Bad Cat Imperial Red

I made it! It's a delicious beer. I used a 30L bucket and topped it up to 22-23L as always, had no issues with blowoff. Just make sure to keep your temperature near the lower end of the advised range to avoid explosive fermentation.

Also, a word of advice: Bulldog kits are incredible, their advice regarding dry hopping is bollocks. Do not boil the hops in a cup of water before adding to the fermenter, cut the "teabag" open and just drop them straight in as-is. They have antibacterial properties and are extremely unlikely to infect your brew, but boiling them destroys many of the chemicals responsible for the 'hoppy" taste and aroma of a proper IPA. Also, add them 24-26 hours before bottling, no earlier - the hoppiness escapes as gas through your airlock the longer the hops are in contact with the beer, 1-2 days is all they need to impart their flavour and aroma without losing any of it to the air.

I'd also advise leaving this to ferment for at least two full weeks before even thinking about bottling it. In my experience it actually needs three, otherwise you're going to have issues with overcarbonated gushers, and a large amount of sediment in your bottles.

My advice would be, brew it, wait until two nights before the three week mark, add the hops, then bottle two days later.

Report back once you've made the kit!

randomname2005 wrote: »

Sorry, just saw this now. Thanks for the advice. Haven't bought it as I wanted to get a good size fermentation vessel at the same time - current one is 25l so will go for 30 or above depending on what is available.

I'm going to assume a 25L fermenter won't cut it with this kit, the trub rings around the edge tend to be up around the 25L / 26L mark with these big 4kg kits. I'm using the standard 30L one and I've never had an issue with any kit so far, and I've made some huge ones.