Hello all,
First time here, so please be gentle with me!
So - my good lady wife bought me a "micro-brewery" kit as a present the
other day, knowing that I like beer (a lot) and i also like tinkering
with stuff (engineering background).
It is a very simple affair - just a big thick plastic 47 pint keg
("King Keg") with a top tap and float arrangement and a screw down lid
that has a combined pressure relief valve and gas charging inlet, plus
a couple of cans of pre-hopped malt extract, some yeast and some
sterilising solution.
Yesterday, I followed the instructions which went as follows:
Clean and sterilise keg
Warm cans of extract to make them nice and runny
Dump extract into keg along with 6 pints of boiling water
Top up with cold tap water
Add yeast
Screw on lid and shake it about a bit
Now I have a keg with 40 pints of "Woodforde's Wherry" (which is a
lovely bitter when I've had it in bottles before) fermenting away
quietly. It says to leave for 2 weeks to finish fermenting, then move
to a cool place for another week to settle. After that, it should be
done - and just in time for my 5 year old's birthday. You then just
dispense the beer directly from the keg - no bottling or anything else.
Anyway - that's all well and good, but the whole process left me kind
of unsatisfied to be honest. There was no boiling, adding of hops
etc......
So my question is, what next? I like the idea of homebrewing, and it
seems it's moved on a lot since I was a lad (and made a disastrous
batch of homebrew in demijohns that exploded).
I've done a bit of reading up this morning, and it seems the next step
would be to use another extract kit, but get one that also allows me to
add my own hops, then the next step from there would be to do the whole
ma****ng process myself? Does that sound about right?
I like the idea of the keg for dispensing the beer from - so is there
any real advantage to bottle conditioning beers? I can go and buy
another keg for my next batch (as I want to do it next week and the
first lot won't be anywhere near ready) Should I plan on a different
vessel for fermenting, then instead of bottling the beer siphon into a
keg for serving - or should I just plan on bottling becuase it's
"better"?
OK - several questions....but I'd like to get started on this hobby
properly and only buy good equipment that will last a lifetime, but do
so as and when I need it.
Presumably I'm going to need a large pan for boiling, a vessel for
fermenting and then something else for storage/secondary fermentation?
Anyway - if any of the experts here could thrwo me a few crumbs of
advise on where to go next, I'd really appreciate it.
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