The pressure barrel was filled with about 35 pints from a 40 pint ferment, but here's what's left of the hoppy pale that I brewed a few weeks ago. It's a home brew called Golden Stag (bought in the Edinburgh brew store) which is an excellent 'summer ale' kit. A couple of hours of preparation (sterilisation and rinsing mainly) then add your warm wort and water mix, top up to 40 pints, add your yeast, seal up the tub with a lid and airlock, keep it at between 20 and 25 C and away you go. On day 5 add dry hops, seal it up again and leave it for another 5-10 days. On day 10, check the gravity and if it's good to go, transfer by syphon to secondary fermentation in the barrel (you lose the 5 pints bit in the yeast and hop sediment which doesn't taste great), add a bit of sugar to get those yeasties going again and produce some CO2. It's well drinkable about 5 days later but still a bit cloudy, another 5 days it's just moresome (a made-up word I've since discovered is a sexual gathering greater than a twosome or threesome but is alliteratively correct in my made-up sense because it reads better than moreish) when it's time to transfer the barrel somewhere a bit cooler, and then a week later it's just awesome.

Superlatives fail me on this kit. It's been as good as the best summer ale pub beer from the get-go. Home brews have certainly changed since my Dad's airing cupboard tinned bitter kit days. There's a 21 page long thread here citing similar exaltations ...

http://www.thehomebrewforum.co.uk/showthread.php?t=23336

Cheers :-)