How To Brew A Beer or Cider Kit.
Mixing Up Your Kit: For Beginners
“Good” brewing is done at a much cooler temperature and slower pace than most kit instructions tell you. The hotter you ferment (eg 26-30C), the quicker the brew will finish but you’ll get more of the 'home-brew' taste and smell in the finished drink, think yeast and sulphur, especially when the beer or cider is being drunk too “young”. We want to encourage you to brew at the cooler end of the yeast’s abilities to reduce off taste and bad smells, we’re going to aim for around 20C (or showing 18,20,22C on your stick on thermometer strip).
After draining out your sanitiser solution you are ready to mix the brew up immediately, don’t rinse or dry off the equipment. Open the kit can/pouch. Put aside the yeast (if there are other packs supplied please ask us when and how to add them). Pour the contents of the kit into the fermenter. Then add a small amount of boiling jug water to the can/pouch (eg 1/4 litre) and using your sanitised stirring spoon swish the hot water around to dissolve the last of the extract, add this to the fermenter. Next, add the other brew ingredient you need to balance the alcohol and flavour with the kit. This will generally be a 1kg Dextrose sugar OR 1kg Enhancer Pack OR a Malt extract. If you’re making your Mangrove Jacks Starter Brewery kit then you’ll have a 1.2kg pouch of malt extract, dissolve this the same way as the beer kit with a small amount of boiling water. If making a cider it will be a 1kg Dextrose but there is also a Cider enhancer option.
Next, start adding cold water to this mix, using the can/pouch to pour it in, and start stirring. Continue to top up with cold water and stir, top up and stir. The intention is to reach 23 litres in volume (for a standard brew mix) and have the final temperature around 20C. If you are under this temperature as you’re topping up you can use a bit more boiling jug water. In winter you might use 2-3 litres of boiling water in total but in summer we'd recommend you use only cold water. You'll be able to still dissolve all the ingredients even in cold water.
Make sure you’ve stirred the brew really well to oxygenate nicely for good yeast growth. Open the yeast and sprinkle on the surface of the brew. Seal the fermenter. When sealing the lid down you need to make sure the top is on correctly. Most new brewers over tighten the lid and squash the black o-ring seal too much. Gently tighten it down until the water in the airlock’s chambers remains uneven. When the water remains higher in one chamber than the other the fermenter is considered sealed, if the water remains level in the airlock’s chambers then the fermenter is not sealed 100% correctly.
After adding the yeast the brew will be in an “aerobic” phase where you grow the yeast colony that does the main fermentation. This phase lasts an average of 6-12 hours but this is affected by temperature, oxygenation levels and yeast strain. Sometimes a high gravity brew may need 24 hours for this stage. Once this phase is finished it will start the “anaerobic” phase which is where alcohol and CO2 gas is produced. To make the CO2 gas visible to us we want to make sure the fermenter is correctly sealed up and under “air lock”. If it's not fully sealed and the water is level then you will not “see” the gas bubbles pushing through the water as its released. Don’t panic.! Your airlock isn’t intended to (accurately) tell you when the brew has started and most definitely does not confirm the brew has finished. That’s what we use our hydrometer for.
If you want to see the CO2 gas you need to make sure the fermenter is sealed correctly to allow the gas to only exit the fermenter by passing through the airlock’s water as a bubble. Otherwise the gas is quite happy to escape out from under the lid or around the grommet. The brew is still fermenting and is fine. Leave the fermenter to sit in a coolish place, around 20C to ferment.
Brewing time is quite unpredictable, lower temperature brewing does take longer and different yeast strains and ingredients also affect the time. Expect to leave the brew at least 1-2 weeks if room temperature is moderate, eg around 20C. If the room is quite hot eg over 25C it may ferment out in under a week. In cold winter months it will take a lot longer and you may wish to get a low wattage heat belt to help you maintain 18C. Next we will take out first hydrometer reading.
