Just started my second brew. Craft Range Ice Cool Apple Cider

[Drzava]

First rule of homebrew - bin the instructions! I have a friend brewing a few months now who still insists on following instructions despite my protestations - has resulted in beers not as good as they could have been as he ends up adding dry hops before fermentation ends because the instructions say to do it on Day X.

There's no need for instructions really for the majority of kits. Most of them can be distilled to the following:

Most beers: Start at 18 - 20C; aim to keep at ~20 if you have temp control. Leave a week before taking readings, and leave 48hrs between them. Bottle when 2/3 readings the same - generally about 2 weeks. If adding dry hops or hop teabag, wait for two readings to be the same before adding. Leave them 2 - 3 days.

Weissbier: Start at 23/24C and aim to keep ~23 if possible. Bottle as above (probably a bit quicker than most beers to finish). Carbonate the shit out of it.

Cider: Essentially as 'most beers' above. Bottle when it has substantially dropped clear - probably min 2 weeks.

[molc]

he ends up adding dry hops before fermentation ends because the instructions say to do it on Day X.

There's actually a school of thought that says it's best to dry hop just as fermentation ends, as the movement of the yeast encourages the hops to stay in suspension and more readily release their oils. As with all things in homebrew, it depends I guess

[HomeBrewWest]

First rule of homebrew - bin the instructions! I have a friend brewing a few months now who still insists on following instructions despite my protestations - has resulted in beers not as good as they could have been as he ends up adding dry hops before fermentation ends because the instructions say to do it on Day X.

There's no need for instructions really for the majority of kits. Most of them can be distilled to the following:

Most beers: Start at 18 - 20C; aim to keep at ~20 if you have temp control. Leave a week before taking readings, and leave 48hrs between them. Bottle when 2/3 readings the same - generally about 2 weeks. If adding dry hops or hop teabag, wait for two readings to be the same before adding. Leave them 2 - 3 days.

Weissbier: Start at 23/24C and aim to keep ~23 if possible. Bottle as above (probably a bit quicker than most beers to finish). Carbonate the shit out of it.

Cider: Essentially as 'most beers' above. Bottle when it has substantially dropped clear - probably min 2 weeks.

I think a lot of the "bin the instructions" advise is the result of terrible instructions during the 80s, and also a single ale yeast strain used by nearly all the beer kits. With the more modern kits (including the Craft Range, things are quite different. The manufacturers do very long trials to get the optimum results with homebrewing setups.

However, the generic fermentation advise above is on the mark and very similar to the Craft Range instructions. I can post them here if anybody wants to read them. They are very different to the 5 lines of text or so that come with the old technology kits. And they all have modern varietal yeast strains.

[Drzava]

BTW OP I just had my first bottle of this cider and it's flipping ace! (half sweetener packet IIRC).

[thechevron]

Unfortunately when I was tipping the sweetener in I tipped to hard and most of it went in, more than 3/4. Anyway I'm glad it's nice. Some of my favourite ciders, Thatchers and Gaymers are pretty sweet.3