does anyone have experience with festa brew

[Scott9002ca]

Hello, Its my first post, and I know this topic is dead, but I thought I'd chime in. Festa Brew is amazing beer (especially the west coast IPA), but you pay for it (with tax I think it was 42$ for a kit of 23L). And you don't have the same customizeability that you do with AG or PM, but you don't really need to, everyone who's tried this beer has loved it (including actual home brew people).

That said I still much prefer doing my own batches, but I keep these kits on hand for when I need to produce a batch of beer and don't have the time.

Cheers!

 

[ESB]

I customize the festa brew kits by adding additional hops (dry hop). I made an excellent english style dry hop pale using their standard pale kit and fuggles hops in the secondary. A good buddy of mine is a pale ale fanatic and travels weekly in the states on business and felt my pale was the best he's had (so much for crappy Canadian beer....)
The Double Oatmeal Stout was very impressive also, another buddy is Irish and was recently in Ireland devouring the freshest stout possible and couldn't believe how good it was, he was overjoyed and felt it was on par with cracking stout from Ireland.
I have also had success with Wheat and Pilsner, although both were a little generic they were still quite good.
The IPA is the best offering, add some cascade into the secondary and you really have something special!

I would avoid red ale, what is red ale anyway...?

 

[ESB]

By the way, I do 1 week primary, 2 weeks secondary then into the keg for mass consumption!!

 

[bigjimmurphy]

first time brewer trying festa pale ale any tips?
the generic instructions are not very helpful

 

[slacker1]

I agree the generic instructions are terrible. However, following the standard 3-4 weeks in fermenter plus 3 weeks to bottle condition works well. I would watch the sugar addition; I use dextrose, because some of these brews produce fountains. Use an online calculator to determine the appropriate amount to add.

You don't say what equipment you are using. Personally, I use a 7 gallon fermenter and swing top (Hacker Pschorr) bottles. An autosiphon and a bottling pail with a bottle filler round out the basic requirements.