Woodforde's Nelson's Bitter

On Saturday 3rd June I went down to the local Brew shop to pick up another brew, and picked up another Woodforde's as I liked how the last one went, and I also got a cider brew as wanted to try it having never brewed a cider before, but more on that later.

And like the last one the instructions were very simple and the beer is a little stronger as you only brew 36 pints.

So first as usual I mixed up my cleaning solutions and gave the mixing barrel a good clean then poured the cleaning solution into the fermenter and also gave that a good clean.

While I left the cleaning solution to soak in the fermenter I decided to check the markings on the side of the mixing bucket to make sure they were accurate and it turns out they're not too bad, I measured and marked 23 litres for 40 imperial pints and as this kit only needs 20.5 litres the mark on the mixing barrel was pretty close.

I then mixd up the brew as usual heating the tins to soften the malt, pouring the malt into the bucket and pouring in boiling water, rinse and repeat and then finally topping up with cold water to the desired 20.5 litres.

I then took a hydrometer reading which came out at starting ABV of about 1.042

I then transferred the brew to the fermenter and added the yeast before sealing and placing the brew under the stairs, I connected the spunding valve and gauge then left it at 12:13 pm to do its thing.

At 08:08 am the next morning it looked like this.

Later that day at 14:18 pm I checked the spunding valve and set the pressure to around 10 PSI and just dropped tube from the spunding valve in to a bottle of water instead of connecting up a keg to capture the CO2.

This way I could see when the bubbles stopped the brew was "ready".

The following week the bubbles had almost stopped so took a hydrometer reading then again the next day.

The brew had gone down to around 1.012, around 4% ABV not the 5% if should be, so I left it a little longer and decided to transfer the brew to bottle and keg on the 21st June.

This time I printed my labels the same day I bottled so I didn't need to worry about disturbing the sediment as I attached the labels to the bottles and the keg.

My next brew is the cider.