[McG]

I brewed for years and then stopped when life got busy. It’s still pretty busy but my buddies discovered that I knew how to brew beer and for the last 9 months I have had on average 4 to 8 carboys of beer and cider brewing or more correctly resting in carboys for bottling. I know that many recommend starting from scratch and I really want to get there too but I just don’t have the time.

I use festa kits. They are all in one and tbh pretty difficult to mess up. 23 litres of wort means that you pour it into a sterilized primary and add the provided yeast. We have been experimenting with malt extract both introduced in place of dextrose for priming and added prior to primary fermentation. I’m getting to the point of adding hops etc to see what happens to the flavour.

As a rule, I find the darker beer/ale much more forgiving than lagers to brew. I’ve been using star san exclusively to sterilize. For bottles, I prefer the 1 litres these days. I find bottling to be the hardest part of the process actually.

Festa stout, brown, red, pale, ipa, are probably the top ones for me. I made one cream ale that was ok and another that was great.

I wouldn’t buy complete beer or winemaking kits from a store now. Kijiji has plenty of people selling the gear and then buy the smaller pieces from a local store to top up your equipment.

You will have to learn patience to let the beer sit. You will also need a good area just to leave the yeast to work it’s magic