It certainly needs something, thats for sure!! I made this up with 250g LDME and the BE1 recommended on the can and its drinkable but quite boring! definitely needs hops!!!!! I made this as my second ever brew, so wasnt sure about adding hops yet, but the whole brew cost me less than $10 cos they were getting rid of everything at coles haha.
I used to use this regularly (pre AG) as below:
1 x coopers canadian blonde
1 x brew enhancer 2
250gm dex
12gm fuggles boiled 15min
12gm fuggles steeped 5 mins
Coopers yeast at approx 20degrees
Easy drinking blonde, a little bland for my taste, but a crowd pleaser.
Would not have thought fuggles would work as well as it does with this kit.
Cheers,
Mark
If you decide to get into partial mashing then a Canadian Blonde is a perfect 'base' goop. Also if you ignore the kit yeast and use US-05 dried yeast you can make a ripper 'fake' lager, fermented at around 17 degrees.
Typical recipe (this will make something fairly close to Carlton Crown but more hoppy)
Mash 1kg Pale Pilsener Malt at 66 degrees for an hour. Strain and sparge (rinse) into stockpot till you get about 8 litres. Boil for an hour with 20 Pride of Ringwood or 15g Superpride.
Strain into fermenter with Canadian Blonde, 750g white sugar or dextrose. You could even use a kilo of BE2 instead and get an improved head / lacing.
Ditto on the hops. I used to use Coopers Canadian Blonde but I have been using Morgans Canadian Light lately. Hops dfinately adds another dimension to this kind of beer.
I have used hallatauer, CL80, cascade and they are all good to use. I just use tea bags. If you wast to get serious get some galaxy pellets!!! That would add some REAL flavour.
Im definitely going to add somthing to improve the flavour to this base as i have tried this as just a standard kit as recomended on the can a while ago and was very boring.
If you use BE2 and simply add 20g of any American hop such as Chinook, Cascade or Amarillo boiled for 30 minutes (boil in water with a bit of sugar added to improve hop utilisation) then it will lift the beer incredibly.
Bottled this last weekend:
Canadian blonde can
1kg LDME
20g cascade 10mins
20g cascade 0mins
US-05, fermented at 18 degrees.
I've done just the can plus BE2 before and it was drinkable, but as seems to be the consensus, quite bland. Definitely needs additional hops to liven it up a bit. Sample prior to bottling was very nice indeed, cascade is one tasty hop! :chug: