Woodfordes Wherry kit

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Hi all,
My very first home brew is bottled and conditioning and will hopefully be ready for Christmas. It’s a Beerworks Presidents American Sierra IPA extract kit. I have a second Beerworks Spire IPA in the FV now with a few days to go before bottling. I’ve got fingers crossed for both these brews!
Moving on to my question. I picked up a Woodfordes Wherry real ale kit from Wilkos this morning having read so many great reports about it on here. I also bought 500g medium spray malt and 11g of Gervin English ale yeast and was wondering what benefits if any I might gain from adding these to this brew. The kit is a two tin with a couple of sachets of yeast, no brewing sugar required. I was also considering brewing it short?
Any suggestions welcome.
Cheers.
 
You can
a) use kits cans and yeasts and brew to 20+ litres
b) add your 500g DME make it up to 23 litres and brew a stronger beer
c) substitute the yeast
d) other variations, many of which appear in here
https://www.thehomebrewforum.co.uk/threads/woodfordes-wherry-review.17784/

In the case of a) and b) you wont know what the original tastes like if you fiddle with it, it may be entirely to your liking. Many folk seem to brew it as it comes out of the box and find it OK.
For c) the Wherry kit used to have problems with only one small packet of yeast but Muntons acknowledged this and you now get two packets which does the job, so there is no real need to substitute it in my view.

If you want to try it out as it comes why not make up one can and one yeast to 11.5litres. That would give you the other can to try out something different. That's what I've done recently with a Wherry kit, and will have two small batches to compare, each with different additions

In the end the choice is yours.
 
You can
a) use kits cans and yeasts and brew to 20+ litres
b) add your 500g DME make it up to 23 litres and brew a stronger beer
c) substitute the yeast
d) other variations, many of which appear in here
https://www.thehomebrewforum.co.uk/threads/woodfordes-wherry-review.17784/

In the case of a) and b) you wont know what the original tastes like if you fiddle with it, it may be entirely to your liking. Many folk seem to brew it as it comes out of the box and find it OK.
For c) the Wherry kit used to have problems with only one small packet of yeast but Muntons acknowledged this and you now get two packets which does the job, so there is no real need to substitute it in my view.

If you want to try it out as it comes why not make up one can and one yeast to 11.5litres. That would give you the other can to try out something different. That's what I've done recently with a Wherry kit, and will have two small batches to compare, each with different additions

In the end the choice is yours.
Thanks terrym, good points. It makes sense to do it by the book having never tasted the beer before. Like the idea of splitting into two smaller brews.
 
I started off my Woodfordes Wherry today. Have done it by the book with an initial SG of 1.043. I’ve put the FV in the brew fridge at 20 degrees C and plan to leave it a couple of weeks before bottling despite the kit saying it will take much less time.
 
You'll not be disappointed with those Beerworks kits. Had the Spire IPA last summer, and it went down a treat at a BBQ we had. The Presidents Sierra is so good that I've done it twice.
I also have a Woodfordes Wherry that I will start at the weekend. I bought it from wilco along with a Woodfordes Sundew. I brewed the Sundew a couple of months ago, added some extra citra hops that I had, and it's turned out OK. Not great, but a decent tasting session ale.
good luck with it.
 
Got my Woodfordes Wherry cold-crashing in the garage at the moment. Starting gravity was 1.042 and after 18 days at 20-22 degrees it is stable at 1.012. So that's around 4% ABV
Going to Barrel/bottle on Friday. I will just be using some soft brown sugar to prime.
hopefully 80g will be enough for 5 gallon
 
I'm drinking another Wherry at the moment that I've tweaked with some Goldings and a bit of extra grain to bump up the ABV.

Think I've come to the conclusion that Wherry is just great on it's own if brewed short to 19/20L and given a good 2 months to condition. I've done loads of tweaks, they've all been OK but just confuse the flavour, unlike Coopers kits which are more of a blank canvas to tweak.
 
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