Defining A 'toucan' Brew

[PostModern]

That's probably a fair point. My understanding was that a 'partial' just meant a combination of extract and grains, and that the grains were there to add authentic colour and flavour more than fermentable sugars. Are you saying that it needs to be base malt, and properly mashed to provide a significant proportion of the fermentables, to be considered 'partial mashing'?

Would there be many brewers who go to all that trouble just for part of the wort and then add extract? It seems like a lot of work, but I agree that dunking a bagful of chocolate malt hardly sounds worthy of the term 'mash'.

I love semantics :beer:

I used to mash 2-3Kg of grain and top up the fermenter with extract. I never managed to collect all the runnings down to 1.010 runoff, as I brewed in two pots on the stove-top, so there was a fair amount of extract added to make up gravity. I made some really nice beer in my years of brewing this way. I copied what some blokes in the US calling themselves "partial mashers" were doing.

Extract brewers in the US have a much wider range of extracts available to them, including liquid Munich extract, etc. When I was doing it, I used the mash to get munich, choc, etc flavours that you couldn't get in a tin but needed more than steeping some Crystal.

There is a group of US guys who seem to just steep specialty grains and add extract of differing colours or munich extracts and go the full volume boil with hop additions etc. I made an all extract American wheat this way when I had my kettle ready but not a big mash tun. Was a little thin, it coulda done with some crystal or cara to make up body. The yeast ripped thru the extract like nothing.

Anyway, I diverge. My classification (if forced to put every method in a box) would go something like this:

K+K = K+K. Could include dry hopping. No boiling.

Kits and bits: hopped kit with extract or other fermentables. May involve steeping specialty and/or boiling hops.

Extract: Like K+B but without kits. All hops come from a boil of hops in extract.

Partial mash: Part of fermentables comes from mashing base malts, plus extract. Boil with hops for bittering, flavour and aroma additions.

AG: well we all know what that is. Can include sugars and other adjuncts.

But what would I do with my old Oatmeal stout recipe that involved mashing base malts with specialty grains and quick oats then adding a Coopers Stout kit?

I just like classifying things, I suppose. Accounts for my being a BJCP fanboi.

But lets not get carried away with termanology and loss focus on making great beers! Thats my 2 cents.

JCG

I hear you :beerbang:

 

[boingk]

IMHO, I'd venture to say that 'toucan' brews are essentially all-malt brewing. After all, thats what gives them generally better body, head retention and overall quality when compared to a kit plus additives such as dextrose, maltodextron and powdered malt.

I did an all malt Becks knock-off a few weeks ago, and consumed a few of them prior to having the first bar night back at uni for the term...not bad. 3kg X-Tract hopped kit, plus 12g of Hallertau hops steeped for 10 minutes in boiling water. Made to 23L. Simple as that!

If you want to get technical you can save a cup of the extract and glad-wrap it to preserve while the rest ferments. Then just divvy up that cup when it comes to carbonation time - true all-malt home brewing, kit style.

 

[Wortgames]

But lets not get carried away with termanology and loss focus on making great beers! Thats my 2 cents.

But this thread is all about arguing the terminology isn't it?! I know it's petty and utterly pointless - but a couple of us are having fun with it, and we're not stopping anyone else talking about brewing.


In trying to pigeonhole different types of brewer, I have to say using the term 'kit' to mean a can of hopped extract doesn't really sit well with me. It's not much of a 'kit' is it - it's one tin, with a packet of yeast.

As I said earlier, in the US, a 'kit' usually means a box of separate ingredients for brewing a particular style of beer, with measured out portions of hops and specialty malts and grains or extract as required. That sounds much more like a 'kit' to me, and I suspect we could see things like that becoming more commonplace here too, so I think it would be good to find a different term for a supermarket tin.

As it is, an American 'kit' brewer is a totally different thing to an Australian 'kit' brewer, and it would be nice not to have that potential for confusion.

 

[Wortgames]

IMHO, I'd venture to say that 'toucan' brews are essentially all-malt brewing. After all, thats what gives them generally better body, head retention and overall quality when compared to a kit plus additives such as dextrose, maltodextron and powdered malt.

