Stu Bru 2

Stu Bru 2 was a noticeable improvement over Stu Bru 1. It was an Coopers IPA kit with 500g of light DME, 300 grams of dextrose. The addition of the DME has certainly helped the body and even though the Golding hops aren't 100% to my taste, it's still a very pleasant beer.

The head retention was good (if that matters at all). The flavour needs a little bit more personality, I'm hoping to use the Cascade hops to make the next version of this, and I'll up the bitterness too, it was a little tame for my tastebuds.

The alcohol should be quite low but after having just 750ml, I noticed this has a fair bit of kick. So I'll be drinking these slowly.

Here's a few photos from bottling:

Beer and bottles

Building up a sweat capping. Where are my 750ml bottles?

At least now these bottles contain some flavour. What a pain to cap though.

Voila! Putting them in containers in case they over-carbonate...aka explode.

First Brew tasting

I was unsure that the brew was fermenting, as there were no bubbles whenever I checked. Then the bad (read: useless) bottle capper meant that there was such a loose seal that the beer didn't carbonate. This also led to a lack of cleaning of the bottles after the bottling as I didn't want to disturb the delicate seal. This caused mold, so I had to clean and dry the whole batch.

After purchasing a better bottle capper and re-sugaring the bottles (and waiting about 2 weeks) - Tasting time!

So bearing in mind that it was a bare bones homebrew kit (no dry malt extract - DME, hops etc.) it tasted like a slightly carbonated malty cordial with a slight apple aftertaste. I'd give it a 2 out of 10. Alcohol content really isn't a concern for me, it's all about flavour. But I would estimate about 4% due to some unreliable gravity readings.

The lessons learnt from this brew are:

1. Don't skimp on a bottle capper - buy a good one!
2. Dextrose is good but still gives a slightly appley after taste.
3. No DME makes a fairly body-less beer.
4. Thoroughly wash and dry the bottles after bottling and muck on the outside will cause mold.

So now I'm making a Coopers IPA to hopefully bring out some true flavour. I have used DME instead of half the sugar, and after reading up on other people's blogs and tasting the malt extract I decided to hold back on adding any extra hops.

So I'll report back with the results :)

First Brew

I remember Dad preparing a batch of homebrew in the evening then a lazy sunday spent bottling the 20 litres or so of beer. I have always wanted to brew over here in sweden but due to lack of linguistic knowledge, I have never found a place that I could pick up a plastic vat to ferment the beer. Until this afternoon. I went to Malmö and picked up a 25L vat with all the necessary equipment on my way to band practice.

As much fun as it was using it as a drum at practice, I brought it home tonight and using a Cooper's Pale Ale extract and a kilo of dexterous made my first brew. All ready to bottle over the weekend. I'll report back with photos and a flavour report.