This is the latest homebrew, a Young’s American IPA:

Young’s American IPA

It’s highly hopped and at the moment quite bitter and it’s at 6.9% ABV. It’s only just finished it’s secondary fermentation and will get better over the next 4 weeks, so I’ve picked up a few “Commercial” IPA’s to back to back with it and see what it’s like. It’s quite difficult to find IPA’s so strong these days but I’ve managed to get some in the 5.5 – 6.5% range.

So, over the past 18 months or so I’ve started to get into home brewing. So far I’ve only been dealing with kits, but will be looking to start doing it “properly” (i.e. all-grain brewing) in the not too distant future.

Anyway, my last couple of brews have had very vigorous initial fermentation’s, so much so that they’ve “foamed over”. In order to counter this, I’ve made some modifications to my fermentation vessel lid. It’s only a basic “Young’s” FV so it doesn’t have even an airlock so I’ve added a bung for an airlock and I have also fitted a tap:

The tap will have a length of 1/2″ tube running from it into my bottling bucket, which will have a sterile liquid covering the end of the tube. Then, should I suffer any more foam over, it’ll flow up the tap, down the tube and into the second bucket. This is completely untested, but with the airlock also helping to release a build up of CO₂ I reckon it should work. I will update when I’ve done my next brew, but that won’t be for a while as I’m waiting for the last lot to be ready to drink before I start on the next, which should be the end of May.