Festival Landlords Finest Bitter

[cwrw gwent]

I've just started Landlords Finest Bitter, a Festival Premium Ale kit made by Ritchies. I understand this is based on Tim Taylor's Landlord and it's in the top range of home brew kits. As far as I can remember, the kit cost about £26 and I'm looking forward to sampling the finished product in October.
The kit arrived with two 1.5kg plastic pouches of malt extract, 10 grams of yeast, 50 grams of hop pellets to be added after five days of fermentation and 100 grams of priming sugar. The hop additions are Celeia and Admiral. Unfortunately, the plastic pouches are difficult to handle compared with cans which are easy to rinse out with warm water, but other than that the process was fairly routine. I bottle my beers so I won't bother with the priming sugar as it appears to be dextrose which I imagine will get clogged in the funnel. Instead, I'll use bog standard Tate & Lyle for priming and save the dextrose next time I brew a kit which involves a sugar/spray malt addition.

The tasting notes are very informative.
SEE- Dark gold with white head.
AROMA - Rich hop aroma with fruit-like undertones.
TASTE - Classic pale ale, biscuit malt tones layered with subtle fruit character and earthly undertones. A real session ale.
ABV - expected to be c. 4.3%

I'll post a review in five or six weeks.

[bitter_dave]

Look forward to reading your review. It gets a good write up in Andy Hamilton's book 'The Perfect Pint'.

I agree with you the funnel method for priming bottles is the best.

[cwrw gwent]

Sounds an interesting read. Tempted to buy it:
https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-pe ... 1787631137

[IPA]

Out of interest I have just looked at the price of the MM Landlord clone. Also £26.
That seems an incredible price for 25 litres of beer. The biggest chunk is obviously the yeast.
I have been using White labs 037 west Yorkshire strain that I bought 10 years ago. I have three samples in my yeast collection 2013, 2015 and 2017 and alternate their use.

[bitter_dave]

Sounds an interesting read. Tempted to buy it:
https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-pe ... 1787631137

It's a nice book to dip into, but there are plenty of second hand copies knocking about so don't spend more than a few quid. It doesn't have huge amount about beer kits, but then the range of kits is always changing anyway. It recommends the Festival Landlord kit as the best kit in it's style, IIRR.

[MarkA]

It gets a good write up in Andy Hamilton's book 'The Perfect Pint'.

Thanks for the heads up, just ordered a copy for £4.39 delivered, not bad for a hardback! I've got two of Andy's other books (Brewing Britain and Booze For Free) both of which are also good reads.

[bitter_dave]

It gets a good write up in Andy Hamilton's book 'The Perfect Pint'.

Thanks for the heads up, just ordered a copy for £4.39 delivered, not bad for a hardback! I've got two of Andy's other books (Brewing Britain and Booze For Free) both of which are also good reads.

Erm, just to let you know, 'The Perfect Pint' is a 'revised and updated' version of 'Brewing Britain' so some of it might look familiar!

[MarkA]

It gets a good write up in Andy Hamilton's book 'The Perfect Pint'.

Thanks for the heads up, just ordered a copy for £4.39 delivered, not bad for a hardback! I've got two of Andy's other books (Brewing Britain and Booze For Free) both of which are also good reads.

Erm, just to let you know, 'The Perfect Pint' is a 'revised and updated' version of 'Brewing Britain' so some of it might look familiar!

Oh well, keep a look out as there might be a hardback going cheap on ebay soon!

[cwrw gwent]

DAY FIVE:
As per instructions I've added the extra hops.
Ritchies recommend ten days fermentation before checking the final gravity - which for this kit is set for 1.009.
Interestingly, the instructions say, "Ensure fermenter is kept at a constant warm temperature between 20-25C throughout fermentation". This is three or so degrees higher than I would normally brew bitter and I struggle to achieve such a temperature without a brew belt or turning on the heating (certainly not in August!). I'm happy with the current temperature which is a constant 18.6C even if it means the wort stays in the bin for an extra day or two.

[bitter_dave]

DAY FIVE:
As per instructions I've added the extra hops.
Ritchies recommend ten days fermentation before checking the final gravity - which for this kit is set for 1.009.
Interestingly, the instructions say, "Ensure fermenter is kept at a constant warm temperature between 20-25C throughout fermentation". This is three or so degrees higher than I would normally brew bitter and I struggle to achieve such a temperature without a brew belt or turning on the heating (certainly not in August!). I'm happy with the current temperature which is a constant 18.6C even if it means the wort stays in the bin for an extra day or two.

25 c for a bitter seems like crazy talk to me! What you are doing sounds far more sensible.

[cwrw gwent]

Bottled yesterday (5th September) after 12 days in the bin and it looks and smells glorious. I managed to get virtually every drop into bottles though the last one was extra cloudy and contains a fair proportion of tub.
Patience is required now as the instructions recommend 14 days of secondary as 20C to 25C (shouldn't be a problem in this heatwave - current temperature in my fermenting cupboard is 22.3C) followed by three weeks in a cooler environment. Hopefully, it will be much more autumnal by 19th September when the beer is moved to my garage.
I'm likely to have a sneak preview by the end of the month (for quality control purposes) but will keep most of the beer for consumption in November/December.

[cwrw gwent]

Nearly two months after bottling the beer has turned out fine. I was a bit apprehensive at first as it tasted somewhat harsh but the hoppy nature has mellowed and the body is good as is the head. Because it's very hoppy I wouldn't mistake this for Timothy Taylor's Landlord Bitter, which it is supposed to be based on.
If I make this again, I may water it down slightly as the best pint was the last of the bin I eked out - it was full of trub and failed to reach the shoulder of the bottle so I topped it up with two inches of water. It was less hoppy and more like a session ale.

[bitter_dave]

Thanks for the update. They seem to give a lot of dry hops with some of these kits. Sometimes less is more, but I get that this is a rather unfashionable view these days! I did a Woodfordes Bure Gold a while ago and the relatively small pack of hops made a nice impression (although this faded quite quickly). Anyway, I digress.. thanks for the taking the time to update. It doesn't sound like this is the beer for me!