Addictive Hobby

[harbinger]

Hi Guys,I'm about 2 months and 4 brews into my brewing career and what great and interesting hobby this is.Not only do you get to get pissed at the end but you also get to learn a lot of new things.

It also helps you become more patient "wanting to bottle/drink" and then saying no not yet!!!!!

So while I'm on my quest for a perfect tasting lager I shall keep reading and learning and of course experimenting...

Its possible I might have made a GEORDIE LAGER KIT taste nice - but i'll keep you updated on this

Here's what I did-

Geordie lager kit
1kg beer enhancer
500g light DME
SAAZ teabag - 15 steeped in hot water and added to wort bag and all
kit yeast + 2 saflager 34/70 starters that i had in fridge and wasnt sure if they'd be any good or not(after 4 days).
Saaz teabag added dry on day 6
And just letting the temprature fluctuate 15-20c cooler at night

Nearly ready for bottling and tasting well nice-of course this might change!!!!!

Will either be nice,great or cack - if its cack i'll sell it to the fools i work with who are happy to pay 3 quid for flat carlsberg!!!

[contadino]

Yeah, I'm about as new to this as you and heartily agree. I promised the wife that we'd never have to buy shonky supermarket beer again. A bold claim with just one FV and an utter ignorance of the subject.

1st brew eventually came good, 2nd eventually because OK-ish, 3rd may well be manky (I think I didn't clean out well enough and got a funny-looking krausen (sp?) after 2 weeks but bottled it anyway so having to wait another couple of weeks to find out), 4th looked and tasted good. Now I have 3 FVs bubbling away and they all seem to be doing what the good folks on here say is normal.

I reckon that having a good stock of beers is the only way to manage the impatience, so I'm brewing like crazy now to try and build up a good 'Drinking' list.

Hope your lager turns out good. I have two 7 year old kits of Mr Malt Lager which I'm going to try brewing when I get some suitable yeast. The thing is, you probably get more satisfaction from making a good beer from a ahem...renowned brand, than you do from a quality kit, no?

[Greatcthulhu]

Glad to hear you're having some success. Building up a good stock is essential if you want to avoid the offie- haven't bought any beer for ages, myself. It also means you can leave some to mature for a few months, which improves the taste no-end, esp stronger beers. I don't make much lager myself- mostly Ale/Stout (if you want to try a cracking stout, check out Ditch's recipe at the top of this forum), but can recommend the Brewferm kits. These are good examples of beers that improve with age- the Belgium Tripple weighs in at a respectable 8% and needs several months in the bottle to come good- ideal Christmas beer if put on now. The best thing I ever did to improve my beer was to use bottled water (£1/5lts from Sainsburys).It really was a revelation after making beer using tap water, but maybe the water here is particularly rich in Chlorines.

[harbinger]

Yeah i've been getting those 6x500ml 97p bottles from tesco perfect for bottling and can use water in brews if timed well and 5l bottles for impending brews