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Hi Pope, welcome to the forum. If you want kit, sometimes you can pick up a bargain on ebay. I recently got a brand new £50 homebrew online starter kit for a tenner! For instance this one is on for £15: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Homebrew-Bundle-/272186739937?

This might be a bit far for you to collect, but I would say that this is an absolute bargain, and will be perfect to brew up and bottle/barrel your first three brews. You can spend the money you save on kits :thumb:
 
After reading a few similar posts to this I went out and tried my new Youngs twin lever capper on an old bottle (new cap of course!) and it worked easily with hardly any effort. Perhaps I had a lucky bottle? It was on old Sharps Atlantic which appeared to be fairly standard size/shape.

I agree here. I use a wilko (identical to the youngs as I had one of them before the wilko one) capper and find they're pretty good and reliable and last about a year. I'm pretty sure a hobgobbo bottle destroyed the last one - it was never the same after I tried to cap a bottle that had been black wych and had to bin it
 
There's a wealth of knowledge on this forum, and we all remember not knowing where to begin, so you'll find many people will answer the simplest and most basic of questions, no one will tell you to go away and Google!

I never really got away with Kits, and more or less went straight to All Grain, most people stick to kits to begin with.

On the subject of the capper, I would avoid those wilko cantilever cappers, I had one and it was awful. They work well if the bottle neck grip is square, which if you reuse bottles it may not be. I got sick of decapitating bottles and binned it in the end.

You can buy bench cappers for 25 nuggets now and they're infinitely better.

Bah, if only I'd seen this earlier. I ordered the bottle capper from Wilkos as advised earlier before I'd seen your post. Oh well, hopefully it'll not be terrible.
 
Bah, if only I'd seen this earlier. I ordered the bottle capper from Wilkos as advised earlier before I'd seen your post. Oh well, hopefully it'll not be terrible.

I've not had any problems with mine as long as you stay away from Wychwood bottles. For a tenner, it'll do you just fine to get going with. You can 'Re-spec' when you find your feet and decide what elements you want to improve. For me, a bench capper is way down the list of things I want to buy.
 
What others said, they work perfectly on anything other than Wytchwood bottles (and there was one other they won't do, cant remember which). Mines been fine since my student days 10 years ago. It's loose and sloppy, and kills at least one bottle per batch, but i'm loath to spend money on another till it dies properly.

There's always the 'knock on' capers, which involve hitting the top with a hammer, universal, but................
 
What others said, they work perfectly on anything other than Wytchwood bottles (and there was one other they won't do, cant remember which). Mines been fine since my student days 10 years ago. It's loose and sloppy, and kills at least one bottle per batch, but i'm loath to spend money on another till it dies properly.

There's always the 'knock on' capers, which involve hitting the top with a hammer, universal, but................

Oh, that's more reassuring. I've heard of that hammer method before...I can imagine that method destroys a few bottles.
 
Pop to your local home brew shop, you might pay a little more, but you will come away with what you need and a kit to suit your taste! My LHBS also has samples on the counter, the St. Peter's ruby I tried last time was brilliant, next on my list to brew!
 
Pop to your local home brew shop, you might pay a little more, but you will come away with what you need and a kit to suit your taste! My LHBS also has samples on the counter, the St. Peter's ruby I tried last time was brilliant, next on my list to brew!


This....also, they're usually quite friendly and offer some good advice
 
Thanks Covrich, I'll definitely be asking questions.

The first thing I need to find out, is exactly what I need in terms of equipment. I've browsed over a few beginner kits but I don't want to just jump in and buy something, which might turn out to be a waste of time. I've looked at this from Amazon which has got decent reviews:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00XUONH4E/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20

I'll be bottling my beer when I make it, which is preference of taste and convenience of transporting it.

that's a good start - star san instead of vwp would be my only change in that kit.

re: bottles - now's the time to start keeping your brown bottles (if you want to do hoppy beers) google 'lightstruck beer"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beer_bottle

ps. avoid wychwood bottles they are a pain to cap with two lever cappers.

finally, welcome, and happy brewing whatever method you choose to do!
 
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Pop to your local home brew shop, you might pay a little more, but you will come away with what you need and a kit to suit your taste! My LHBS also has samples on the counter, the St. Peter's ruby I tried last time was brilliant, next on my list to brew!

Cheers Saltrock. I went to a brew shop yesterday.

I started my first brew on Saturday afternoon but I couldn't get the right temperature...it was between 16 and 18 degrees Celsius. So I went to a brew shop near Leeds and got myself a Brew Belt, which is definitely doing the job...it's now at 22 degrees.
 
Cheers Saltrock. I went to a brew shop yesterday.

I started my first brew on Saturday afternoon but I couldn't get the right temperature...it was between 16 and 18 degrees Celsius. So I went to a brew shop near Leeds and got myself a Brew Belt, which is definitely doing the job...it's now at 22 degrees.

I wouldn't worry too much even if it was 16 - 18 degrees. Most of the general purpose ale yeasts will still work at those temps. It's only more specialist yeasts that would need to be that bit warmer; like a saison or something.

My airing cupboard flits between 15 and 22 depending on how much the heating has been on.!! At some stage, I'll sort out a brew fridge to be able to maintain a stable temperature.
 
that's a good start - star san instead of vwp would be my only change in that kit.

re: bottles - now's the time to start keeping your brown bottles (if you want to do hoppy beers) google 'lightstruck beer"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beer_bottle

ps. avoid wychwood bottles they are a pain to cap with two lever cappers.

finally, welcome, and happy brewing whatever method you choose to do!

Thanks for the welcome Dad of Jon.

I've already started to collect my bottles, I've got 6 X 275ml San Miguel bottles (emptied the contents down the sink) and about 12 Brewdog bottles.

I want to label my own bottles but I don't really know where to start with that one, nor do I know the associated costs. I've managed to get the San Miguel labels off, but the Brewdog ones don't want to come off at all.
 
Thanks for the welcome Dad of Jon.

I've already started to collect my bottles, I've got 6 X 275ml San Miguel bottles (emptied the contents down the sink) and about 12 Brewdog bottles.

I want to label my own bottles but I don't really know where to start with that one, nor do I know the associated costs. I've managed to get the San Miguel labels off, but the Brewdog ones don't want to come off at all.

yup brewdog labels are hard to remove soak in hot water to persuade them - still quite tricky though. with lableing try .... https://www.beerlabelizer.com/

if you have access to a laser printer stick the labels on with milk - no it doesn't smell (painting the back of them with a pastry brush or similar) or if just an ink jet printer a pritt stick will not wet the ink causing it to run.
 
if you have access to a laser printer stick the labels on with milk - no it doesn't smell (painting the back of them with a pastry brush or similar) or if just an ink jet printer a pritt stick will not wet the ink causing it to run.

+1 for the laser printer, milk stuck labels - I haven't looked back since dad_of_john gave me the heads up about this method a little while ago:-

 
yup brewdog labels are hard to remove soak in hot water to persuade them - still quite tricky though. with lableing try .... https://www.beerlabelizer.com/

if you have access to a laser printer stick the labels on with milk - no it doesn't smell (painting the back of them with a pastry brush or similar) or if just an ink jet printer a pritt stick will not wet the ink causing it to run.

I did a bit of research and found that brewdog labels come off easier when you fill the bottles with boiling water. I tried it last night and it worked a treat.

Cheers for the tip about milk. I managed to find a free website to design my own labels, I just couldn't find someone who would provide self-adhesive labels...
 

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