best lager kit

[don cherry]

in the opinion of this board what is the best lager kit on the market ,either tins ,pouch or wort.also any one tried 1 of these morgans heineken clone kits , any good ?

 

[Nick the Knife]

Forgive me for making a suggestion but as someone who's started and moved away from pure kits. Have you considered the very marginally more difficult malt extract plus do all your own hop additions?

It'll give you massively improved results that you can tailor to your exact lager preferences - vastly more flexibility and all you have to do is a mini-boil for your hop additions - literally just certain amount of water, certain amount of the unhopped extract - bring to boil, toss certain weights of hops in for given time and simmer.

 

[don cherry]

thanks mate , i guess that would be the next logical step in my brewing ,but sorry if i am being stupid ,so all i would need is some malt extract ,hops & water ,and away we go ?

 

[Nick the Knife]

thanks mate , i guess that would be the next logical step in my brewing ,but sorry if i am being stupid ,so all i would need is some malt extract ,hops & water ,and away we go ?

Hi Don,
Thats ok mate - not silly at all. Simple answer is, yes - as you say plus yeast and you're away. Me rambling is below:

Yes, the kits (for example as you say a lager kit - which is typically a can/tin that contains liquid malt extract and also a certain amount of hop extract) are great but you're pretty limited by the varieties of them. While you can 'pimp' them by adding extra things to them you're still on a relatively narrow number of choices. They're simple - and as with most things where you trade off for convenience you lose on other areas. Easy parallel is using a premade curry or pasta sauce from the shops vs making from scratch yourself. One's simpler but the other has a significantly higher ceiling.

So yes - by going from hopped kits to extract based recipes - all the hop additions - would be decided by you.

So you only need the sugars (generally liquid malt extract but you can use dried and you can use other types of sugars, though recommended in moderation). Hops (different hops for different beers - to get the bitterness, flavour and aroma to suit the style and your palate). Water, yes. And then yeast - as you'll no longer be using a kit - which generally will come with a generic-ish yeast - you select a yeast to suit your beer style or if you're feeling adventurous can even reculture a commerical yeast e.g from a bottle of Coopers.

The big advantage I found in going from hopped kits to extract based recipes - is it was very little extra work. There's nothing wrong with kit brewing and I know I felt it was kind of 'low end' to do - but made excellent beers via it. But by using tins of UNHOPPED malt extract I could just add a few dollars worth of hops (from your local brewing store or Ebay) - mainstream recipes don't need much at all - unless you're making the very hoppy American ales that became popular - and you can keep a few cans of light malt extract in your cupboard and make a much wider range of brews from it.

Unhopped extract tends to keep better than hopped kits - I'd buy enough to get free postage from Coopers DIY online - light being most of them, a few wheat and perhaps an Amber. Hops in 100g packets are very cheap, same for quality yeast e.g US-05 - as a Lager liker, I'd actually say a faux Lager - would probably suit your palate well. As I'm guessing you don't have a temperature controlled brew fridge for your fermenter? So essentially a lager recipe, brewed using a clean ale yeast (US-05 is perfect) - nice time of year to do as you'll be able to get stable low temps in your house towards the low end of ale brewing temps. But thats me digressing.

If you do try a non-hopped extract brew - I'd keep simple and use one hop only (as you'll progress you'll find the benefit of using specific hops for bittering additions) and then later in your boil adding other hops that contribute more flavour & aroma.

Don't be put off by my excessive typing - making this very slight stepup from kits was something I regretted not doing sooner - keeps brewing quick and simple but gives you a lot more creative freedom & flexibility.

 

[don cherry]

wow what a reply ,thanks for taking the time to do this ,1 more thing and i promise i will go away ,where did you find your first step by step guide/recipe to try this idea , i am keen to try this .i have an inkbird for the fridge by the way ,thanks again mate

 

[Nick the Knife]

wow what a reply ,thanks for taking the time to do this ,1 more thing and i promise i will go away ,where did you find your first step by step guide/recipe to try this idea , i am keen to try this .i have an inkbird for the fridge by the way ,thanks again mate

Don,
Not at all - very happy to assist - thanks for being good about it - these days one is often ignored or berated when trying to assist folks so it's a pleasure.

Ummm I don't know if I found a specific recipe or guide - as you know folks generally always start off in pure kit and kilo territory - I've heard of a few very brave souls actually starting in All grain (AG) territory but I think they're a very rare bird. It's hard to know what to refer to it as, as I don't think using unhopped extract + your own hops has a catchy name - but I kind of stumbled across it reading about what K&K folks were doing other than going to AG.

