Sanitising and Bottling

I finally got around to sanitising and bottling at the weekend. Again using the Thin Bleach and Vinegar Method.

I used a dishwasher rack to drain the bottles as before.

Sanitising and Draining the bottles

I had a final gravity reading of close to 1000 giving me the expected alcohol content of 6%.

Final Gravity Reading ~1000

The brew tastes good, if a little dry, and has already been used to successfully baste a roast ham. As can be seen, the cider is quite cloudy due to using cloudy apple juice, this doesn't bother me but could probably be clarified with some finings in future batches.

Finished Product

My growing collection of swing-top bottles proved it's worth. The swing-tops are much easier to remove old labels from and much quicker to close when bottling. The only small problem I had when bottling was that the table I stored the fermenter on was quite low which made it difficult to use the Little Bottler, leave at least 3 feet between the ground and the fermenter tap to make life easy, especially with the longer 750ml lemonade bottles.

All should be ready to drink before Christmas, in the meantime I picked up a couple of bottles of Aspall's Premier Cru and Sheppy's Single Variety to tide me over.

Beginner Home Brew - First Batch of Cider

So after a long break from posting, I'm back for my second brew batch.

Given that it's apple harvest time, I'll be making a turbo cider. This should hopefully be ready to drink for Christmas.

The recipe really couldn't be simpler, ideal for beginners.

Ingredients:

• Lidl Cloudy Apple Juice - 23 Litres @ €1.25 each
• Cider Yeast with Sweetener - €1.05 from MyBeerAndWine

That's it!

My Bountiful Harvest

Simply pour all of the cider into a fermenter, in my case, a 23 litre Cooper's fermenter, pitch the yeast and wait.

The apple juice doesn't foam up nearly as much as a beer wort, so hopefully the yeast will activate quicker than it did with my previous lager brew.

Apple Juice to Cider - Freshly Pitched Yeast

My Starting Gravity reading came out at 1050, which should give me a final alcohol strength of around 6%, I think this is strong enough for a first batch. If the taste is OK I may try to bump this up in future batches.

Starting Gravity Hydrometer Reading of 1050

I sanitised my fermenter using the No-Rinse solution recommended on Beoir.org - Bleach As A No Rinse Sanitiser thread, as per my last bottling day. If you follow this method, make sure to use Thin Bleach, I used Thick Bleach this time and it takes a lot of rinsing to get rid of the smell of bleach.
Solution:

• 23 Litres of Water
• 30ml of Thin Bleach - Frangrance Free
• 30ml of Vinegar

Add the bleach to the water and stir before adding the vinegar to avoid any nasty chemical reactions!

Drinking the Homebrew

So I've been a few bottles every weekend for the last couple of weeks.

Initial bottles were very fizzy but with little to no head-retention. However the first few bottles were taken from the bottom of the fermenter and were heavy on sediment.

The rest of the bottles have been getting better each week.

Last night the brew got it's first official public outing, complete with custom labels!

Homebrew labels courtesy of John O'Connor

The drinks went down a storm at a friend's birthday party and the labels proved particulary impressive.

Labelled bottles with sample pour

The recycled Grolsch bottles really looked the part as well. The picture above doesn't really show the colour of the brew, it's quite a golden-yellow colour, similar to a Heineken or any similar lager, if a little cloudier.

All in all, I was very happy with the Cooper's Home Brew Kit and now that I know how to homebrew, I will definitely continue. Perhaps a cider next time.

Bottled It!

I really bottled it tonight, all 43 bottles!

This weekend I decided to pick up some more swingtop bottles for my first batch of homebrew. I spotted a few bottles of Flensburger Weizen and Pilsner in my local off-licence. They come in a nice 500ml brown bottle complete with swing tops.

The Weizen was delicious, smooth and fruity, almost sweet. The Pilsner was a little too bitter for me, but maybe tasted stronger because I drank it after the Weizen. I won't be rushing out for more of the Pilsner but will definitely pick up more of the Weizen.

