I brewed my own British beer… what could go wrong??
I decided to make my own British beer using a golden ale kit. I knew almost nothing about brewing, but I wanted to see what happened if I followed the instructions that came in the box. No extra reading, no helpful YouTube tutorials. After about five or six days, I was already doubting that decision.
This was the experiment I shared in April 2023. It involved repeated testing, a broken piece of equipment, beer on the kitchen floor and a bucket that stayed around long enough for me to call it Pete. Eventually, there was beer to taste. Getting to that point was considerably less straightforward than opening a packet.
A box of unfamiliar equipment
The kit had tins, packets and instructions. I read them and was still confused. The word “sterilise” appeared often enough for even me to notice it, so I started by cleaning the equipment that would touch the ale. The tins sat in hot water before I opened them. Inside was thick, dark stuff that reminded me of Marmite.
Pouring that into the bucket while recording wasn’t elegant. Adding the hot water gave me a dense, syrupy mass to stir. It gradually became less like syrup, which felt encouraging. Then came cold water, the hop sachet and the yeast sachet. I stirred, tried to break up the remaining clumps and put the lid on. There was also an airlock to fit, and I wasn’t very confident about how far down it should go.
The filled bucket was extremely heavy. It wasn’t going far. I tucked it away, with the kit’s instruction to leave it for four to six days in mind, and waited to find out what I’d made.
Pete wasn’t ready
The house had been cold, and keeping the heating on constantly wasn’t something I could afford. I knew the instructions wanted a warm place. Mine hadn’t had that. When I checked after roughly five or six days, it had been gurgling, but I didn’t know whether it was ready for the next step.
I used the hydrometer from the kit to test a sample. That gave me a reading to compare with the bottling level in the instructions, and my reading wasn’t there yet. I sealed the bucket again. Around that point, I also thought I’d fitted the airlock too high. This was turning into quite a lot of learning for someone who had only wanted to try making beer.
I left it longer, thinking the cold might be slowing things down. I wasn’t keeping a tidy count of the days. The next test was closer to the level I was looking for, but still not ready. By then, the bucket had become a regular feature of the kitchen. Pete lived there now.
On another attempt, I dropped the tester while getting everything ready. Glass on the floor, no working tester and the last of my sanitiser used up. I needed replacements before I could continue. I thought the beer might finally be ready, but thinking it wasn’t enough to get me to the bottling stage that day.
Finally, bottles
After more days and another test, I thought we were there. I’d bought bottles weeks earlier, and at last I could use them. I cleaned them, added the sugar described in the instructions and started trying to siphon the beer across. Getting the arrangement to work was awkward. The first filled bottle felt like a considerable achievement.
The rest took time. I filled bottles, let the foam settle and topped them up. More than once, I panicked and turned the control fully open instead of shutting it. Beer ended up on the floor. The kitchen smelled like a brewery, and the bottles needed wiping down as well as the floor needing a clean.
I stopped with about twelve pints because I didn’t have room for the full quantity of bottles. That was less than the kit could produce, but enough to make me feel I’d accomplished something. Then came another wait. This was my messy attempt with that kit, not a set of reliable brewing instructions or a measured account of how long fermentation should take.
It tasted like beer
Weeks later, I chilled one bottle for about a day before opening it. I poured carefully, trying to leave some liquid behind because I expected sediment at the bottom. I wasn’t even sure what colour I should have been looking for. After all that waiting, I was still nervous about the taste test.
It tasted like beer. It was carbonated and better than I’d expected, although I didn’t think it was fabulous. My partner knows more about beer than I do, so I asked him to taste it. He said it was great, a little weak, and like pints he’d had at the pub. I didn’t know what had made it weak or how to change that in another batch.
I’ll take that result. I’d started with no brewing knowledge and finished with bottles of beer and a lot more experience. It was even growing on me by the end of the taste test. Pete had taken his time, but he hadn’t been a complete disaster.
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