Geterbrewed Proper English IPA Kit Ingredients Box

[Tony1951]

I won one of the Geterbrewed Kit boxes in the recent raffle (lucky beggar - I know). This thread is for the review of how it all works out as a kit.

Kit came today by Parcel Force. Nicely packaged and all ingredients look great, well marked and looks great quality with nice fragrant fresh malt and vacuum packed hops. The yeast supplied is the famous Gervin GV12.

It has simple clear instructions which assume that the brewer has at least read enough to know what to do with the contents in the same way that any cookery book recipe assumes people know what to do with pots and pans.

I can't see how this can go wrong if I do my part properly which I am looking forward to doing as soon as I can. I have all the required ingredients for my Proper English IPA brew.

I am a new AG brewer and can only do stove top 12 litre brews so I am going to have to split the contents in half and go from there. This might introduce inconsistencies which will be my fault and not that of the kit supplier, but I will do my best to get it right.

I will report my brew day fun soon.... Watch this space. :)

Cheers.

Tony

 

[Covrich]

I won one of the Geterbrewed Kit boxes in the recent raffle (lucky beggar - I know). This thread is for the review of how it all works out as a kit.

Kit came today by Parcel Force. Nicely packaged and all ingredients look great, well marked and looks great quality with nice fragrant fresh malt and vacuum packed hops. The yeast supplied is the famous Gervin GV12.

It has simple clear instructions which assume that the brewer has at least read enough to know what to do with the contents in the same way that any cookery book recipe assumes people know what to do with pots and pans.

I can't see how this can go wrong if I do my part properly which I am looking forward to doing as soon as I can. I have all the required ingredients for my Proper English IPA brew.

I am a new AG brewer and can only do stove top 12 litre brews so I am going to have to split the contents in half and go from there. This might introduce inconsistencies which will be my fault and not that of the kit supplier, but I will do my best to get it right.

I will report my brew day fun soon.... Watch this space. :)

Cheers.

Tony

Looks good

I split my HBC kit so do not worry, infact its good to see how both version a and b turn out. Mine with all good intentions to do two idenitcal brews my second one ended up a fair bit stronger than the first..

Have fun.. you brewing today?

 

[Tony1951]

I was intending to brew on Wednesday.

To try and get consistency, I will tip all the malt into a tub and give it a really good stir so the various malts have at least a chance of being evenly distributed between the two brews. I have a decent digital scale so I ought to be able to half the hops properly too. Probably not ideally the way Geterbrewed would want their kit handled, but not unrealistic because there are a lot of beginner brewers like me who don't have a 30 litre boiler who might still buy their kits.

Initial thoughts on value for money are that for £15 (the kit price) you can't go wrong really with what they sent me. It is more or less the price of a Cooper's one can kit only I would have had to buy the extra fermentables. This looks like premium quality stuff for little money.

 

[Tony1951]

OK - temptation to get on with this was just too much and I am typing this while the wort is boiling. I was asked to do a prompt review so we are at minute 36 of the sixty minute boil as I type here.

The first job was to split the grains in two to match my daft little kettle, so I emptied the delicious smelling grains into a large plastic box and stirred them well so I didn't get an imbalance of base and special malts between the two brews I am going to make with the kit. The pack contains Weyermann Pale Ale, biscuit, wheat, three crystal malts, but the exact amounts are not specified. Why would they tell? It would undermine the whole idea of people buying a kit because they could buy the stuff themselves for less.

I weighed out exactly half of the grain into my brewing bag and put the balance back into its plastic bag for storage until next time.

So, off we go to mash. Four jug kettles of water (6litres) were boiled and put in my 12l brewing pot on the stove. The temp was a bit high for strike temperature so I added a bit of cold until I hit the magic 75C which once cooled by adding the grain usually comes in at about 67C - the target temperature. Once there I added the grain and when thoroughly stirred, the mash was at 68C. Near enough says Head Brewer here at Bodgeit Brewit &Co.

 

[Tony1951]

While the mash was on, I divided up the hops into the three additions and halved them exactly saving half for the next brew.

The hops listed on the Geterbrewed website are, East Kent Goldings, Fuggles, and Challenger. I can't tell which are which but they supplied 44grams of each for the whole kit. I'm guessing that the Fuggles are the 60 minute hops, the E.K. Goldings the 10 minute hops, and the Challenger is probably the flame out hop.

