All grain quality from extract beer?

[bmarshall]

Is it possible to get near all grain quality in kit or extract beer?
Ive done four kit brews so far and cant stand to drink a whole glass of any one.
My lasy was a brown/dark ale mangrove jacks and breiss munich lmd with 100g of casc and cent.
I like hoppy beers and so far 100g of hops just isnt doing it for me. I may need to almost double this amount.
How much hopps do people use for a good hoppy brew similar to hop hog, alpha queen, roadtrip, hop zone and epic or green flash IPA?
My toucan was just ok. Too bitter, not good ballance and the weird twang flavor!
Only the amarillo FWK was decent.
Cheers.

 

[Lord Raja Goomba I]

In my opinion no. My AG beer is hands down better.

It's not just that the ingredients are better and offer more flexibility, one's techniques are both part of the flexibility as well as improved by the process.

I know some make excellent extract beer, but I've never done so myself.

 

[Mick Gramoit]

In terms of Hops, I just threw in 220g of Mosaic and Simcoe in my Hoppy Session IPA that I brewed today. I would say if you like your IPA/Hoppy beers (I certainly do), you need to put in 200g plus of hops in a 18-20 L batch. But it always depends on what style of beer you are brewing obviously (So far I have just brewed American IPAs).
I never did extract so I can not answer the first question, but All grain is pretty awesome.

 

[manticle]

Use a high quality extract like Briess or weyermann. It won't be AG necessarily (although some extract brewers have won National awards with extract bews) but a good extract will be head and shoulders above your kit brews if your fermentation and sanitation are up to scratch.

You need good fermentation and sanitation practice regardless of ingredients or method.

 

[Mardoo]

Another vote for the Briess and Weyermann extracts. My last extract beer was a dunkel that I did with the Briess liquid Munich, among others. That's the first time I got close to what I have gotten with my AG attempts. I fully prefer AG, but those are very good extracts.

 

[HBHB]

The malt extracts you're buying are made by experts in the field who know what they're doing. With this in mind, they're made to create a specific style when talking kits and they have to meet budgetary constraints plus buyer wants & needs. If a kit doesn't meet a home brewers wants, then their best bet is extract brewing or grain brewing.

In unhopped extracts, the same applies, there's very few styles that can't be made by extract and the rest are easily covered by blending the myriad of styles of extracts along with steeping grains or doing a mini mash. IMHO, (for what it's worth) brewers have never had it so good with access to a huge range of affordable malt extracts to make great beers at home. Again, these are made in commercial breweries around the world to exacting standards and are, in most cases, of an excellent standard. If treated well, using a little thought and process control including good sanitising methods, decent yeast and hops stored well, along with appropriate temperature control and general fermentation methods, quite capable of being turned into outstanding beer.

If you want to have a little artistic license over the design and want to take the step into a wider range of choices for colour, flavour and aroma, then grain brewing is for you. It's not that grain is necessarily "better". It's about what you as an individual want to achieve and how involved in the process you wish to become.

I work long hours in the retail side of the industry and have extensive commitments outside of that, so time is all important. I prefer grain brewing because i love the process and creative side, but won't hesitate to do an extract brew and play around with the latest kits to know and understand their characteristics and stay on top of what's on the shelves. If i don't know the products, i can't advise on them.

Every brewer will brew to their own level according to the information and gear available to them. BUT, i think if more brewers and brewsters understood just how easy grain brewing was and they had an interest in it, then we'd see a lot more doing it and for good reason.

Each to their own.

Martin

 

[stakka82]

I made some good extract beers and one or two are probably in my all time top 20, but the rest are all grain...

I think some of it probably comes down to the fact that most people are less experienced when they're in the extract 'bridging' phase, but I never had one that totally blew my socks off like some of my better AG efforts have.

 

[pcmfisher]

I think its a quantum leap from kits to unhopped extract.
For me, the difference in quality between kits and extract is bigger than extract to all grain.

To me all kit brews have that same kit taste which I don't get with extract brews.

 

[dammag]

I agree with pcmfisher.

I've made some good extract brews and never got that kit twang. As has been said, they might not be AG quality but they are perfectly acceptable.

Having said that, stovetop BIAB is easy if you want to have a go at AG. If you brew for the experience as well as the beer then this is a great way to get into AG. I try and do 1 stovetop BIAB a week.

If you just want decent beer to drink then extract might be the go.

The thing is with a really hoppy beer you might have to do a full boil to get the most out of the hops or try some other methods like hop tea's? If you are doing a full boil then you really might as well go BIAB.

