A few weeks ago I made another brew. The kit I’ve got makes up to 40 pints, there’s loads of recipes you can follow or kits you can buy. I’ve basically got all my stuff from brewuk.com. The instructions from the site go like this:
“Sanitise all equipment and rise before using. Bring 6 litres of water to the boil and Dissolve the 1kg of malt extract and 30g of the hops.
Boil for 40 mins then add the other 2kg of malt extract.Add a further 10g of hops and boil for a further 15 minutes.
Turn off the heat and add a further 10g of the hops and allow to steep for 30 mins. Add 8 litres of water to a the fermenting bin then strain the boiled liquid into the water. Top up the fermenting bin to 21 Litre mark. Ideally pouring the remaining water through the strainer to extract maximum flavour from the hops.
Add the yeast when the liquid has cooled to pitching temperature (15-24C), if in doubt use a thermometer to check the temperature. Take a hydrometer reading and record starting gravity. Place the lid on with airlock. Move to a suitable area in the house and leave until fermentation is complete.
I used bottled water from the supermarket and what I should have done is kept some in the fridge to strain through the remaining hops so the wort was cool enough to add the yeast to. It took me ages to get it down to temperature! I used a boiled muslin to strain the hops through, you can really give it a good squeeze at the end then to get the most out of the hops. Fermentation took about 10 days at about 22°C, I then put 80g of sugar in to the sterilised pressure barrel and syphoned it all in to that.
It only took about 2 weeks to clear up nicely and it’s getting better with age although I don’t see this one lasting very long…………. Cheers!