Hello all. I've been brewing beer from kits for a good few years but thought I'd have a bash at wine. Looked on here for hints and tips of where to begin and the general consensus seemed to be that a you could make a decent enough white wine from a kit but reds always seemed to be a bit...
I always add the hops loose and use a hop sock when siphoning. Its a 75g hop addition but never seen anything like this even with 100g additions except the Youngs NW Saison. The 'ring' around the neck of the bottles does not look like hops which I would describe as having a wet sawdust...
LIke the original post, I started with an OG of 1.066 but after the 9-10 days when the hops should be added as per the instructions, my SG was 1.022 - way too high to be adding hops. I left it for another week and it got down to 1.014 which I was not unhappy with so I added the hops. That also...
Did you check the SG b4 adding the hops as 1.020 seems on the high side to me. Even if there's not much if any apparent activity from the airlock, the yeast may still be 'working'. I'd usualy wait until day 12ish, check gravity, if OK add hops then bottle 2 days later. If you add hops too soon...
Other posts have covered the main beer kits to think about. Not too much on ciders so for what it's worth, I found the basic apple ciders from Youngs, Bulldog and Wobbly gob to be fine. Youngs peach and passion fruit was nice. Their strawberry and lime a bit so so. MJ kits have a sweetener...
Well, beauty is in the eye of the beholder as they say. It wasn't a bad beer. I've made worse. But it was, imo, unremarkable and I doubt I'd make it again.
I think 1.012 is good for this kit after only 9 days. Mine took 3 weeks. I'd give it at least 2 weeks. I found it slow to carbonate but eventually turned out OK albeit unremarkable.
Looks like the caps were not fully tight. Use a set of these to give them a final tweak when tightening. You'll likely need them to loosen too. The onlt issue I have with these bottles is that some of them fail and leak from the bottom. I can have a half empty bottle with beer in my plastic...
Just a heads up for everyone. My wife is getting ad's on her Facebook for Joules and Cath Kidston with offers of 80 to 99% off. Like Wilkos, both recently went out of business. These are scams. So, if you start receiving similar offers from 'Wilkos', proceed with caution. Chances are it won't be...