[Review] Get'er Brewed Porter Extract Kit

[itsclinto]

I'm not rubbing it in or anything but I have been given the responsibility of giving a review to the Get'er Brewed Extract Porter kit (http://geterbrewed.ie/porter-extract-brewing-kit.html) because I won the raffle    Thanks again.

Firstly, Get'er Brewed had packed the contents nicely with the few other things I bought.  The kit came with the following:
•   2 cans of Muntons Maris Otter Light extract (Best Before June 2016)
•   2 sealed hop bags for 10 and 60 minutes additions
•   A bag of various crushed steeping grains (1kg Weyermann Grains, according to the instructions)
•   1 whirfloc tab
•   1 muslin bag
•   1 sachet of Gervin yeast - GV12 Ale yeast (Best Before March 2016)
•   A page with instructions


I brewed this kit on the 14th January and tried to keep to the instructions as best I could.  They said that the kit is based on a 26 litre boil with 23 litres afterwards.  I had to use my own initiative as the instructions didn't explain the amount of water in which I had to steep the speciality grains.  I put the grains in the muslin bag provided, into 5 litres of water at 71 degrees and a half hour later I had my wort.  The temperature varied between 71 degrees (strike temperature) and 65 degrees over the 30 minutes.




I added the wort, two cans of extract and water to the boiler and brought to the boil.  I made the mistake here in not having indications of the water levels in my boiler so I believe that I entered less than the 26 litres on the instructions.   Even so, I brought the wort to the boil and added my first hops at 60 minutes.  I was surprised that the sealed hop bag actually had two tea hop bags of pellets – one 19 gram and one of 18 grams.  There was no indication of what hops these were although the website says fuggles.



I put my wort chiller in the boil with 15 minutes left to go.


The next and last addition was at 10 minutes, so I added the hop tea bag and the whirlfoc tablet to the boil.


At the end of the hour boil, the elements were turned off and the tap was turned on to chill the wort to 20 degrees as per the instructions.  I overshot the 20 degrees and got the wort down to 18.4 degrees.  The cold night helped with getting the wort cooled quickly.  I made a mistake here by whirl pooling the wort against the chiller direction with my plastic paddle, forgetting about the hop teabags.  These disintegrated into nothing with my stupidity and the pellets were left to roam the wort.


I transferred 19.5 litres to my fermenter and took a gravity reading.  The instructions recommended an opening gravity of between 1.040 and 1.052.  I got an opening gravity of 1.042 which although is on the lower end.  I pitched the yeast and put the fermenter aside under a blanket and duvet.




The yeast took a bit to get going but fermented away nicely over two and a half weeks.  My final gravity ended up at 1.014, with the recommended range of between 1.008 to 1.014.  I bottled on the 2nd February (19 days later) and I batch primed with 105 grams of glucose.  I squeezed 41 bottles from the 19.5 litres I had.  I got the hop pellets out with a newly made hop stopper out of an Ikea splash guard rolled up, when batch priming.


I have to say this is a lovely porter that was easy to drink.  This came out at 3.7% and is a lovely dark brown colour, with a light chocolate and caramel taste, and subtle hops.  It went down a treat at the Louth Brewers meeting. 



The kit is well worth the value, especially with the ingredients included.  The only problems I had with the kit were that the instructions could be better.  There were vague areas that only for I knew from doing a kit before, I was able to get through the process.  Things like the initial water amount for steeping grains, length of the boil, when is the right time to bottle and carbonation of the beer.  If the instructions were better or maybe a video on the website that people can refer to, this kit would be suitable for the homebrewer who wanted to upgrade to extract kits.

Overall though, I'd recommend this kit.

[banjobrew]

At £16.74 / €19.94 the kit looks great. I assume (hopefully geterbrewed will correct me) that you would just steep in the 26L. I do partial boil myself because my hob can't create a rolling boil at over 15L so I steep in 8L.

How did the instructions compare to say northernbrewer.com?

http://www.northernbrewer.com/documentation/beerkits/DryIrishStout.pdf

[itsclinto]

I'm sure you could steep in the 26 litres if you wanted.  I steeped in 5 litres myself before adding the additional water and malt extract for the boil.

The instructions would be very basic in comparison to the northern brewer one.  They explain about the ingredients, sit (sterilisation, information and temperature) and there are seven points which describe the process.  For example, they talk about making a starter for the yeast but don't explain how to do it, which wouldn't be great for somebody's first extract kit.

[molc]

Also a starter isn't recommended for dry yeast which threw me a bit as well.

[banjobrew]

Also a starter isn't recommended for dry yeast which threw me a bit as well.

What about rehydration?

[molc]

Also a starter isn't recommended for dry yeast which threw me a bit as well.

What about rehydration?

Yeah, I rehydrate in about 10x it's weight in water @~27C for about 30 minutes.

[itsclinto]

Also a starter isn't recommended for dry yeast which threw me a bit as well.

Ye its surprising because on the packet it says: Sprinkle onto the surface of the prepared 'beer' wort (no need to stir).  I took this from muntons website:

In saying that, it took a while to get bubbling (about 3 days as far as i can remember) when normally it'd be a day or so for any yeast to show signs of fermenting.  I'm guessing the starter is to get things up and running early.

[Will_D]

The reason I reckon this advice is given:

"Sprinkle/do not stir is that at the surface the yeast as it re-hydrates has access to massive amounts of oxygen from the air above it."

Stir it into the wort and there goes 99.9% of free oxygen!

[banjobrew]

In saying that, it took a while to get bubbling (about 3 days as far as i can remember) when normally it'd be a day or so for any yeast to show signs of fermenting.  I'm guessing the starter is to get things up and running early.

I've used GV12 before and it took a couple of days. S-04 took off in a few hours.

[irish_goat]

Never had any hassle with GV12 myself. It's a bargain price too.

[molc]

Ditto. GV12 took off in about 12 hours for me, even though I stirred it into the starter.

[@geterbrewed]

Thanks for the great review, we have realised that our instructions need some attention and we will improve them, these review help us to see what needs improved and we genuinely appreciate you guys taking the time to provide feedback, we are launching a new website very soon and when it is complete we'll focus on improving the instructions