Home Brew Beer - Est. 2006

I bottled the Woodforde’s Norflock Nog last Thursday (24 August). 20 pints went in bottles with half a tsp of Young’s Body Brew (Malto Dextrin sugar). The other 20 pints were barreled in the Beer Sphere with approx 1.5 oz of Young’s Body Brew.I think the bottles should have cleared in about a week, while the barrel will take a little longer. The starting gravity (SG) for this brew was 1.032 and the final gravity (FG) was 1.015 which is a little high. This gives an ABV of only about 2.3% but I don’t think the hydrometer is entirely error-free for various reasons. I therefore believe that the ABV is a bit higher, somewhere between 3 and 4%.

This blog is going to be basically a diary of my home brew beer activities. This will hopefully help others, as well as reminding me of mistakes I have made! Check back frequently for updates.

I started homebrewing about 6 weeks ago having obtained some equipment from my uncle. The experience has therefore been relatively inexpensive.

Firstly, I brewed and barrelled a Geordie Yorkshire Bitter kit. This first beer was fermented for 7 days and then transferred to a Hambleton Bard Beer Sphere (a type of pressure barrel). The kit definitely produced beer (as opposed to something undrinkable) but it didn’t have a great deal of flavour or body. The kit has 1.5kg of liquid malt extract to which was added 1 kg of castor sugar. Having done more reading on the subject I now realise that this was not the best idea. I would rate the whole learning experience so far as a partial success, i.e. Positives: beer was the result, Negatives: it wasn’t spectacular.

I currently have a Woodforde’s Norfok Nog - Porter Style liquid malt extract kit fermenting and hope to bottle/barrel it tomorrow. This is an all extract kit (3kg) so i hope that it produces more interesting results. As i wrote previously, check back to see how i get on.