Wherry with 500g Spraymalt & Hops

[MartyMcFly]

Hey all,

Just set a Wherry away with 500g spraymalt and planning on adding some hops when the fermentation has died down.

I've brewed it to 23 litres, but the extra malt should up the abv slightly.

I was thinking of adding 15-20g of Goldings and maybe 15-20g of Magnum hops after a week or so to dry hop. What are people's thoughts on this?

Cheers!

[GavH]

Personally Iwould not have added the DME. If you wanted tto add ABV, some dextrose would have done that without adding any more maltiness or body. I found Wherry to be the maltiest kit I've made by far and that was'as is', albeit brewed shirt to 21L.

As for hops, if I were to do it again, I'd quite fancy some Cascade or perhaps Galaxy in there, but I'm a bit new to experimenting with hops.

[MartyMcFly]

Cheers Gav, not too worried about the Spraymalt to be honest as I like my beers malty, plus I've brewed it to 23 litres instead of the usual 20, so that should negate the extra.

There's a famous tweak where 250g of Spraymalt is added so I figured the extra wouldn't hurt. Plus I didnt want to leave a half a bag open for a week or so till the next brew.

Looking forward to adding the hops, has anyone else had good experience dry hopping Wherry?

[Monkeybrew]

I think that you will be fine with the extra DME.

Your brew probably would have benefited from a hop tea and a dry hop, but it's too late for that now, and a decent dry hop should be fine.

I've dry hopped a Wherry with Fuggles and East Kent Golding hops on separate occasions, and preferred the EKG brew.

I would personally go for 50g of Goldings and leave out the Magnum, as I thought that it was more of a smooth bittering hop than an aroma one.

Cheers

MB

[CestrIan]

When I started experimenting with kits, I used to use one can of Wherry, 1Kg of spraymalt and 250g sugar. I boiled the spraymalt for 1 hour with 1oz of Amarillo or similar. This matched (ish) the bitterness of a can of Wherry. Then last 5 minutes of the boil I added another 1-2 oz of Cascade or Amarillo or both. I added the tin of Wherry and topped up to 20L with cold water. They turned out great and I got two brews out of one Wherry kit. Word of warning though: this was the first step I took away from following the instructions on the tin which shortly after had me converting the garage in to an all grain brewery.

Also I would use the magnum for bittering and keep the goldings for late additions.

[MartyMcFly]

Sounds good Cestrian - think I'm going to go with the East Kent Goldings. I'll post an update on how it goes.

[MartyMcFly]

Just kegged this, went with about 40-50g of East Kent Goldings and it tastes good out of the FV, the hop pellets were in for abbout 12 days, put in a week after fermentation. They broke up and sank to the bottom of the ferementer nicely. I used the strainer bag that came with a Festival kit over the end of the syphon, it works a treat at keeping bits out the barrel.

Should be a corker in a few weeks!

[dazzla42]

Hi Marty
I had a wherry kit off a neighbour (unused christmas gift), and intended to pimp it up! just waiting to collect medium spraymalt from wilkos (£3.30 at the moment), bought some Safale S-04 and styrian golding hops (30g) to dry hop after primary fermentation has completed, just curious how yours turned out? my LHBS advised not to add dextrose, but use Spraymalt, the different thought processes interest me.

regards...

[Dusty]

I've dry hopped a couple of wherry kits with EKG which were nice,but what I usually do is dry hop it with is 50g of Centennial.

[Harmergeddon]

Hi Marty
I had a wherry kit off a neighbour (unused christmas gift), and intended to pimp it up! just waiting to collect medium spraymalt from wilkos (£3.30 at the moment), bought some Safale S-04 and styrian golding hops (30g) to dry hop after primary fermentation has completed, just curious how yours turned out? my LHBS advised not to add dextrose, but use Spraymalt, the different thought processes interest me.

regards...

My last brew was using one of the wherry cans with 1.5kg medium DME. Steeped some crushed crystal and black malts (200g and 60 respectively) Then boiled up added the dme with flame out then hops were ekg and challenger can't remember exactly how much and when in the boil i added them. Got it written down somewhere.
Then added the one can as per kit instructions to fv and added my wort once it had cooled. Used S-04.
End result is tasty but needed 3 weeks in fv and was best after 6 weeks in bottle. Gave it time to mellow as it was quite bittere after 10 days in bottle.

[MartyMcFly]

HI Daz, mine turned out ok, but probably not as nice as standard Wherry with no additions. It could have just been my batch though as others have had great experiences doing similar.

I've got a feeling a hot spell in the middle of fermentation may have contributed to the not so great results. Yours will be fine, I'm sure!

[dazzla42]

Hi Marty
Fermentation has slowed right down, down to 1.014, but don't want to dry hop til 1.010, just hangin tight. thought the use of the Safale S-04 would have given a slightly more timely fermentation. mind you, the turn in the weather has not helped. i think i have had a two degree drop in temp, so moved my fermenter into a cabinet to hopefully keep the temp more of a constant. when i use the beer thief, you can still see bubbles rising, which i guess is the yeast still actively converting?

i will post results, either way!!!

[Monkeybrew]

Hi Marty
Fermentation has slowed right down, down to 1.014, but don't want to dry hop til 1.010, just hangin tight. thought the use of the Safale S-04 would have given a slightly more timely fermentation. mind you, the turn in the weather has not helped. i think i have had a two degree drop in temp, so moved my fermenter into a cabinet to hopefully keep the temp more of a constant. when i use the beer thief, you can still see bubbles rising, which i guess is the yeast still actively converting?

i will post results, either way!!!

Hi

How much DME did you add to the kit and what was your OG?

Cheers

MB

[dazzla42]

Hi MB
I bought a 500g bag, had a little mishap, and used about 480g. @23lt SG was 1.048, still bubbling last check was sunday, 1.014.

Dazzla

[dazzla42]

Hi
Check OG again three days on, only moved .001, so decided to move to secondary off the trub and add 40g of stryian hops. had a hop bag disaster, so had to leave them loose, and strain later.
will check OG again sunday / monday with the aim of bottling!

Does anyone use this ABV calc:

1.05 (OG-FG/FG/0.79)100?