I always 'pimped' my brews by adding some extra hops or steeped grain, even from the very 1st effort - so it seemed a natural progression to 'think' I could improve my end result by removing the factory hopped extract and instead making my own wort by combining LME and hops.

There are extract + hops recipes - but they're harder to find.....as recipes tend to be either K&K or AG. So what you can do is reverse engineer a recipe by using the Kit & Extract Beer Designer V4.1b spreadsheet (which is hosted in here somewhere and is terrific and very simple). Obviously it's not the same as any original recipe but with the spreadsheet (or another piece of brewing software) you can ensure you're going to do roughly the same thing. It's important that you use some type of software as when you add your bittering hop additions you're only needing to use a very small amount of bittering hops - perhaps only 15g of them, for a 23L batch - so getting it right is important but very simple - so planning your recipe is important.

I don't pretend I'm some great brewer, far from it - but I don't drink much and as much as anything just do it for the satisfaction of knowing I made it myself - so my recipe advice would be to not stray too far from well regarded recipes (Coopers DIY site is excellent for this as well as it's all K&K based and you can very easily generate an extract +hops recipe from a K&K one, AG is a little more tricky as they've so much more grain variations). But my worst brews are where I either thought I knew better than the actual experts who made the recipe or cheaped out and tried to cobble together a brew with left overs from other brews.

Oh thats great if you have a temp controlled brew fridge - thats one of the 3 pillars to a great end result.

Please don't get me wrong as I don't know where you're at on your brew 'journey' - and if you've not started adding your own hops or grain steeps even to prehopped kits, 'jumping' to doing all the hop additions yourself may be seen as a big step. All I wish to pass on is it's very little extra work. Got to run tend the fire but happy to answer anything else but have a read up and I'm sure you'll find stuff to think over.

 

[don cherry]

thanks so much for all of your help , i think it's time to make the leap ,will have to do some home work.cheers mate .

 

[clarkejw]

I couldn't agree more with the above comments. I now brew all-grain, but for 30 years or so, it was kits, mainly Coopers Real Ale, and then Pale Ale, when it came out. Kit brews do a terrific job, whether one is just starting out, or it's just preference.
One thing I quickly found was that by adding a couple of extra ingredients, such as steeping some grain, and using brewing sugars, the quality of the brews increased enormously, and indeed as Nick says, if you use tinned brew kits with added hops, you are constrained somewhat stylistically.
But, you asked about a lager kit, and I had great success with Morgans Blue Mountain Lager, using a Safale Lager Yeast, and a brew enhancer. In fact, I made 50 litres for my son's wedding, which was kegged, and it ran out before the keg of commercial Coopers Pale. My one claim to brewing fame!
If Mark, (MHB) is reading this, he helped me with that, and many other brews, and may like to add some comments.
But, my rule was, if you buy a commercial tinned kit, the first thing you do is to open the lid, remove the yeast sachet, throw it away, and replace with a good style-specific yeast.

 

[Nick the Knife]

I couldn't agree more with the above comments. I now brew all-grain, but for 30 years or so, it was kits, mainly Coopers Real Ale, and then Pale Ale, when it came out. Kit brews do a terrific job, whether one is just starting out, or it's just preference.
One thing I quickly found was that by adding a couple of extra ingredients, such as steeping some grain, and using brewing sugars, the quality of the brews increased enormously, and indeed as Nick says, if you use tinned brew kits with added hops, you are constrained somewhat stylistically.
But, you asked about a lager kit, and I had great success with Morgans Blue Mountain Lager, using a Safale Lager Yeast, and a brew enhancer. In fact, I made 50 litres for my son's wedding, which was kegged, and it ran out before the keg of commercial Coopers Pale. My one claim to brewing fame!
If Mark, (MHB) is reading this, he helped me with that, and many other brews, and may like to add some comments.
But, my rule was, if you buy a commercial tinned kit, the first thing you do is to open the lid, remove the yeast sachet, throw it away, and replace with a good style-specific yeast.

@clarkejw makes some excellent points.

I read an article that said that BY FAR, the yeast is the single ingredient which influences the end result the most. So while you could cut costs & quality on the malt, hops - they'd not have the impact getting the right yeast would. The assumption being that any yeast used is utilised in the correct manner e.g correct style of beer, temps, OG etc.

