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Yes and it was only 45g - it needed way more.

The chocolate stout I made used cocoa powder rather than actual chocolate - to quote the book ("Home Brew" by Rouxel and Paston Williams): "You can use chocolate, but this can get very messy and add oils that can spoil head retention." That said the batch I made got put down the sink due to my...

I tried my monster brew last night - it's incredible!! Caffeine kick like a branded energy drink but retaining 9.8% abv and a red bull/vimto flavour (or in other words not bad). Going to try it again and see if I can get things started quicker than throwing four types of yeast in before I post...

Mine finally finished up yesterday after 4 weeks - well tbh I finished it cause the reading was around the 1.010 mark so added campdens and stabiliser. I also threw a sachet of beer finnings in I had lying around spare. Still tastes good so it seems the energy concentrate in it worked - now to...

I do hope you tested the weight on those fridge shelves ~11kg on each is quite a lot. I speak from experience of smashing one about a month ago - still one good thing, it took out one of the salad crisper's too.

At this point it would just make it stronger. I'd leave it for now. Did you buy a single or double can kit for next time - if single use the malt instead of sugar in that.

Relax dx - you shouldn't feel pressure to make a perfect brew quickly. It's a learning process and I'm fully prepared to pour a failure down the drain - I'll still learn from my mistakes (I think my first all grain brew may head that way - time will tell). Don't start thinking you need perfect...

As far as I know the secondary fermentation merges pretty much with the conditioning. My advice would be get it into fizzy drink bottles (simple smart price/basic/value carbonated water ones at ~17p each will do). Leave it roughly a week then put it in the cold. You can always re-rack it...

A lot of yeast will still be in suspension in the liquid (hence some of the cloudiness) - and no I doubt there'd be much difference between ale and wine yeast for this purpose. I used champagne yeast on mine following: viewtopic.php?f=39&t=5982

I'm guessing what you saw at the bottom was down to the cream of tartar - your yeast must have worked to get that kinda drop in gravity (unless you got infected by an airbourne strain of ginger beer yeast!). As for lack of carbonation and head - they come with secondary fermentation, which...

Dog did sneeze earlier - and the hamster isn't up yet :P

oh don't wifey is still at work so looking after our 3 kids. My 12 year old had to pick tonight to do her maths homework and need help :S

I just didn't want to inject germs into my brew then let them breed for a few weeks and risk creating a new strand of super manflu which could leave to extreme shortages of Lemsips

Will they be ok that long - the fermenters are the cheapo ones which don't seal so there's defiantly some gas exchange going on

Another +1 for St Peter's Ruby Red. Just finished one last night - lovely and very drinkable stuff.

Hey I've got a lovely dose of manflu atm and two brews which need bottling/casking - one actually finished fermenting two days ago. Should I syphon etc while I'm germy? or get my wife to do it (joke should probably go here but I can't be bothered).

Yeah continue - the rubber on the airlock should be pretty clean as it's your first brew, and the yeast spreads throughout the brew anyway. In fact it's normally advised to give it another good aeration a day after you pitch the yeast.

Thanks. What happens at the end of fermenation - will the break matter drop or should I skim it off the top before syphoning?

Ahh yes seems it was holding back the yeast head - cause 3 hours after aerating: You can't see how superb it looks in that photos but the white bits are way higher than the brown bits. I'll get skimming! (edit got maybe 75% of it - didn't want to remove all of the yeast head) It's at about...

Hi I brewed a chocolate stout clone the other but I'm pretty worried about the head. The day I after I pitched the yeast (s04) it had what looked like a layer of milk curds on top of the brew (apart from the dark brown colour from the cocoa powder). I aerated it with a drill/spoon combo but...