Instructions for Homebrewers
Using Sanitizing Cleaner
Instructions: For cleaning bottles, caps, brewing equipment, tubing and utensils. Dilute 1 TB to one gallon of water, or other dilution as recommended on container. Do not exceed 130 degrees. Mix thoroughly and allow at least five minutes of contact time with items to be cleaned. Rinse thoroughly.
Caution: do not mix with anything other than water!!! Causes eye and skin damage, use precautions, avoid splashing. If contact with:
Eyes: flush with water for 15 minutes, get medical attention.
Skin: Water and soap wash. If irritation persists, get medical attention.
If swallowed: drink water, do not induce vomiting, get medical attention.
Home Brewing Instructions:
1. If the liquid malt is cold, place it in warm water to soften so it will pour out easily.
2. Pour 2 gallons of water into a large pot and heat it to 170 degrees. Turn off the heat. Put specialty grains into grain sock, tie off the end and place into the hot water. Let steep for about 30 minutes. Pour some fresh hot water through the sack to rinse the rest of the good stuff out. Discard spent grains.
3. Mix the malt extract into the water, stirring until all the malt is in suspension.
4. Bring the mixture up to a boil. Get a large glass of cold water and have it standing nearby. When the wort (wort is what we call the mixture until we pitch the yeast, then it becomes beer) is boiling, add the hops labeled “boiling” or “bittering”. If the wort begins to boil over, add a little cold water and stir – do this until you reach a rolling boil. Boil for 50 minutes. Take the wort down to a simmer, and add the finishing hops and irish moss. Let it simmer for 10 minutes. Turn off the heat. Put the pot of wort into your sink with cold water around the boil pot until it cools to about 125 to 140 degrees. Then siphon the clear wort off into your fermenter or glass carboy. Make sure to aerate the wort as it goes in. (the oxygen is important for the yeast!) Add cold water until you have 5.5 gallons in the fermenter.
5. Check the temperature and if it is between 70 and 80 degrees, take a hydrometer reading and write down your starting gravity. Then you will pitch your yeast . Alcohol the outer surface of the yeast package or vial., as well as the scissors you will use to open the package. Dedicate scissors for this purpose only. Pour the yeast onto the wort.
6. Insert sanitized airlock into the sanitized top. Fill the airlock halfway with water or vodka and snap the top in place. Move fermenter to a warm, but not sunny, location where it can ferment for the next 7 days.
7. On the 5th day, you will take the lid off and take another hydrometer reading. Be careful to remove sample with a sanitized cup. Do the test again on the 7th day. If your reading is the same as the 5th day, or around 1.012 then proceed and bottle using the bottling instructions.
Bottling Instructions:
After you have determined through hydrometer tests that the batch of beer has reached terminal gravity, follow these steps to bottle and condition your beer.
1. Boil 6oz (3/4 cup) of brewing sugar which we call priming sugar (dextrose, not cane sugar) in half a cup of water for 2 minutes. Let this mix cool. Once it has cooled, pour it into your sanitized bottling bucket.
2. Siphon the beer from your fermenter quietly (preventing it from splashing around too much) into the bottling bucket. NEVER SUCK ON THE HOSE TO START A SIPHON!!! We recommend the “auto-siphon” as a useful addition to your brewing equipment. However, if you do not have one, simply fill the racking cane, tube with water holding the ends up in the air. Continue to hold the tube up high as you place the racking cane in the bucket, when you drop the tube into the bottling bucket the siphon should begin. When you are siphoning from the fermenter, don’t move the racking tube around too much, this will help keep out the trub (stuff at the bottom of the fermenter) from getting into the bottling bucket, thus making clearer beer! But if it does move around, don’t worry, it won’t hurt anything.
3. Now that you have your beer in the bucket and mixed with the priming sugar, put the bottling bucket onto the counter or some other high place. Attach your sanitized bottle filler to your siphon hose; attach your filler setup to the spigot (if you have one). If you have a spigot, open it up and start filling your bottles with the filler. If you don’t have a spigot, here is a trick to get the siphon going. Fill the siphon hose with water, turn both ends up so the water doesn’t escape, attach the bottle filler. Place the racking cane attached to the siphon hose into the beer while continuing to hold the bottle filler up, then in the first bottle drop in your bottle filler. When you press the tip of the bottle filler into the bottle this will start your siphon. Please do not start the siphon with your mouth!