I stir the mash about every fifteen minutes and measure the temperature. For the first twenty minutes it was 68C, the next twenty 67C the next 65C and at the end the mash temperature was 64C

At the end of the hour, the grains were lifted and I had a very strong wort. Really sweet. Should come in quite a high gravity - we shall see....

Dunk sparged with 5 litres of water at 85C and ended by pouring another litre or so of boiling water over the grains.

This is my mash and boiling arrangement. The ceramic hob is just about at full capacity with this volume of water. I could certainly do with a greater heat input to save time waiting for the boil.

 

[Tony1951]

The boil came to a roll at 107C. This was something surprising on my first AG brew a few weeks back and I thought I had a duff thermometer. That time, with a lower gravity brew it boiled at 104C. It's all about the sugar obviously. The more sugar in the wort the higher the boil temperature.

Fifty minutes into the boil, the ten minute hops were added and half a wirflock tablet. The hops came packaged in nice little tea bags, but as the brew has been split, mine were just free in the wort. Since they are pellets, I can't fish them out at the end as usual. I'm hoping they will just sink into the trub, else I will need to strain through muslin after fermentation.

The boil finished and the Zero minute hops were added and the low tech wort chiller - the kitchen sink - came into use.

Note how the wort changed over five minutes as it began to cool.

Five minutes later it is starting to separate out.

The first AG brew I did a few weeks back, I saw this separation thing and thought there was something wrong. It looked like a weird life form in there. However, it just settles out and becomes trub as the fermentation proceeds. Using wirflock really helps the beer to clear fast. I only began using it on my last brew previous to this one and that beer went into bottles already clear after two weeks in the FV.

This photo below shows the wort at 30C not long before I measured the OG and pitched the yeast. The pot is only uncovered for the purpose of photography.

The Wilco 12l pan will be used as the FV. This worked a treat last time, so I won't change it.

The wort was aerated by pouring it back and forth between the boil pan and a sterilised pan that had been used for storing the first run off. Oxygen in the wort helps good yeast growth after pitching.

The OG came out at 1064 at 22C.
A great kit and a fun brew day. I will update when fermentation starts and later report on the flavour of the brew. The wort tastes nice as it is.

If the brew ferments out to 1010 it will be at 7% ABV before carbonation.

 

[Tony1951]

Had a sneaky taste of this brew today while I was adding some citra for dry hopping. It is day 13 today and the taste of this recipe is fantastic - a real strong hoppy flavour and a very strong brew - albeit that I have rather under liquored it so it could probably do with some dilution.

I think this is going to be a really fine beer and I can already say it is probably the best thing I have made.

I was a bit dubious about leaving it on the trub and boiled hops for so long, but it tastes great, so if we get no accidents, it should be pretty good.

 

[MyQul]

I was a bit dubious about leaving it on the trub and boiled hops for so long, but it tastes great, so if we get no accidents, it should be pretty good.

I always leave my wort on the trub with no negative consequences taste wise. However it makes yeast harvesting difficult (unless you plan on just pitching trub with loads of break material in it, which isn't a problem - done it several times myself), so will be seperating my wort from the trub from now on.

Have a look at this bruphilosophy experiment about whether beer with loads of trub in it has any effect on taste.

http://brulosophy.com/2014/06/02/the-great-trub-exbeeriment-results-are-in/

 

[clibit]

You've dry hopped the proper English IPA with Citra? :-o

 

[Tony1951]

I always leave my wort on the trub with no negative consequences taste wise. However it makes yeast harvesting difficult (unless you plan on just pitching trub with loads of break material in it, which isn't a problem - done it several times myself), so will be seperating my wort from the trub from now on.

Have a look at this bruphilosophy experiment about whether beer with loads of trub in it has any effect on taste.

http://brulosophy.com/2014/06/02/the-great-trub-exbeeriment-results-are-in/

Great site that brulosophy one. An interesting artcile as was the one about Irish Moss. Surprising outcomes in both experiments.

 

[clibit]

You know you're in trouble when you find articles about Irish moss interesting. :thumb:

 

[Tony1951]

You've dry hopped the proper English IPA with Citra? :-o

Yeah - I swear in church too. :evil:

You know you're in trouble when you find articles about Irish moss interesting. :thumb:

All part of the slide into madness.

 

[MyQul]

Great site that brulosophy one. An interesting artcile as was the one about Irish Moss. Surprising outcomes in both experiments.

Yeah, I've read a few of the beer experiment articles, haven't read the irish moss one yet though