This tutorial on how to brew beer using a kit was originally written by ‘tubby_shaw’ from thehomebrewforum.co.uk. It’s a superb guide on brewing beer at home using a kit, and is best suited for premium high quality beer kits.

Beer Kit Instructions – How to brew beer from a kit

Two can or all malt beer kits are the pinnacle of beer kit brewing, these kits are available in a wide range of beer styles and are the best that can be experienced in home brewing before taking up extract or grain brewing.

This kit is Bardon bitter from Matchless Homebrew.

Brewing beer from a kit

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Hi brewers! I haven’t posted in a while, so I thought it was about time that I put another how-to guide up for all to see!

This guide was written by The Homebrew Forum member, ‘Oblivious’. It’s a superbly simple ‘how to’ guide which tells you how to harvest yeast for brewing.
You can find the original thread here.

How to harvest yeast for brewing

This is my method of yeast harvesting, this was done for my last brew a Saison with WLP550

After racking the beer to the keg pour the remaining liquid, trub and yeast into a sterilized container. I find one around 2 liters to be a good size. Place the full container in the fridge for a few hours.

Harvesting yeast

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We’ve all been there – that horrible moment when we suddenly realised we’ve made a big mistake whilst brewing a batch of beer. Whether it’s remembering, after three days of no fermentation activity, that we forgot to add the yeast on brewday, or realising that we forgot to put the lid on our airlock and that our beer’s been sitting exposed to all kinds of airborne beer-ruining bacteria overnight!

What do we do in these situations? Panic.

“Is it ruined?! What if it’s infected? I must tip it all away down the sink because I messed up and ruined my beer! ”

What should we do in these situations?

RDWHAHB!

RDWHAHB!

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We’ve all seen those fancypants brewing rigs with welded in sighting-tubes for gauging the volume of water or wort in the kettle, but what do you do if you can’t afford a fancy boil kettle, or don’t have the skills to fabricate such an elaborate volume-measuring device?

The answer is a lot simpler than you might think: Use a sanitised metal ruler!

Before you brew, fill your boil kettle up in small increments. Each time you add another litre of water (or whatever your unit of measurement is) – dip the ruler into the boil kettle and take a reading of the measurement. Then when you need to know how much liquid is in your kettle during brewing, simply dip the ruler in and check what volume was recorded at that measurement!

You could also do the same thing but using a wooden spoon – score a line for each litre and a thicker line for every 5 litres to make it easy to read.

Thanks for reading,
- Brewing-tips.com Staff

What is the difference between an Airlock and a blow-off tube?

An airlock is a water-barrier that allows co2 to escape during fermentation, without allowing airborne particles, bacteria or insects to enter the fermentation vessel.

A U-bend Style Airlock

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Gelatin Finings are used to ‘clear’ beer before kegging or bottling. Gelatin is the most powerful organic fining agent available in brewing.

Note: Gelatin is not vegetarian. If you plan to serve your beer to vegetarian friends, do not use Gelatin finings!

Across the Internet on the various brewing forums there is a massive amount of conflicting opinion on the correct way to use gelatin finings. One of the main things that people get wrong, is they boil the gelatin before adding it to the beer. Boiling gelatin will render it useless; do NOT boil the gelatin finings before adding them to the beer! I hope to clear things up here with a definitive method to using gelatin finings to clear a 5 gallon batch of beer. This is a tried and tested method which I have used for many brews with great success.

Gelatin Finings

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What is Dry Hopping?

Dry Hopping is a technique used by brewers to increase the hop aroma in their beer. Usually hops are boiled with the wort to give it bitterness and aroma, however much of the aroma from the hops is lost by boiling them, so dry-hopping adds the aroma that cannot be extracted from the hops during the boil. Many inexperienced home-brewers come across recipes that call for ‘dry hopping’ and do not understand how the process works. Dry hopping is actually a very simple technique which can give your beer greater depth of flavour and aroma with very little work.

Fresh Hops for Dry Hopping - Image from www.onpdx.com

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Diacetyl is a chemical bi-product produced by yeast during fermentation, it gives the beer a strong buttery aroma and taste which is almost always detrimental to the quality of the beer. For this reason, homebrewers try to ensure that their finished beer contains as little diacetyl as possible.

It is important to note that Diacetyl can also be produced by bacterial infection of the wort during fermentation, so the first step in reducing diacetyl levels in your beer is good sanitation.

Diacetyl Molecular Structure

Fortunately, diacetyl is reabsorbed by the yeast during the end of primary fermentation. This can only happen however at regular fermentation temperatures – If you are largering a beer, you will need to raise the temperature of the fermenting beer to room temperature for a few days after primary fermentation; this is called a diacetyl rest. If you are brewing an ale, your beer should be fermenting at the correct temperatures already; to reduce diacetyl levels simply leave the beer in primary fermentation until the buttery taste and aroma has subsided.

For more information about Diacetyl and how to get rid of it, check out these useful links:

http://beerme.com/diacetyl.php

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diacetyl
Thanks for reading,
Brewing Tips Staff.