Rush said:
Ok i was given a kit for my birthday last september ...says it makes 40 pints , cant see it really as the tin is not that big...What next
You do need the fermenter, or you'll never get over the physics problem and on to the brewing. (or maybe you'll figure out how to put 40 pints into that tin and win the Nobel prize, who am I to judge?)
The best idea, if you will be repeating the offence (er, brew) is to get a glass tank. The problem with plastic is that it absorbs all of the flavors of your first brew, and gives them back the next time. It also gives a slight plastic flavor to the beer, unless you rinse it with dilute vinegar 2-3 times, or a very mild perchlorate, then finish with repeated oxygenating rinses with some type of percarbonate sterilization agent.
You will need a air lock (basically a tiny version of a P-trap, like your house plumbing) to keep the random bacteria and yeasts out while allowing the escape of the fermentation's carbon dioxide. Some of you might think, when I say "bacteria" that I mean your house isn't clean.. No, generally that type of bacteria ignores brews. The most common agents that like to sour a batch are lactobacillus (from milk products), vinegar bacteria (acetobacter), or penicillin (green fuzz) variants. You'll get "off" flavors, or, at worst, a ruined batch.
The two key words of fermentation are:
-sterility
-termperature
Of course there are other factors, such as ingredients and darkness, but without those two above, you won't normally have a good result.
When making a beer, there are several steps, or "rests" to be taken in the cooking process, to allow for the breakdown or "conversion" of various components of the grains, as well as the mixing of adjuncts such as rice, and the extraction of complex organics from hops and other fravoring components.
(Remember, yeast eats sugar and poops alcohol, and farts carbon dioxide. If you can read this and still drink beer, then you're a brewer. Read on!)
There are generally two types of starches and proteins to be broken down into convertible sugars. The first to go is maltose (from the "malt" in beer, which is partially roasted barley). At higher temperatures, amylase is converted to sugars and to complex chains of loosely coupled hydrocarbons which add "body" or what's known by brewers as "mouthfeel". Lastly, any proteins available are broken down at high temperatures. They don't contribute to beer, and depending on your ingredients, may not be a factor, but loose unconverted proteins are not positive to fermentation.
If you have a "kit" then the extraction has already been done for you. Chances are you only need to heat water (the kit should tell you how hot) and mix in the malts, let them sit for the prescribed length of time, add some hops, and let cool. Since you don't have a mash tun with a chiller, just let it sit in the fermenter. Once cooled to room temperature, add the yeast (proof dry yeast with 1/2 l of 40 deg C boiled and cooled sugar water until it begins to bubble before adding), seal, and put in a calm dark cool place. Check it every few hours at the beginning to make sure the yeast has properly started (bubbling starts in the liquid) and make sure you have a catch bucket around the bottom of the fermenter since these kits have a tendency to have a lot of available simple sugars and will (at times literally) explode with fermentation once they get started. Let ferment until bubbling stops.
I don't know your kit's exact method of carbonation, so follow directions. It's either a CO2 or nitrogen cartridge and a pressure vessel, or bottles and corn sugar to bottle ferment (Belgian style).
Well, time to get to work. More later.
Cheers
FB
