Tweaked Geordie Yorkshire Bitter Kit

Posted by: pdtnc on: February 28, 2009

In: Brewing
4 Comments

OK, I’ve gone and done it… these should be pretty different.. One weak and light, and One Dark and bitter!
Its a Geordie Yorkshire Bitter Kit split in two so I can mess around a bit with the brewing process, each of my two Fermentation Vessels

In FV1:

20 Pints of Geordie Yorkshire Bitter
ASDA Smart price Liquor
500g Medium Spray malt
280g Brewing Sugar (just what I had left in a bag)
100g Demerara Sugar
20g Target Hops Steeped for 15mins in cafetiere (Hop Tea)
Kit Yeast used and brought to life for a good couple of hours before pitching
OG: 1040

In FV2:

20 Pints of Geordie Yorkshire Bitter
ASDA Smart price Liquor
500g Light Spray malt
20g Saaz Hops steeped for 15mins in cafetiere
Safale s04 Yeast also working well before pitching
OG: 1032

Are they going to be OK or awful?
They might both be awful, but I’m thinking of these as experiments before I make a mess of any other kits 🙂

**Update**
The Only Drawback here is I shall probably have to prime my bottles rather than priming my Bottling Bucket (which is FV2).
I do have some other buckets but I’d have to buy a drum tap, I’ll probably stick to 1 Bucket brews after this as I think I bent my head a bit trying to remember what volumes of liquor to add…
I mixed the Kit and the liquor in 1 bucket first to less than the stated full 40 Pints, then had 1L dissolved malt/sugar and 1L-ish of Hop Tea.
They both have a nice rocky head this morning 🙂
My rehydrated yeast was pretty impressive as both the Kit Yeast and the Safale04 were trying to escape from their sterile cling-filmed jugs, the S04 was really going for it. Pitched the Yeast at about 24 Deg C.
As the pictures now show, yeast heads and constant 20 Deg C 🙂

**Second Update**
Looks like FV1 is going to have Alcohol Content (ABV): 2.89% and FV2’s Alcohol Content (ABV): 3.94% as they have both settled at around FG: 1010

**Third Update**
Primed with 40g Brewing Sugar and bottled today (07/03/09) 23 Bottles of each and half a 2L coke bottle, all capped and at 20 Deg C for 1 week. I’ve wrote on all the crown caps so I don’t get them mixed up, GYB Saaz & GYB T – Geordie Yorkshire Bitter Saaz + Light Spray Malt & Geordie Yorkshire Bitter Target + Medium Spray Malt + Brewing Sugar + Demerara.
My sneaky little taste of both brews are quite promissing as they both taste better than the Woodfordes Wherry, I’ll be looking forward to these ones. 🙂 The Saaz batch with the Safale s04 Yeast dropped out almost clear whereas the Kit yeast stayed in suspension a bit more.

The two big plastic buckets I got from work streamlined my bottle sanitizing procedure, it still took me over an hour to clean, sanitize and rinse about 50 bottles though (did some extras so i wouldn’t get caught out). I also got a couple of drum taps from the HBS so I fitted 1 bucket with a tap and used it as my bottling bucket.