Congratulations for taking the plunge into the delicious world of making your own beers with all-grain Fresh Wort Kits.

While the process itself is fast, taking all of about 10 minutes to get the liquid unfermented beer into your fermenter with the yeast, there are some things that you can do to make the process even easier. 

Follow this advice and you’ll practically guarantee a perfect beer every time!

Clean - Rinse - Sanitise

Pour and Pitch at Optimal Yeast Temp

Open the Cap Easily

Pour Without Pain

Pitch Yeast

When you get a Keg King Brewing Beer Kit (Fresh Wort Kit) it’s ready to pour into your fermenter. 

Each kit, or cube, weighs about 18 kilos so just make sure as you move it around in transport or carry it around to where you’re going to prepare it, that you protect your back. Lift with your knees and take care of your back. In transport, make sure your Beer Kit is secured so it doesn’t slide around as you drive. 

Before you open your kit, prepare your fermenter. Clean, rinse and sanitise. These are the three most critical steps to keeping your beers tasting and smelling perfect every brew. 

Clean: If you have a fermenter you’ve been using and you can see residue or debris, use brewery safe cleaner like our Atomic 15 Alkaline Brewery Cleaner (ABC) and mix to the ratio indicated on the label: 5g per litre with warm water. Allow to soak.

If your fermenter is brand new, you can skip cleaning the first time and move to the next step, rinse.

Rinse: Atomic 15 ABC is extremely effective at removing residue from fermenter tank surfaces and brewery parts. After it has done its job, pour out the cleaner.  You’ll need to give those surfaces a quick rinse with clean cold or warm water to remove the cleaner, which can be quite slippery to the touch. A quick clean water rinse is all it takes to remove the cleaner from surfaces.

Sanitise:  Atomic 15 Foaming Sanitiser or Atomic 15 Low Foaming Sanitiser. Either will do the trick to get your fermenter in a pristine state to receive your Keg King Brewing Beer Kits. Most tap water will have low levels of bacteria, so the phosphoric acid in our sanitisers is a perfect, food grade preparation to get all the fermenter parts sanitary for fermentation. Foaming sanitiser in in a litre spay bottle is also effective for checking your draught system, kegs and fermenters for gas leaks and Low Foam sanitiser is great for clean in place (CIP) processes where foam would be undesirable. 

Mix the sanitisers as recommended: 1. Use your dosing cap to measure the sanitiser. ALWAYS add the acid to the water, not the other way around.  You don’t need to fill the entire fermenter, usually 5 litres is plenty to be able to splash around to cover the surfaces and get them wet with the sanitiser solution. If you have one of our pressure fermenters, run some of your mixed sanitiser out of the dip tube and liquid post. You can do this with a disconnect and bronco/picnic tap or even better, you can add 5 psi of pressure, and use a Quickie Sample Tap to move the sanitiser up and out to sanitise the dip tube assembly while you also check your fermenter assembly seals for leaks. 

Pour and Pitch at Optimal Yeast Temp:  You Keg King Beer Kit will adjust to the ambient temperature that it is stored in, which means in winter, sitting on a cold floor in your house, garage or shed, the liquid could be really cold in temperature. Possibly WAY too cold for yeast to perform. If you pitch your yeast into wort that is too cold, it might remain inactive for a long time, which isn’t great. We want fermentation to take off quickly.

Get your Keg King Beer kit to the temp your yeast require to work perfectly BEFORE you pour it out into your fermenter. Take it up to around 18C - 20C for ale yeasts and around 12C to 15C for Lager Yeasts. To get it warm you can use a Heat Belt to provide gentle heat to a small enclosed area.

To add the recommended 3 litres of water to the kit, boil the water and allow it to cool to around the same temp as the wort. If it is a bit warmer that’s fine, the rest of the liquid will balance the temp. Boiling the water before cooling and adding it to your fermenter means you’ll be certain you’ve removed unwanted microbes from the water. 

Open the Cap Easily: Ok, it’s time to crank that beautiful cap on the Beer Kit. If you can do it by hand, hats off to you. You’re really strong. The caps are on there super tight to keep air out. Don’t be a hero, be smart, save your knuckles! Get a Blue Cap Spanner and you’ll open your cube with little effort.  

When you get the cap off, be aware there is also a white washer seal under the cap. SOMETIMES this white washer can wind up in your fermenter when it sticks to the rim of the cube while you pour out the liquid. Don’t worry. It’s fine. It won’t affect the beer and is completely sanitary. There is no need to remove it from your fermenter if it accidentally goes in.

Pitching Yeast:  Adding yeast to your Fresh Beer Kit/Fresh Wort Kit is how it converts from wort to beer. The action of adding it in brewing terms is called pitching. To pitch your yeast, sanitise your yeast pouch or sachet, sanitise your scissors. Cut the pouch or sachet and add the entire contents to the liquid. If you want a drier beer with lower carbs and less body, you can also pitch Dry Enzyme with the yeast which will break down long chain sugars and make them more fermentable for the yeast to convert to alcohol. Adding Dry Enzyme with yeast is the perfect way to make our Rice Lager or our Aussie Draught into crispy, dry variety beers.

That’s it. You’ll be the best brewer you know in no time at all!

Happy Brewing!