Now, after you get a few bottles filled, get out your capper and start capping them. (Don’t fill too many bottles at once without capping them) Once you have filled all your bottles, place them in a dark temperate area (between 65-75 degrees). If you don’t have a dark area, cover the beer with a blanket to keep the light out. The beer will referment in the bottle thus creating carbonation! This process can take as little as a week or as long as a month. Much depends on the type of beer and the storage temperature. Test your beer each week to gauge how things are going. If it doesn’t carbonate right away, don’t worry, you didn’t mess up! Some beers are slow to carbonate. You’ll find as we have that beer gets better with age, so be patient if you can!
Home Winemaking Instructions
1. Record keeping:
• Urge customer to use instructions, all needed information can be obtained by reading these. The instruction sheet has assigned place for record keeping, a hydrometer should be used for o.g., f.g. just like beer. There is a peel and stick label on each box this should be removed and attached to the instruction sheet as well. This is absolutely needed if there is a problem without that code number we have no recourse.
2. Timing: kits are 4-6 weeks to bottling not drinking.
• Customer should have realistic time tables for when the wine will be drinkable.
*Encourage cellar building! If a customer uses wine 3x a week that is about 180 bottles a year or 6 batches. Recommend that they make 12 kits to start then they will have wine ready to enjoy at anytime.
• It is IMPERATIVE to go to the secondary fermentor before fermentation is complete. This is because the presence of lees is needed to drive off oxygen and for fining agents to work properly.
• Topping up the wine is necessary! After first racking the wine level should be brought up, to with in two fingers of the bottom of the neck. The kit has been calculated to have this additional water added ( approximately 1 qt).
3.Stirring: Sell Whips!
• Blending the wine kit when you make it is important.
• Degassing is crucial! If the wine is not degassed with repeated stirring the wine will always be fizzy, this is considered a major flaw in wine.
4. Analysis:
• Teach customers to use their hydrometers. On day one, day eight racking and final before additives.
• Kits can not be acid tested or PH tested the kits are pasteurized and therefore they are unable to be measured.
• Adjusting the Brix : Vintners Reserve kits are about 11% ( o.g. 1.075-1.085) they are not intended to be heavy wines, they are lighter wines to be enjoyed young. It is not recommended that the customer adjust the alcohol.
• Selection Kits are higher alcohol 14-16% and customers should purchase these if they desire higher alcohol wines
.*over active fermentation can be handled in the following way; sanitize your finger, coat it with a vegetable oil and run your finger along the rim of the carboy neck. The oil will collapse the foaming.
• Chaptalisation: adding sugar to increase alcohol content.
1-2lbs of sugar can be added to fruit wines-Island Mist Kits. Not recommended for Vintners Reserve or Selection Kits.
* F-packs contain sulphites and cannot be added during fermentation!
5. Yeast Temperature: 70 degrees is ideal temperature for fermentation and degassing. Liquid White Labs yeast is not recommended at this time.
*Why does the wine have a sweetness or grapeiness? Lower tannin wines have a softness and are meant to be enjoyed young. Higher tannin wines will not exhibit this.
6. Fining: The wine must have a yeast bed to have the fining agents work properly.
• It must be warm enough, 70 degrees
• It must be stirred 3x for 2 minutes, there is no such thing as stirring too much.
• It must be given enough time to clear. If it does not clear even with these steps followed you can add ½ packet of Chitosan (Superkleer is too strong for wine kits).
7. Aging: Selection and Estate Series have higher dissolved materials and take longer to age, they may store in cellaring conditions.
• To bulk age in a carboy it is recommended that the customer add 55 parts per million of sulphite. It is important that they measure this out exactly. It is approximately ½ tsp per gallon.
• Oak barrels are great but extremely high maintenance unless they have the knowledge and time it may not be worth it. To increase oak presence divide the provided oak in half add first half in primary and the second half in the secondary.
*Stuck fermentations the only real way to correct is make another batch of the same wine; when the second batch is racked, save the lees and rack the first batch on to the lees of the second batch.
• Customer should have separate equipment for wine making, do not use beer plastic fermentors or you will have a “wine with 20 IBU’S”.