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

The kit contains two cans of hopped malt extract, comprehensive instructions and a sachet of yeast.

Brewing Beer kits

Recommended equipment is two 30l fermentation buckets with lids and taps, your choice of sanitising solution, a kettle, thermometer, hydrometer and trial jar and campden tablets or campden powder.
The first stage of the process is to clean and sanitise the fermentation buckets.
My recommendation before doing anything further is to dechlorinate your brewing water. Using 1/2 a crushed campden tablet or the equivalent of campden powder stirred into 25L of tap water will immediately remove all chlorine and chloramines which can give your finished beer a chemical or medicine taste.
Adding the campden powder to the tap water

Adding Campden to brewing water

Take the water required to be heated from the treated water and boil it in your kettle.

Making beer from a kit

Standing the two cans in hot water for 5 minutes prior to opening will soften the contents and make them easier to work with. Make sure to use a clean can opener.

Cans of hopped malt extract

Empty the can contents into the fermenting vessel.

Pouring malt extract

Use some of the boiled treated water to rinse out all of the can contents.

Get the malt extract out of the can

Empty the dissolved contents of the cans into the fermenting vessel.
Warning the can will be very hot, use oven gloves or similar to protect your hands!
Stir to dissolve the bulk of the malt extract in the hot water added from the can.

Stir to disolve the Malt Extract

Using the tap on the bucket containing your treated water, drop your treated water into the dissolved kit contents. This will ensure thorough mixing and also aerate your wort to give the yeast the best possible start.

brewing with a beer kit

Check that the temperature of your wort is between 20 and 28 Celsius.

The right temperature for fermentation

If the temperature is correct add the yeast.

Adding yeast to a beer kit

Take a gravity reading. In this case 1.040. If you plan to return the sample to the fermenter make sure that the hydrometer and trial jar were sanitised.

Taking a hydrometer reading

22.5 Litres of Bardon bitter waiting for the yeasties to do their thing.

Yeast pitched

18 hours later at 20C and the yeast crop is beginning to form nicely

Yeast krausen appears

28 hours in and the yeast head looks like this.

Full yeast head

7 days later and fermentation is finished
This is how it looks after a week, after another 3 days, it’ll clear down considerably and be ready for kegging.

Fermentation complete

OK so it’s been 8 days, gravity is 1.012, but now it’s time to keg.
I will be using a plastic home brew keg for this how to.
The keg was cleaned with Oxyclean, then sanitised with a solution of cheap, thin, unscented bleach. Then rinsed well with cold tap water and finally swilled out with a kettle of boiling water. (Be careful)
50g of sugar (I used demerera, but use what you prefer) was weighed out.

Sugar for carbonating beer

The sugar was added to the keg.
Using a length of hose from the tap on the fermenter, the beer was run into the keg which mixed in the sugar.

Racking beer to keg

Once all the beer was in the keg a burst of gas from an S30 cylinder was added.

S30 co2 cylinder

After 5 minutes to allow the CO2 to settle, the lid was cracked to vent the air in the keg and leave a protective blanket of CO2.
This keg has a mechanical pressure relief valve, a further squirt of gas and the indicator can be seen to be OK (Green showing)

Kit beer brewing

40 Pints of Bardon bitter conditioning.

Beer conditioning

Give it a couple of weeks before checking for clarity.

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!

Or in laymans terms: Relax, Don’t Worry, Have A Home-Brew!

There’s very little you can do to completely ruin a batch of beer. I once heard a veteran brewer give a panicking newbie the sound advice, “Unless you actually defacated into the fermentation vessel, your beer is going to be just fine.”

Whatever you do, do NOT dump a batch of beer. See how it turns out, and if it’s undrinkable after the full brewing process (after 3 weeks in the bottle!) you are then still not permitted to dump the batch. Beer gets better in time, and the yeast know what they’re doing. Besides, even if you do have an infected batch, it won’t do you any harm! No pathogens can survive in beer, due to the PH level. Even if your beer tastes like a small animal died in it, all it will do is give you an ‘icky tummy’.

So before you tip away that beer you ‘ruined’, give the yeast a chance to do their thing and clean up after your mistakes!

RDWHAHB!
- Brewingtips.com Staff

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

A blow-off tube replaces the airlock in a fermentation vessel. One end attaches to the top of the fermentation vessel and the other end is submersed in a container full of water.

A Blow-off Tube

Which one should I use?

For most brews, an airlock is fine. The advantage of an airlock is that it is relatively small compared to the blow-off tube, and is much easier to maintain. The problem with airlocks is that a very aggressive fermentation can clog the airlock with Krausen, causing a build up of pressure in the fermentation vessel. When that pressure gets too much, either the airlock or the lid of the fermentation vessel will pop off with great force, causing a big mess. A blow-off tube is much less likely to clog up than an airlock.

A Clogged Airlock

If you are brewing a beer using a top-fermenting yeast (most wheat-beers are brewed using this type of yeast), then you should always use a blow-off tube. This is because top-fermenting yeast produce a much higher, thicker krausen than regular ale yeasts and are much more likely to cause problems when using an airlock.

How to make a blow-off tube.

1. Attach a piece of sanitised tubing to the opening of your demijohn (or lid of your fermentation bucket) using a sanitised stopper with a hole in it.
2. Half-fill a small container such as a measuring jug or pint glass with water, and place the other end of the tube inside, below the level of the water. You do NOT need to use bleach or sanitising solution for this!

For an in-depth tutorial on how to build a blow-off tube, check out this article at examiner.com.

