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Thank you again, Rory. I will do a bit of further research on that technique and give it a try. Meanwhile, it looks like my current brew is functioning normally now. Seems like Wyeast liquid smack pack may be a deal more robust than I thought at first - but takes a while longer to get started...

Hi Rory. Thank you for your input. At the moment, it looks like I have got away with this batch. The airlock is bubbling at a fairly steady 4.5 second intervals, and a thick krausen has formed of about 1 1/2 inches thick with a few brown streaks. Temperature at around 18 to 19 C and all...

Thanks for that, Bob. I pitched the Wyeast at 20 C, then left it overnight at about 19 C before letting it come back up to 20 again. The package recommended rangte says 18 to 22 C. Good idea on the re-hydrating. I was planning to pitch it in dry, leave a half hour and then aerate a bit (as...

I currently have a batch of Coopers Real Ale brewed with Muntons DME and Wyeast 1968 (smack-pack liquid yeast). Due to a hold up in delivery I think my yeast may have got spoiled by exposure to high temperatures (Singapore climate!!) before it reached me. The pack swelled up OK but when I...

At present, all I am doing is rinsing the caps under the tap for a few seconds, and letting them sit in a bowl of sanitiser for a half hour or so while I am washing the actual bottles. One or two of them look a little stained as I have been using them for a while and have but recently...

I am using easily obtainable 1.5 litre Coke bottles for bottling. These PET Bottles cannot be washed in hot water as the material can be damaged, so I use cold or warm water for rinsing. However the bottle caps are of a more normal type of hard plastic, and I would like to give them a...

Well, as they say – “the proof of the pudding is in the eating” – and for sure the proof of the brew is in the drinking thereof! I always bottle a few ½ litre bottles for sneak preview sampling – I guess I know my own patience – and I just cracked one of...

Thanks I'll try that !

Hercher, Actually the Coopers kits do require the addition of fermentable sugars in order to generate the alcohol. The instructions say that you can add a Kg of white sugar - or replace that with other fermentable sugars to taste - or words to that effect. While plain white sugar does work, I...

That is good to know! From what you say, I ought to be OK with around 2 Kg of liquid maltose plus a can of Coopers beer mix for the future? Since getting away from white granulated sugar, the only sugars I add normally are liquid maltose and sometimes some honey. In the latest brew, I just...

That is certainly most informative. From your remark that: Yeast needs glucose in the fermentation during the lag time IIRC, you couldn't make a 100% maltose beer without an impact on the fermentation. I would gather that I have probably been messing up by using just Maltose. In some brews I...

Thanks Kontrol I think my pitching temperature was fairly good on both batches, although I have thrown out that part of the records. The Real ale was at 24 C if memory serves. I recall it took about a day to bring it back down to 21 C afterwards. It sounds more and more like I may have...

Thanks for useful input, Hercher I am not too sure what crystal malt is, so cannot answer to that. The Maltose is in the form of a honey-like thick viscous liquid. The beer kit can has gone out in the trash, but I have one last can (English Bitter) bought at the same time, and it has an...

Thanks for your input, El Caro, and I agree that 1.03 sounds too high – but I think the FG is probably correct. I got a reading of 1.03 after 8 days in the fermenter, and I left it there for a further week, thinking like you, that the reading was too high. However during that week, I got the...

I have been experimenting with liquid maltose in conjunction with Coopers kits. In the first test case I used a Coopers English Bitter kit with 26 litres water plus 1.8 Kg Maltose and Safale S-04 yeast to get a FG of 1.014 and an estimated 4% alcohol which is just about right. I normally...

I have been experimenting with liquid maltose in conjunction with Coopers kits. In the first test case I used a Coopers English Bitter kit with 26 litres water plus 1.8 Kg Maltose and Safale S-04 yeast to get a FG of 1.014 and an estimated 4% alcohol which is just about right. I normally...

Thanks. Recipe was just as per instructions for Cooper's Bitter with the exception that I substituted my 2 KG of LME sample for the sugars, boiled that briefly in 5 litres RO water before cooling down and pitching Safale SO-4 yeast in place of the Coopers supplied yeast. Still the odd bubbles...

I have now tried bottles from this batch. Both the un-tampered and the re-primed bottles are pretty much fine. The beer does have a bit more of a bitter after taste than I would have liked, and I am not sure that the re-primed bottles are not just a little less bitter than the others. I...

In case of interest to anyone following this thread, the brew has been in the fermenter for 12 days now, and is still bubbling away. The bubble frequency as seen at the airlock is now around 52 seconds and seems to be increasing by around 10 to 15 seconds a day. This seems a rather...

Thanks to Siclesr for those helpful and informed answers! The die has been cast! I used the 2 KG of Maltose and gave it a brief boil in 5 litres water before taking off the boil and adding in the beer mix can. Unfortunately I am all out of hops, so had to skip the hop boil that would have...