Youngs Harvest Bitter review

[chub1]

1 can Harvest bitter (brewed short to 18 litres)
Yeast as supplied
500 gm medium spray malt
500 gm beer enhancer(youngs)
16 grm goldings pellets steeped in caffatiere 15 mins
25gm fuggles dry hop, steeped in bag, both bag and liquid added for 5 days
OG 1045
FG 1014
ABV 4.1% after 18 days
racked and -
-Batch primed with 78.5 gm sugar

quite cloudy in the bottles , but steady clearance after 10 days, fair amount of yeast deposit in bottles.

Cracked one open after only 14 days of carbing and cooling( impatient), quite bitter, reasonable small head, decent colour although i did manage to decant some yeast deposit. Think with time this could be quite a reasonable drink.

 

[Simon_C]

My review is for Youngs Definitive Bitter (no sign of a thread of its own, so this seems to be closest!), so perhaps a Moderator might pick this up and give it a home of its own! I think it does deserve its own space...

My first attempt at a one-tin beer kit, and my first attempt to try and be patient to let the beer reach its full potential! Having read quite a lot about the kit, I used 1.2kg of Muntons Beer Enhancer rather than brewing sugar to give it a bit more body, and added a hop tea of Challenger hops to add a few more bitter notes, as I am hoping this might become something of a session beer in the future. After two weeks in the FV, with a stable FV of 1010, this beer came out with an abv of 4.2%, which I am very happy with.

I have a small 16 pint barrel and 24 pints in bottles, which I am hoping to leave almost intact for a back garden beer festival in the late Spring, but I have tried a first bottle, and was pleasantly surprised. I didn't have high expectations, and this is no Wherry in terms of complexity of taste and character, but as a juvenile first taste it was very drinkable, and I have high hopes that it will mature nicely in the coming few months.

 

[old_git]

This was my first ever brew n'all.

Very pleasant, even following instructions with no extra malt, just sugar. Good mild bittering, not much hop aroma. True to the style. Everybody who i gave this to (except my wife) enjoyed it - but then, it's free beer, c'mon.

I am brewing a second batch of this with 1kg light spray malt + 600g mixed sugars and will attempt a hop tea and/or bittering with the priming sugar depending on the fg and taste when bottling day comes. I reckon it can be improved. My only criticism is that it lacked body when brewed as per the instructions. Very dry but needs more density. Hopefully the dme will add this once the yeasts have done their work

 

[old_git]

What a difference a brew makes!

Malt has made this a different beer. I decided to add the hops as fg was around 1.011 (a little sweet for me) so will wait until the bottle conditioning does its trick. First impressions were - wow, this tastes better than the last batch. Although it's not as dry

 

[LarryF]

I've not done their Bitter but I've done their Lager and Harvest Pilsner and liked both of them but they do need spray malt or Brew Enhancer and a hop tea or dry hopping. For what you can pick them up for in the Tesco Sale for and what you can get out of them with a bit of tweaking they're an excellent value for money kit. Saying that, as time went on with their beers, they only ever got better and better, I don't want to sell these kits short, either as a kit or a LME in a partial mash, they're really very good.

 

[old_git]

LarryF, you're quite right. I've just tried a sneaky sample one week in and I'm pleasantly surprised.

On bottling day, I noticed a slightly sweet, cloying flavour. This I attributed to the yeast, which hadn't flocctulated that well compared to the previous brew. This is the first time I tried spray malt. I kept the fermentation identical to the previous batch except the spray malt. I had added 600g of mixed sugar (white and demerara cane) and after the initial burst of krausen, the yeast settled down. It was in the fv for two weeks and still cloudy. I think my temperature control needs rethinking to solve this problem.

Anyway, after a further week bottle conditioning, it is much improved. This is mainly to do with letting the suspended yeast do their thing for a longer time and the addition of hops during boiling of priming sugar.

I had a sneaky suspicion that my beer might underattenuate through fermentation using a larger proportion of malt. This could have been avoided (I think) by controlling draughts and by leaving the wort to ferment longer in the fv. I was not able to reverse the first, nor allow the second due to my error of drilling the airlock hole too wide on my third fermentor (soon to be bottling bucket). This I drilled using a 13mm flat bit instead of 12mm. Never mind. The compromise I made was to add more hops and let the beer ferment out more using a little less priming sugar, boiled with pellet bittering hops. I added these to a hop tea from leaf hops. After the boil and let them steep for 40-50 mins before cooling and adding to a bottling bucket. I then mixed in the contents of the fv and bottled.

The end of the batch ( that I couldn't bottle) I sampled, and it was way too sweet. I hoped the suspended yeast would take care of it, along with time in the bottles and my reduced priming solution coupled with hop additions. My gambit worked. The beer is nearly as dry as the last batch, but with a cleaner aftertaste, despite it still swimming with yeast. I suspect a further week or two will bring the fg down to 1.009 or 1.007 and make this a winner. The addition of the hops has also been noteworthy, as I stuck with ekg in both pellet and leaf and got a very nice complementary flavour. I believe ekg was used in the original hop extract in the tin so using these hops you can't go (much) wrong. It actually needs more carbonation so I may have undershot the mark long term. Here lies my process.

1 x can youngs harvest bitter
1kg light spray malt
450g white sugar
150g demerara sugar

Brought spray malt and sugar to boil, added can of extract and pitched at 20 degrees. Yeast as supplied, straight from packet. This fermented peaking at around 23 degrees the third day before I took action and covered in wet towels. Brough fermentation temperature down to 21 degrees. The fermentation temperature dropped to 19 - 20 degrees for the last week. This is when my yeast stopped floculating. I had to pull it due at 2 weeks to potential for oxidation and infection risk due to lack of air tight seal. Decided best course of action was additional hops through priming.

Priming sugar - 85g for 5 gallon batch

Priming sugar boiled with 33.3g ekg pellets for 45 mins. At flameout, left to cool and transfered to coffee cafetiere filled with 33.3g ekg leaf hops. 45min steep before plunging and leaving to cool in sink filled with cool water. brough temperature down to 26 degrees (I have infrared gizmo! :-)) and then bottle from bucket.

I wanted to give myself a frame of reference for the first test in a week of bottling so I drank some bohemian pilsner (budvar) english ale (st. Peters ipa, timothy taylors landlord) before attempting my own brew. It holds its own, in its own way. While it's certainly none of the above, with the addition of malt, hops and some educated guess work, you can make a can into a beer, and a very good one at that.

Cheers!