Home Brewing Blog

A hydrometer is a useful tool in the hands of a brewer and allows you to obtain the gravity levels (density) between pure water and water with sugar dissolved in it by flotation and you also determine the alcohol percentage at the end of fermentation.

During the brewing process yeast is added to malt and some other fermentable ingredients and during fermentation the yeast organisms eat the malts and sugars and produce ethanol...

The quality of your homebrew can be dramatically improved by making a yeast starter. Home brewers often toss a packet or vial of yeast into their beer without much thought to the quantity needed.

Though modern liquid brewer’s yeast smack packs and vials are a huge improvement over older dry yeast packs, these packages do not contain enough yeast cells for optimal pitching. Underpitching results in slower startup, higher risk of infection, off flavors and sometimes incomplete fermentation. How Much Yeast is Enough?

Mini mashing is not difficult. Essentially you are heating water to a set temperature, adding grains and maintaining that water temperature for up to 1 hour. Grains have enzymes on their husk which activate at temperatures between 60°C - 72°C. These enzymes love eating up starch. Grain is 80% starch and these enzymes turn starch into sugars (malt). This Mini Mash method is called a Thin Mash as opposed to a Thick Mash which requires the grains to be sparged (washed). Most of the sugar dissolves into our hot water and do not require sparging. With our Mini Mash we are not using the grains to provide the bulk of the malt but rather to add flavour, body, sweetness and particular characteristics applicable to selected grain; your Kit and brewing sugar do the rest.

Draft problems are usually very simple and easily fixed when you understand the facts. The advice below will give you most of the information you need to solve most of your draft issues.

Different beers will like to sit at different pressure. All beers like to sit in static state under a certain "Target" pressure. Each beer will have a slightly different carbonation level and therefore a slightly different "Target" pressure. Generally speaking most beers like to sit in the keg at between 0.8bar (12psi) to 1.0bar (14psi) at 4 degrees C. The issue is that at this pressure, you flow speed might be too fast or too slow. That is why you need to increase or decrease your beer line length and diameter so you can maintain the correct pouring

Clearing Your Beer:

Clearing your beer will keep sediment out of your lines and keg. It also gives you a professional looking and tasting brew. Brew beer as normal. After fermentation is completed, add one sachet of beer finings and 3 teaspoons of white sugar to 250-300ml of boiling water. Add this to the top of the brew and stir gently over the surface. Leave for a minimum of 3 days to clear. For even better results, siphon the beer into a second fermenter prior to adding finings. This leaves the majority of the finings in the first fermenter.

Cleaning and Sterilising:

Just treat your bottle like one big bottle-rinse out with fresh water and rinse out with pink detergent. Pour some pink detergent down the stem. (Avoid using sodium metabisulphite to...