Thanks for reading,
Brewing-tips.com Staff

Thanks to www.rooftopbrew.net for this fantastic ABV Calculator.
- Brewing-tips.com

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

How To Use Gelatin Finings

1. Ferment your beer as usual. If you have dry hopped the beer with loose hops, rack the beer from under the hops into a sanitised fermentation vessel in order to remove any hop matter.

2. Boil a kettle.

3. Weigh out 1.5 grams of Gelatin for every 5 Gallons of beer.

4. Pour the hot boiled water into a heatproof measuring jug or other heatproof bowl. Add the gelatin powder and stir until dissolved.

5. Cover and cool until it reaches close to the same temperature as the beer.

6. Add to the beer, stirring SLOWLY so as not to introduce oxygen to the beer.

7. Leave for 5 days or until clear.

8. Rack to bottling bucket or keg as usual, being careful not to suck up the layer of yeast sediment.

I hope this helps you get a clearer beer.
Thanks for reading,
Brewing-tips.com staff.

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

How do you ‘dry hop’ a beer?

To dry hop your beer, simply add the amount of hops specified in your recipe at the beginning of secondary fermentation.
1. Ferment the beer as usual until it has finished primary fermentation (take a hydrometer reading and ensure that the beer has reached its final gravity).
2. Using a racking cane and auto-syphon, transfer the beer to an empty, sanitised fermentation vessel being careful not to suck up any of the yeast sediment at the bottom of the beer.
3. Add your hops to the beer – either just chuck them in loose, or put them in a hop sock or muslin bag.
4. Leave for at least 3 days.
5. Using a racking cane and auto-syphon, transfer the beer to a sanitised fermentation vessel before bottling or kegging. Try not to suck up any of the hops during this step, as they will be present in the final beer if you do!

Do you have to boil the hops first?

No. Hops are a natural preservative and do not need to be boiled before being added to the fermenting beer. If you are using a hop sock or muslin bag, you may want to boil that to sanitise it first.

Which hops should you use for dry hopping?

Dry hopping does not add bitterness to the beer, but it does add the aromatic oils that are lost when the hops are boiled. Therefore the best hops for dry hopping are aroma hops with low Alpha Acid content. All of the noble hop varieties including Saaz, Hallertauer, Goldings, Fuggles, and Cascade are great for dry-hopping.

Thanks for Reading,
Brewing-Tips.com Staff

Here’s a quick guide to some of the most popular speciality grains.

Amber Malt

Amber Malt

Amber malt is a lightly roasted chocolate malt. It gives the beer a strong biscuity taste with a coffee and chocolate aroma. Amber malt is often used in English browns, milds and old ales. This malt should only make up 20% or less of the mash when used in an All-grain brew.
Colour: 43 EBC

Potential Gravity: 1.035 SG

Black Malt

Black Malt

Black Malt gives the beer a very dark colour, and a dry roasted flavour. Black Malt is commonly used in Porter and Stout style beers. When used in Porters and Stouts, Black Malt is used for flavour as well as colour. When used in lighter beers Black Malt is used mainly for colour.

Colour: 980 EBC
Potential Gravity: 1.025 SG

Caramalt

Caramalt

Caramalt is a very light crystal malt. It has a strong caramel flavour and is sweeter than regular crystal malt. Caramalt is often used to aid head retention and add flavour. We recommend using caramalt as no more than 10% of the grist.

Colour: 20 EBC

Potential Gravity: 1.035 SG

Chocolate Malt

Chocolate Malt

Chocolate Malt is a very dark roasted malt. It is used primarily in Brown Ales, Porters, and some stouts to impart a deep red/brown colour and dark-chocolate flavour.
Colour: 20 EBC

Potential Gravity: 1.035 SG

Crystal Malt

Crystal Malt

Crystal Malt gives beer a golden amber colour. It is used in many different beer styles and gives beer a toffee and caramel flavour. Crystal malt also gives the beer more body, and improves head retention.
Colour: 120 EBC (Available in different levels of colour)

Potential Gravity: 1.033 – 1.036SG

Crystal Wheat Malt

Crystal Wheat Malt

Crystal Wheat Malt is a wheat malt with a deeper colour and stronger aroma. It is often used in darker wheat beer styles such as Dunkelweizens. Also known as Carawheat.
Colour: 125 EBC

Potential Gravity: 1.035 SG

Flaked Barley

Flaked Barley

Flaked Barley is used to add body to the beer and aid head retention. It is more commonly used in darker beers, due to the fact that its high protein content causes haze which is undesirable in lighter coloured beers.
Colour: 3 EBC

Potential Gravity: 1.032 SG

Flaked Maize

Flaked Maize

Flaked Maize is used to raise the specific gravity without adding body to the beer. It produces a better, less harsh taste than simply adding sugar. It is often seen in recipes for Best Bitters and is used to make the beer lighter and more summery.
Colour: 3 EBC

Potential Gravity: 1.035 SG

Roasted Barley

Roasted Barley

Roasted Barley gives the beer a burnt bitter coffee taste and very dark red to brown colour. It should only be used in small amounts of 10% or less of the total grain bill.
Colour: 1300 EBC

Potential Gravity: 1.025 SG




These are just a few of the many speciality grains used in brewing. Thanks to Barley Bottom Homebrew Supplies for supplying pictures of the different grains. We highly recommend their online store for homebrew ingredients in the UK. www.barleybottom.com.

If you have any questions about this article, or wish to point out any mistakes we have made, please post a comment or email us at info@brewing-tips.com and I will get back to you as soon as possible.

Cheers,
Brewing-Tips Staff

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.