Breing From Extracts

[Rizzla]

Hi I have been brewing with kits and the invaluable advice gleaned from these pages for quite a few months now and loving it. It appears the majority of us in this kit & extract forum start with a kit and work fom there pimping to various degrees with hops, grain corn syrup etc. I'm sort of at the stage where I would like to control the taste and texture from scratch starting off with unhopped liquid and/or dry malt extract. there are a few malt only start recipies on the forum including Neill's http://www.aussiehomebrewer.com/forum/inde...showtopic=35657. I am going to give this one a go next.

I understand the basics (from this site) of steeping grain , boiling hops and so on for addition to kits. I would like to know others experience/advice in brewing starting from extract malts only eg are liquids better to start with than dry, would I be better off sticking to pimping the kits, do the kits have yeast nutrient included that I will have to add going this way or any other information on things I might have to do differently to avoid pitfalls.

Thanks in anticipation for any input

Cheers Tom

 

[yum beer]

Hey Tom, essentially using liquid malt tins is no different to using kits, except you have to add the hops yourself.

You say youve played around with grains and hop etc, so you know the process.

All you are changing is the bittering addition has not been done for you.

 

[yum beer]

Also if you havent got it, get a copy of brewmate, or Ians extract spreadsheet...do a search..., they are great for playing with recipes and

getting an idea of what you are brewing.

 

[J Grimmer]

all the extract beers that i have done have been better than my kit and bit beers, the only thing i found is that I wanted more. So i have resigned myself to the fact that i will be moving to AG brewing sooner rather than later. (Sigh). The harddest part was finding a good supplier of malt extracts and hops, ie fresh and reasonably priced. So once this was achieved the possiblities were endless. I still use kits and find some are good bases but some times you need to use an extract and do a mini mash, it really does depend the beer you are trying to make.

Its a slippery slide downhill from here.

Jan

 

[manticle]

Hi I have been brewing with kits and the invaluable advice gleaned from these pages for quite a few months now and loving it. It appears the majority of us in this kit & extract forum start with a kit and work fom there pimping to various degrees with hops, grain corn syrup etc. I'm sort of at the stage where I would like to control the taste and texture from scratch starting off with unhopped liquid and/or dry malt extract. there are a few malt only start recipies on the forum including Neill's http://www.aussiehomebrewer.com/forum/inde...showtopic=35657. I am going to give this one a go next.

I understand the basics (from this site) of steeping grain , boiling hops and so on for addition to kits. I would like to know others experience/advice in brewing starting from extract malts only eg are liquids better to start with than dry, would I be better off sticking to pimping the kits, do the kits have yeast nutrient included that I will have to add going this way or any other information on things I might have to do differently to avoid pitfalls.

Thanks in anticipation for any input

Cheers Tom

You could do much worse than reading palmer's intro on making your first extract beer. You could also do worse than buying a copy of brewing classic styles as all recipes are able to be made as both extract and all grain. http://www.howtobrew.com/section1/index.html

http://www.amazon.com/Brewing-Classic-Styl...4904&sr=1-1


Liquid vs dried doesn't really matter as much as getting fresh stuff. The main difference is that liquid contains water so you need about 20% more by weight to get the same gravity (I think it's 20 - please double check).

I don't extract brew any more but if I did, I would be using the briess extracts as they seem to have a good range including things like munich.

http://www.grainandgrape.com.au/index.php?cPath=1_39_46

http://www.craftbrewer.com.au/shop/default.asp?CID=163

OR the weyerman extracts for the same reason (and weyerman grain is great so I expect the extracts to be similar).

http://www.craftbrewer.com.au/shop/default.asp?CID=117

Weyerman extracts are actually an already created unhopped recipe so they contain a balance of malts. Briess are stand alone.

 

[Lord Raja Goomba I]

If you do go AG, then definately head down (or up) to Craftbrewer. You can shoot the breeze with Ross or Anthony, and taste some stuff he makes.

You may consider doing a FWK from Ross prior to going on to AG. Kinda cheating, but fantastic beer.

Goomba