A few days later I saw an email from Northern Brewer touting a hard seltzer kit so I decided to give it a try. It arrived yesterday and I decided that I'd document things here in case anybody else is interested in trying it out. I'm posting it here, because it's very basic. If you can brew using extracts, you can do this - based on what arrived and the directions.
It arrived with 4lbs of corn sugar, yeast, carbonation drops (for bottling priming), yeast nutrient, and a citrus flavoring pack. I'm opting to not use the flavor pack because we have Toriani syrups that we use for my Berliner Weiss and we'll use them for this as well so we can add whichever flavor we want to the glass and not have 5 gallons of any one-flavor.
The directions are pretty simple:
Use 2.5G of water to dissolve and boil the corn sugar for 10 minutes.
Cool to 80. Add to fermentor and top off to 5G.
Pitch yeast.
Then, every 24 hours for the next 3 days, add one packet of yeast nutrient.
Once fermented, leave for 2 weeks to clear.
Add to bottling bucket (if you use one) and add the flavoring to-taste (after dissolving in water).
Use fizzy drops to bottle carb, or you could keg and carb per your normal process (which is what I'm doing).
Since I'm working from home, like most, I did the boil this morning and it's now cooling to pitch temps. I'm not bothering to use my immersion chiller so it's 'slow chilling' until I get to it later.
I'll post along the way, but I don't expect much in terms of Earth-shattering updates. It seems pretty easy. And it' supposed to be based on White Claw, so I'm hoping it tastes similar when ready.
Given the simple ingredients, you could make this up with supplies from your own LHBS - except that you'll need a way to flavor it if you choose to do so.
More to come ~