 

[indica86]

Even some crystal / specialty grains + hops can help with the taste of kit brews

 

[Adr_0]

doesn't sound good that you struggled to finish a glass. does sound good that there's lots of room for improvement.

as Manticle said, sanitation and cleanliness is a massive part, but also consistent temperature control - if you can a fridge with a temp controller, that will help big time.

i think fresh, good quality extract is a big part of it. if you add some freshly crushed, good quality spec malts - e.g. Weyermann or Thomas Fawcett - and steep at 60-70°C for 30min, keep things clean and sanitised, then pitch a decent yeast and keep the temperature constant you're a long way to a very tasty beer. get some Starsan and PBW, or search for Napisan/sodium percarbonate on here.

you could also be super-sentive to some of the off flavours in beer: acetaldehyde, chlorophenols, sulphurs.

it might not match the depth of flavour of AG, but your beer should be bloody tasty - no reason you couldn't finish 6 glasses.

 

[Lord Raja Goomba I]

2 pot stovetop with ghetto lauter FTW! I've got 38L of bitter from it at a pinch.

 

[Adr_0]

2 pot stovetop with ghetto lauter FTW! I've got 38L of bitter from it at a pinch.

Wouldn't that be AG?

Though I've never had the pleasure, pretty sure this guy ^ makes awesome beer, so that shows two things: LRG would be all over cleanliness/sanitation/yeast health/ingredients; and if you do decide to go AG there are cheaper and easier ways that the 2-3V lummoxes out there like me.

 

[bmarshall]

Thanks guys

 

[verysupple]

Personally, I think fermentation is far more important than wort production as long as you don't go nuts with specialty malts etc. - early on in my AG brewing I decided I was making a dark, old ale which was pretty bad (way too much dark crystal and chocolate malt).

What yeasts did you use and how did you control fermentation temperature?

As for hops, how are you using them? Boiled in wort? Boiled in water? Dry hopped? Hop tea? The way you use hops makes a huge difference to the outcome.

 

[Bizier]

You should be able to make decent hoppy beer with FRESH unhopped pale extract plus steeping grains.

A big factor is doing the largest boil you can manage with your available equipment, plus the associated chilling times to halt degradation of the sexy aromatic oil fractions in the hops.

OR... you could just go AG and be a real brewer h34r:

 

[Bizier]

And not every all-grain beer is of high quality, I have made a couple of infected and ill-conceived ones and I have tasted some absolute abominations from other brewers.

 

[QldKev]

my 2c, I would not spend the time it takes to make AG if I didn't think it was a better final product. You can make good beers with extract, but you can make awesome beers with AG. Even the simplest BIAB setup can make awesome beers, BribieG has won a few awards using a basic urn setup.

 

[Bribie G]

One of the problems with extract brewing in Australia is that we are a small market and most extract is made for baking and confectionery by companies such as Wander, and they don't really have the home brewer in mind. Who knows what temperature they mash it at, or how they extract the wort. I'd guess they mash and extract to give the maximum $$$ and quality beer isn't even on their radar. If the extract is old it can give a twang, and Light dried malt extract regularly gave me a bad chill haze.

For the brewer, companies such as Coopers and Morgans do indeed make it in their own mashtuns, mostly for the kits but they spin off some tins of pure extract as well, I'd guess that's a minor part of the trade. And it's good quality but as dear as poison compared to AG brewing. There's also the danger that it's been sitting in an un-airconditioned LHBS for a year.
A reliable source of Briess and Wey. extract would be the best option, from a high turnover source like CB or MHB or ESB to name but 3

I find a good middle ground is to pimp a kit with a mini mash. This works very well for Coopers lighter kits such as Cerveza or Canadian plus a 2 kilo mini mash, appropriate hops and a good yeast.

However once you get to that stage you might as well go AG anyway.

Edit: The best kit on the market IMHO is Coopers stout, and although I didn't win anything I got marked about mid field with a RIS made on Coopers plus LDME and dex in the Nationals. Oh those crazy days of my youth.

h34r:

Edit edit: when Oakey Maltings were still going I know for a fact that they used to sell their "below spec" malts to extract companies. They once did a heap for Milo (which is made in Gympie I believe).
I actually brewed with some of that and whilst not dreadful, it wasn't the best. OK for a dollar a kilo and tricked up with some spec malts.

 

[Adr_0]

Bmarshall, do you have temp control for your fermentation? Any idea how hot the yeast gets?

Can you describe what the flavour is like that makes you not want to finish the beer? Sour, solvent/alcohol, bandaids, apples or cider, metallic, burnt caramel?