Ok, so I have spent some time now with this kit, and I feel a lot more com­fort­able with it.

Since I started out with this new lit­tle project, I have not had high hopes for the fin­ished prod­uct. I have only heard bad things about the first batch of beer that you brew. So, because of that, I have dubbed this batch, “TW Wheat”. The “TW” stands for toi­let water, haha.

I have come a long way, and have since met with a few brew­mas­ters, read a ton online and I have really been drink­ing a lot of beer. Read on to find out some things I’ve learned in the process.

Since Part 1 of this review, I have fin­ished the fer­men­ta­tion stage of the brew­ing process. I was very excited to bot­tle, but I want to make sure I do it right. I decided that I was going to add my brew to a sec­ond fer­menter in order to clear it up a bit and allow the sed­i­ment to set­tle a lit­tle more.

After ster­il­iz­ing every­thing, I hooked up the auto-siphon to my pri­mary fer­menter and began trans­fer­ring the beau­ti­ful liq­uid into my glass car­boy. I’m very glad I did this, as the slurry and sed­i­ment that col­lected on the bot­tom of the pri­mary was pretty gnarly. Once in the car­boy, I was finally able to see the awe­some color that this wheat has become.

Once in the sec­ondary fer­menter, I let the brew sit for 3 days. I fig­ured this was long enough because I saw a marked dif­fer­ence in the clar­ity of the beer.

From the car­boy, it was time to trans­fer the beer once more to the prim­ing bucket. I used the auto-siphon again and once again noticed a col­lec­tion of sed­i­ment at the bot­tom of the car­boy. I’m so glad I went with the sec­ondary too, as all of that gunk would have ended up in my final beer.

Once in the prim­ing con­tainer, I needed to get my bot­tle ready. I filled a clean sink with hot water and added my no-rinse ster­il­izer. I then method­i­cally washed and dried my 36 22oz. bottles.

After the bot­tles were all dry, I added 7 prim­ing sugar pel­lets to each bot­tle (5 for a high-head 12oz.). I then dis­con­nected the auto-siphon from the tube and con­nected the bot­tle filler. From there I pro­ceeded to fill each of the bot­tles. It was actu­ally a very fun and fairly fast process. Once that was done (actu­ally, after each bot­tle was filled), I capped each one with the pro­vided caps and cap­per. That was sur­pris­ingly easy and enjoy­able, it didn’t get boring.

Now all that’s left to do is sit and wait for the beer to car­bon­ate, which I’m going to give 3 weeks. That should allow the fla­vors to really come out.

Now, to review the kit.

Con­tents, Price and Instructions

Note: Now, I have to of course pref­ace this sec­tion with “I didn’t pay for the kit”. How­ever, hav­ing been mak­ing and spend­ing money for some time, I do have a decent under­stand­ing of the value of a dol­lar. There­for, I feel I can com­ment on the kit’s value.

The amount of things this kit comes with is pretty awe­some. If you were to go out and price every­thing on your own, you would come out right around the same price, and it might not be as high qual­ity as this. The fact that it comes with the caps and the ster­il­iz­ing solu­tion and the hydrom­e­ter and all that is really, really con­ve­nient. Of course, it doesn’t come with the pot or the bot­tles, but that is kind of sec­ondary. Well, maybe not. So, the con­tents I say would score a 8.5÷10, and price would be a 9/10.

The instruc­tions were phe­nom­e­nal. In fact, they are an entire book that actu­ally sell for $7–10 on their own. I read the whole thing front to back and it was very very valu­able infor­ma­tion. I give these guys a 10/10.

Ease of Use

At first I was very ner­vous. I didn’t want to get into this thing and blow the whole batch. How­ever, once I got into it, I felt much more com­fort­able. To be really hon­est, it is very nerve-racking for a new­bie to jump right in. I think this kit is sup­posed to come with a DVD and that would really make your life way eas­ier. As with my kit, how­ever, it didn’t and I was forced to YouTube some videos to help me out. I got through it, but the jury is still out on my brew.

Final Thoughts

Over­all, I really thought this was a very pleas­ant expe­ri­ence. Never once did I think, “man, this kit sure is mak­ing this harder on me”. The kit did exactly what it needed to do, with­out any extra knowl­edge on my part. I think, in addi­tion to the awe­some book, the kit should come with a sim­ple “1, 2, 3″ step guide for new brew­ers. Like “wheat: boil, place in bucket 1, then move to bucket 2, then bot­tle”. That way, a new brewer can very eas­ily find out the basic steps for his spe­cific brew.

A neat thing to note, accord­ing to my hydrom­e­ter, this kit brewed the wheat ingre­di­ent kit at nearly the exact abv that it stated on the pack­age. Just a cool thought.

My next step is to ven­ture away from the pre-packaged kit and mix my own ingre­di­ents. I want to pos­si­bly make a blue­berry wheat this time. Changes: I will be using a dif­fer­ent brand of wheat malt extract, I will be using liq­uid yeast, and I will be steep­ing some dried blue­ber­ries for added fruitiness.

Stay tuned, I will be review­ing this ingre­di­ent kit as soon as I taste the fin­ished product!

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• 

Dane

Dane Mentzer is a young man with a love for beer and a pas­sion for peo­ple. He prides myself on a well-established nose and palate, with a widely devel­oped vocab­u­lary. The only thing he loves more than beer is peo­ple, and that is where life gets excit­ing. In addi­tion to found­ing The Brew Bros, He has also estab­lished “Beer Into Water” a non-for-profit orga­ni­za­tion aimed at host­ing beer events in order to quench the thirst of chil­dren around the world. Stay tuned for more infor­ma­tion as that char­ity comes to fruition. His favorite style is the Impe­r­ial India Pale Ale, although it changes with the sea­sons. His favorite brew at the time is Arc­tic Panzer Wolf by 3 Floyds.

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