Tiny Rebel brewing Co - Cwtch beer kit.

Cwtch is a beer kit from Tiny Rebel brewing Co but it is created under licence by Muntons. I bought mine from home brew online for £25.95.

The kit comes with in a funky, vibrant box.
Verging on hipster this is a beer kit marketed towards a younger brewing crowd.

It is a premium kit. The box contained two tins of malt extract, two packets of yeast (which I've not seen before), four packets of hop pellets (citra and columbus).

It is worth mentioning that the Cwtch brewed by Tiny Rebel was the 2015 champion beer of Britain. So I suppose the kit is attempting to create that level of quality. This is fantastic.

The instructions that come with the kit are well thought out and easy to read. Included are instructions on how to use a hydrometer and work out the abv. There's even a set of boxes to write down the starting and final gravity and other notes. I found that useful. No need for a separate peice of paper. I recccomend this kit if you've never brewed beer before. The instructions are clear enough and the other supporting information is such that a novice can't really go wrong.

The process of brewing this kit isn't much different to any other. All be it the hop pellets are added at two different stages.

All in all this is a very user friendly kit. And scores 5 out of 5 pints.

Expect a review of the beer itself in a few weeks. She's been brewed and is now maturing in the bottle.

I am BACK.

It has been a while hasn't it? I've been busy, busy drinking and brewing beer mostly!

I started off doing all grain, full mash, what I call 'proper' brewing. But with the birth of my son almost two years ago I discovered I no longer had the time that proper brewing demanded. So I stopped brewing until earlier this year when I gave a beer kit a go. Ya know it was pretty good!

So going forward I am going to be brewing more kits and writing about them too. My intention is to review each kit twice. Firstly a review of the kit itself, a look at how good are the instructions, the quality of ingredients, is it good value for money? That kind of thing. The second review will happen much later once the beer is brewed and has had some time to settle and mature. This review will look at how good a job I think i have done, is it a good beer? and how close to the description on the kit have I got it?

I might occasionally review the odd beer I find in the pub or supermarket shelf to and expect the occasional wine kit to appear to.

So to start with I will shortly be writing about the kit pictured at the top Cwtch.

Brew notes. Caldonian deuchars IPA

Brew day 17/07/14
TOG - 1038 TABV - 3.8% TFG - 1009

AOG - 1042

New brew. Black sheep ale.

So I've been brewing since Christmas 2012. Starting off with a kit moving on to brewing with with malt extract and finally all grain. If I'm honest it's only in the last couple of batches that I feel I'm really starting to get the hang of this.

I get all my ingredients and some kit from www.brewuk.co.uk. Speedy delivery and excellent quality.

Today I'm brewing the recipe for one of my favourite beers. Black sheep ale. You can find it on page 123 of the excellent third edition of British real ale by Graham Wheeler.

The beers OG should be 1046 with an FG of 1011  giving an abv of 4.6%

8:31 sanitise everything.  I use starsan.  It's a bit more expensive but it's also no rinse. So more convenient to use.

8:55. Malt weighed out. Bringing the water for the mash up to the required temperature. 

9:14. Grain added to mash tun (cool box). Left now to mash for 90 minutes. The cool box insulates well keeping the temperature pretty much spot on. Probably not as good as a thermostatically controlled proper tun but I haven't had a problem hitting the gravity i'm after doing it this way. 

10:53. Onto sparging.  Home made kit from two oil buckets from work. First run off goes back through the mash.

11:39. I now have 24 litres of wort. I'll take some off to boil with the hops since I don't have anything I can boil all of it in. I also take a gravity reading now since it won't really change . But I could easily add more sugar at this point if required. The gravity is 1034 a bit low so I will add some malt extract I have to bump it up. The wort at this point is still warmer than the calibrated temperature of my hydrometer. I use this handy website to do the conversion for me.http://www.brewersfriend.com/hydrometer-temp/

11:57. Hop's weighed out. Challenger, fuggle and progress in first.  Golding plus Irish moss for the last ten minutes of the boil.

13:31. Cooling the post boil wort as fast as possible. Then it's added to the remaining wort. The quantity topped up to 23 litres if needs be. 

14.01. The yeast hydrates for 15 minutes at 35 centigrade. 

The final gravity having increased the sugar content is now 1060 so this will be a strong one!

14:41 and done bar some cleaning up. Note I'm not using a normal air lock yet. The last time I used this yeast strain it got a bit overexcited and blew the lock. So I will keep it like this for the first 24 hours or so until it settles down then fit a standard air lock.

 

If I brew this to the FG of 1011 it should work out to be 6.43% abv. Much stronger than the recipe. Clearly I've added to much additional sugar. Never mind, I would sooner have a strong beer than a weak one!

In a couple of weeks it'll be time to bottle. I'll update this post then.  

A pint of: Jeremiah Weed - root brew

Firstly the label & name made this instantly intriguing & appealing. It's trying to be very American with the use of the language used on the bottle. It says that Jeremiah Weed is the original southern gentleman from Kentucky, USA. I doubt he's ever existed & it's a shame to read on the back that it's produced & brewed in the UK & then gives a London address. I feel that it should either be genuinely American, brewed there and imported. Or be proud to be British & have a different theme. This is perhaps though a bug bear of mine, I dislike Fosters & other mass produced lagers that claim to be of Australia or a European country when they are in fact all brewed in the same brewery in the UK. A wine producer couldn't get away with it & I wish the same were true of beer. But anyway...

The drink itself is a 'ginger brew with fruit alcohol, spirit & flavourings'. No where on the label does it expand on what fruits are used or what spirit. Although I am assuming spirit meant whiskey et al but it may well mean the departed soul of Jeremiah Weed. Certainly given that it's only 4% abv the latter is certainly possible.

The drink is a cloudy amber. It is a bit fizzy & quite sweet. It doesn't taste very gingery. Far less than say the Wychwood ginger beard. That said this drink is very nice & extremely drinkable. It reminds me a lot of a favourite cocktail called the lucky leaf. To make a leaf which i wish was my invention, put some ice in a tall glass, then add 2 dashes of angostura bitters, half a limes juice, a shot of whiskey, a shot of green apple sourz & top it off with ginger beer.

This drink is £2 in Sainsburys currently. I give it 7 out of 10, I'm only marking it down for the bollocks on the bottle. The drink itself is brill.

A glass of Sainsbury's house sparkling for the lady

Hands up anyone who'd expect anything much from a £4.99 bottle of 'house sparkling'? Anyone?

Well, actually, there's a good chance you'd be missing out. In all honesty I only picked up this bottle because of the promised 'brioche' flavours advertised on the label. I'm very partial to enriched bakery products, so distilling this into a bottle of wine seemed like manna from heaven.

On this point I am rather disappointed- the promised brioche has failed to materialise on this particular palette. However in all other respects this is a pleasant glass of wine. It's nicely fizzy without feeling gassy and somewhere between a typical brut and demi-sec. I'm normally a proponent of very dry wines but I am somewhat more flexible in the presence of bubbles and found the very slight sweetness rather appealing.

As a hardened Cava and Prosecco girl I will admit I approached this wine looking only to criticise. However, now I've tried it I would definitely buy it again. 7/10

A pint of: Morland - old golden hen

A beautiful golden coloured ale. Very bitter with a strong, lasting, aftertaste. The bottle suggests subtle tropical fruit notes.

It's 4.1% abv & comes in a 500ml clear glass bottle. The bottle bit being tinted does increase the risk of the beer spoiling. So perhaps pick one from the back of the shelf.

Sainsburys, where this brew is from, seem to have recently increased all the alcohols prices. So this beer is currently £1.99. I give it 6 out of 10.