer density meter + measuring cup

I already have my own lab equipment (bottles, sterilized equipment, gloves, tubes, autoclave, pH/EC testing equipment, personal protection).

Now comes the hard part; I'm pretty picky with my beers, although I may be a bit more forgiving if I brew it myself. I understand some beers might need different temperature ranges compared to others, and my house is currently in a steady 19-20 degrees.

What starter kit should I buy?

The reviews on most of them seem to come from people that haven't brewed them yet and have wordings like "Posh box, looks like a very nice gift". I tried the review section on the forum, but most seem to be of beers that I'm not particularly fond of.

Would anyone able to recommend me a particular brand of brewing kit that it well suited for people with zero experience?

Things I like;

Belgian beers in all sorts of types, like; Duvel, La Chouffe, Westmalle.

Pilsener; Grolsch, Beck's, DAB, Ursus, Bitburger, Asahi, Sapporo

Hefeweizen; Paulaner (especially cloudy ones), Weihenstephaner, Franziskaner, Erdinger, Löwenbräu etc.

I strongly dislike;

Tripel Karmeliet (triple)
St Bernardus Tripel (triple)
Jupiler (Pils)
Krombacher (Pils)
Cervezza types
American Pilseners

Regarding IPAs (there are a LOT of different ones in the San Diego area) it's really a hit or miss. I can also sometimes enjoy things like a guinness.


Meh - Yes, I'm a picky person. Is there anyone who tried some of these kits and might have an idea which ones might work for me? I'd love to try brewing, but I'd hate giving up because I have to fail the first 10 times (taste wise).
Click to expand...

apart from a brewferm kit you could use this yeast....

http://www.fermentis.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Safbrew-WB-06-en.pdf

with 3kg of dried wheat extract (muntons or similar) in 6 litres water boil for 20 mins with 50g of tettnang pellets. strain hop pellets out then dilute to 21 litres in fermenter. pitch (rehydrated) yeast at about 24 degrees. your house temp will be fine for this beer.

using bottled water means no need to treat it. plus you can chill some bottles easily to get to the correct pitching temp quickly
 
Pfeffer said:
Pending the receipt of my shiny new toys, can anyone give a rough estimate on how much time I need to reserve to brew a brewferm tripel or diabolo? (Hands on work with the extract, not counting fermenting etc).

I'll be receiving it on a work day, so I'm trying to determine if I can start my brew same day instead of waiting until the weekend.
Click to expand...

Using kits is pot-noodle brewing. I would bash one out in half an our. If its your first time, you should be finished within an hour. Just make sure you have both hot and cold water for topping up, so that you can hit pitching temperature exactly, add the yeast and be done with it.
 
Not sure what fermentables you plan to use with the Brewferm, but Tate & Lyle Golden Syrup works much better than just brewing sugar, as it's more like traditional Belgian candi sugar. You need to use 10-20% more than the raw sugar weight, but it's worth it with these kits.
 
Thank you all, my first batch of brewferm tripel is in.. took me about 1,5 hours incl sanitizing - not to bad..

After this one I'll have another brewferm kit (diabolo) and munton belgian style ale ready to go. I decided to use light brown kandij sugar (candi) 350 gr and 140 gram crystal sugar to keep it relatively blond (hopefully).
 

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