Coopers used to use the same yeast (which I believe was a very small 5g sizing) for all it's Original Series products. Some of the International and Thomas Coopers variations had style specific yeasts with them e.g Lager, Wheat specific. I believe Mauribrew were meant to be the source for these.

Though I've benerally always used 3rd party yeasts (though I did just use the Coopers generics via a starter for some ginger beer as I had nothing else onhand and felt it a decent fit for purpose) - I've always kept in case of an emergency or stuck ferment. Worst case scenario you can add to your 'boil' and it will provide yeast hulls, which are excellent nutrition for your chosen brew yeast.

I digress but I also believe the simple task of rehydrating your dried yeast should be near mandatory for brewers, as you're killing 30-50% of the viable cells by just sprinkling on top of your wort. Thats makes a massive difference in allowing the yeast to become the dominant organism in your brew in those first few days - which is where off flavours can develop from another competing bacteria/fungus etc.

 

[clarkejw]

@clarkejw makes some excellent points.

I read an article that said that BY FAR, the yeast is the single ingredient which influences the end result the most. So while you could cut costs & quality on the malt, hops - they'd not have the impact getting the right yeast would. The assumption being that any yeast used is utilised in the correct manner e.g correct style of beer, temps, OG etc.

Coopers used to use the same yeast (which I believe was a very small 5g sizing) for all it's Original Series products. Some of the International and Thomas Coopers variations had style specific yeasts with them e.g Lager, Wheat specific. I believe Mauribrew were meant to be the source for these.

Though I've benerally always used 3rd party yeasts (though I did just use the Coopers generics via a starter for some ginger beer as I had nothing else onhand and felt it a decent fit for purpose) - I've always kept in case of an emergency or stuck ferment. Worst case scenario you can add to your 'boil' and it will provide yeast hulls, which are excellent nutrition for your chosen brew yeast.

I digress but I also believe the simple task of rehydrating your dried yeast should be near mandatory for brewers, as you're killing 30-50% of the viable cells by just sprinkling on top of your wort. Thats makes a massive difference in allowing the yeast to become the dominant organism in your brew in those first few days - which is where off flavours can develop from another competing bacteria/fungus etc.

Haha, after saying throw it away, I must admit that I have a sandwich bag full of Coopers yeast sachets! I've used them in ginger beer, and I've made focaccia with them, which works surprisingly well.

 

[GrumpyPaul]

@don cherry have a look at Ianh's Kit and Extract spreadsheet - its not a bad too. Just enter your recipe and hop additions etc, then the Brew day tab will have step by step instructions on ho to do the mini boil for hop and any speccy grain additions you have.

https://aussiehomebrewer.com/threads/kit-and-extract-beer-spreadsheet.29655/

 

[Nick the Knife]

@don cherry have a look at Ianh's Kit and Extract spreadsheet - its not a bad too. Just enter your recipe and hop additions etc, then the Brew day tab will have step by step instructions on ho to do the mini boil for hop and any speccy grain additions you have.

https://aussiehomebrewer.com/threads/kit-and-extract-beer-spreadsheet.29655/

Yes, it's a terrific and very easy to use tool.

It's very easy to 'roughly' approximate most K&K recipes - you can nail the IBUs very easily - EBC is a little more tricky as generally an extract brewer will be limited to light, wheat, amber and dark malt extract. And while you can partially use a 1.5kg can, it's not ideal either to measure or store opened for several months (though I am sure if you covered, froze & then used in your next boil it'd be near impossible to pick from 'fresh' tinned).

So your EBC will often be a little off - though you can tighten this up and add extra nuance with a small selection of steeping grains. e.g light crystal, vienna malt.

Only thing I'd add is well worth using a specialist bittering hop - they're much more efficient at it i.e you'll use much less Magnum to get 25 IBU than if you did with Saaz or Cascade. Thus saving your aroma/flavour hops, like Cascade & saaz etc for those late kettle additions/flameouts etc. And the result will be MUCH better as bittering hops are specialists at this - think you need to put in a nail and a screw. You CAN rough out using a spanner for both but you'll get a better result using a hammer for the nail, and the spanner for the screw. My LHBS guy, who seems a very talented brewer - recommended if you just want one bittering hop onhand - pick one of Magnum, Northern Brewer or CZT. All very cheap and you use very little of them unless you're making eye squinting Double IPAs etc.