Flensburger - Highly Recommended Weizen

Before I could start bottling I had to figure out how to sanitise all my bottles, I went with a no-rinse solution as recommended on Beoir.org. This is well worth mixing up to save time rinsing 40+ bottles, I'm assured it won't leave any taste. I didn't have a bottle draining 'tree' so used the bottom shelf of my dish washer hung above the bath as a drainer.

I only had 7 swingtop bottles so most of my beer went into Cooper's ox-bar plastic bottles, this meant a lot of hand-tightening of plastic screwtops and two massive blisters.

Unfortunately, Cooper's have changed the size of their bottles since making their Beginner Homebrew videos and I ended up bottling with 1 carbonation drop per bottle when I really needed 1.5, I realised this just after bottling. So after reopening and recapping all the bottles my blister is now well and truly shredded. Ouch.

The Inventory - I'm sure it'll all be worth it

Seeing my shelf stacked with 43 bottles of my own home brewed beer was pretty impressive and has me looking forward desperately for my first drink.

The Amber Nectar

Now that my first batch of beer is finished and bottled, I just need to wait for it to condition, then label and drink. That should give me a week to come up with a decent label design for 'Coach Boon's Shamrock Moon'

Brew Progress

So, I got home this weekend and was able to take my second sample of the Cooper's home brew. The hydrometer shows steady progress, with a reading of about 1020, taste is a little bitter but hopefully that'll mellow out over the next few weeks.

I still haven't seen any bubbles in the airlock, so I presumably have a small air leak, but as long as the beer is still fermenting I won't worry about that. I now have the barrel wrapped in a thick blanket, indoors but away from any radiators which seems to give a consistent temperature of around 22 °C.

I hope to bottle my homebrew next weekend if the readings have stabilised.

I picked up a few bottle of Grolsch on Friday night for their lovely swing-top bottles, the beer was quite nice too, even if the after-taste was a little bitter. This was washed down with plenty of Bavaria, best served in plastic pitchers, apparently.

Mickey Rourke Approves (Spotted in Odeon)

Sampling the Home Brew

Well, I was beginning to get worried by the lack of bubbles in the fermenter air-lock.

I've been monitoring the temperature and found it was dropping to around 18°C overnight so I'm now using the brew-belt, keeping it high up the barrell to avoid over-heating during the day. The Cooper's lager kit recommends a fermenting temperature between 21°C and 27°C.

It's been three days now and not a single bubble in my homebrew.

Since the fermenter has a bottom-tap I was able to take a sample without risking infection.

The liquid is now a lot cloudier than it was when I first sampled it, it also smells and tastes like beer. The hydrometer indicated a gravity of around 1037-1039. Although it was hard to get an accurate reading due to the amount of head in the sampling tube.

I'm now happy to call it beer! Looks like it's started well, now I just have to sit back and wait another 2 weeks or so for my first batch of home brew..

As for the question of "how to keep the homebrew at the correct temperature?" Unfortunately I'll only be able to check on the brew at weekends so will have to rely on my family to monitor the temperature during the week, I'm thinking the simplest thing to do would be to keep the brew-belt on and wrap the fermenter in a blanket at night.

Using a Hydrometer is the best way to measure fermentation activity

Getting Started - First Brew Day

Today I set about learning how to home brew using a beginner homebrew kit from Cooper's.

This blog will record my experiences of this brew and hopefully, many more brews to come.

The ingredients: Cooper's Lager Concentrate, Lidl Spring Water and Cooper's Brew Enhancer No. 1

I picked up 24 Litres of Spring Water in Lidl @ 49c for 2 Litres. I had hoped to find a couple of large drums of water to reuse as a secondary fermenter but had to settle for the 2 Litre bottles, this batch will have to go straight to bottle from the fermenter.

Adding the yeast to the wort, probably the most important step in any homebrew.

The wort was a lot more frothy than I had expected, I hope this isn't a bad sign.

Finshed mix, in the Cooper's fermenter

For now, I'm keeping the fermenter indoors, I have a brew belt so I could move it out to the shed if it gets smelly.

Starting Gravity reading

I recorded a starting gravity of 1040, which should hopefully give a final ABV of around 5%.

And now the waiting game.....