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Do you have a cafetiere? Try a hop tea. Bung 15-20g into the cafetiere, fill with boiling water, wait 5 mins, plunge it and add the liquid to the brew. Instant hop character! Not quite the same end result as dry-hopping, but will certainly liven up a dull brew.

The Coopers Australian PA, made with 500g pale malt extract and 500g brewing sugar comes out very nicely. Should be ready to drink in around 6-8 weeks (2 weeks fermenting, 4-6 weeks in the bottle). Failing that, you could do an extract brew if you have a big pot. The Malt Miller sells 3kg of...

Peelman, for me you have hit the nail on the head. Homebrewing for me is about producing high quality beer, and using recipes to give me a guide as to how the beer will turn out, rather than attempting to 100% clone a commercial beer. Once you have that thought process, you can tailor the beer...

This - it is a hobby as well as a daily necessity, and the different razors, blades, creams etc allow that level of experimentation crucial in any good hobby. And it doesn't have to cost a fortune either - a reasonable razor/brush/blades/soap setup should cost easily less than £30. Congrats...

Hi Hoppy, Have a read here, and you'll see where my thoughts came from... http://blog.beer-pages.com/2010/05/mars ... reads.html

Update in post above, but the brief synopsis is that it's worked very well, and seems to have a flavour profile somewhere between S04 and US05. So defo a winner, given that it only cost 50p of malt extract to bring it on... I've been told that I can also have the dregs of Butcombe Bitter or...

Ok, 7 days in, what's it doing I hear you ask? Not a lot. But that's a good thing as it's already down to 1.009 and seems stable. I've pulled a sample out, and the yeast has done it's job perfectly - still a little krausen on the top of the beer, but most has sunk to the bottom. The beer at...

Nice one - you can be proud of that! Another way of pepping up a kit is to add a hop tea just before bottling. Just put 15-20g of a nice hop (goldings for british bitters works well, cascade or amarillo for american pales etc) into a 6-8cup cafetiere and fill it with boiling water. Leave it...

Haha, I know your pain! Just wait until you go AG - the first one normally takes a good 7-8hours including clear-up until you get the hang of multitasking! A little tip from me, if you are using a steel pot on a hob, just bung the whole thing in the sink with cold water around it, and change...

I did a 2-can mashup of Coopers Aussie Pale and Mexican Cervesa, and it turned out really nice, but did need about 2 months in the bottle for the bitterness to die down to a sensible level.

The yeast can sometimes take a little colour out too (or at least flocculate some down to the bottom), so it might well be lighter once fermentation has finished and is clear.

The extra 20 mins could well have caramelised the wort, which would have darkened it by a good couple of points.

I went from bottling to kegging for convenience, but found that I preferred the taste of bottled beer, so sold all my kegs and went back to bottling. It's also a damn site easier taking a few bottles round a mates and bunging them in his fridge! I batch prime which saves a lot of hassle, and...

I reckon I've got a dodgy ring then (matron...) :shock: I use a kettle element in my FV now, which is a lot less hassle for me. Must try and clean the cooker gas jets at some point...

The lid thing is a bit dependant on what malts you are using. If you are using a well modified malt like Maris Otter, then it shouldn't be too much of a problem, but some of the other malts can suffer if the DMS (Dimethyl Sulphide...I think) isn't boiled off. Gives it a bit of a cooked...

Yeah, I wanted the smooth bitterness of simcoe with the piney flavour that you get when it's used as an aroma hop. Bit like a Brewdog-light I suppose. And Amarillo because, well just because, really. Who doesn't like tropical flavours in their APAs eh? Might have to do an amarillo hop tea in...

Looks good. You'll get a good approximation of a lager with US05, but make sure it's given enough time to clear before you bottle it, as it won't stick to the bottom of the bottle that well, so the less you have in there the better.

Gotta be honest, I don't reckon my wok burner is any better than the 4" one! Bloody MFI... On a single 4" burner you are probably looking at at least 45mins from 60C, and anything up to 75mins from cold (you lose less heat from the sides of the pan at lower temps, so the last 30C or so takes...

Depends on how big vs tall your pan is - shorter flatter pans have a greater surface area for evaporation than thinner taller ones. With my 33L FV boiler on a good rolling boil, I normally expect to lose about 3.5L per hour, so if your pan is a little smaller than that, I would reckon on about...

Sort of depends how thick the steel on your pan is. I found it took around 45mins to get from sparge to boiling point when I boiled 15L in a 19L pan on a wok-burner ring, but then my 19L pan's steel is so thin I reckon it'd pass the feck test... :lol: That was from around 60C - if you are...