As I recall, toucan brewing actually started off as being a fairly lazy, cheap way to get a better quality brew without having to go to the LHBS. When I first tried it I hadn't heard of it elsewhere, and it wasn't something I was especially proud of - it seemed a pretty 'bogan' thing to do in my opinion, but something told me it would probably work and I liked the idea of it being all-malt.

It just so happened that the resulting beers could turn out surprisingly well (I remember my legendary 'NF Draught' - made from 2 cans of No Frills Draught, at the grand price of about $7 a tin. We must have drunk a thousand litres of that stuff). Somewhere along the line, toucan brews became acceptable, and then almost honourable. It's kind of amusing to see them described as 'superior' :super:


I have no personal objection to anyone adding extras to a toucan brew, but to me, a true blue toucan will always be made from nothing other than 2 tins of goop from the local IGA, preferably whatever's on special :beer:

 

[blackbock]

IMHO, I'd venture to say that 'toucan' brews are essentially all-malt brewing.

Canned goop is not malt. It's malt extract. The same goes for the dried stuff - despite what my LHBS tells me, that coloured stuff in bags is not malt, it's dried Malt Extract. Malt is malted grain.

 

[boingk]

Malt is malted grain.

Well, yes and no. Grain naturally germinates and starts to convert its starches in sugars to feed the seedling until it has leaves.

What malting is, is the process of soaking the grain so as to start this process as occurs in nature. What then happens is it is allowed to proceed to a certain point and then the grain is dried and [unless its light/lager malt] roasted.

Mashing and reheating the grain once the malting process has been carried out will release the the malty goodness - it is this 'extract' that is used in making beer, and is actually 100% pure natural malty goodness...at least, as far as I'm aware.

 

[tangent]

Both of them were syrupy.

interesting point. Cans of goo are supposed to be less fermentable because they're designed originally to go with a kilo of highly fermentable sugar which thins and dries everything out. For a thick beer the Coopers Stout would IMO be the ultimate toucan brew.

 

[Mr Bond]

When you consider that they mash @ up to 75c as found here, its not surprising that extract brews are fuller in body and mouthfeel.
Thats why it is impossible to make a real lager with extracts(no matter what yeast and hop combo).

 

[Wortgames]

Cans of goo are supposed to be less fermentable because they're designed originally to go with a kilo of highly fermentable sugar which thins and dries everything out.

That's an interesting point too - I had never considered that. I always figured that your average tin of goo was simply LME with a bit of coloured malt extract and hop extract added. It never occurred to me that they deliberately increased the body to compensate for the addition of sugar.

Is it a fact?

I know that apparently, all malt extracts are not equal. Some should really be boiled by the homebrewer and others are fine just to be diluted. I was reading something about this very subject a week or two back, wish I could remember where.

 

[tangent]

radical brewing maybe (actually, mr bond informed me of it first here on AHB a few years ago!)

once again Mr Bond.... rehahahaha

 

[Brewtus]

Gee it is good to see such a simple question has draged out some interesting discussion.

Do suppliers just use straight LME and then add hop oil or do they mash properly, boil with hops added at the correct intervals and then concentrate the brew to a loverly goo?
Do they design the mix for a kilo of sugar or is it that they make what ever and specify as much sugar as they can get away with so the punters get a product at a price?

 

[blackbock]

Well, yes and no. Grain naturally germinates and starts to convert its starches in sugars to feed the seedling until it has leaves.

What malting is, is the process of soaking the grain so as to start this process as occurs in nature. What then happens is it is allowed to proceed to a certain point and then the grain is dried and [unless its light/lager malt] roasted.

Mashing and reheating the grain once the malting process has been carried out will release the the malty goodness - it is this 'extract' that is used in making beer, and is actually 100% pure natural malty goodness...at least, as far as I'm aware.

But the toucans that we are talking about are actually concentrated malt extract, which has been dehydrated somehow. They are not the same as the syrup that comes from the mashing process you describe above.
The heating and drying process caramelises them to a degree and changes their fermentability.

Calling goop "malt" is akin to calling dried milk powder "milk" - they are not the same thing, and certainly don't taste the same.

But at least we basically agree that malt-based beer is better than sucrose/dextrose/maltodextrin chemical soup! :lol:

 

[Wortgames]

Do suppliers just use straight LME and then add hop oil or do they mash properly, boil with hops added at the correct intervals and then concentrate the brew to a loverly goo?

I think the answer to this question is in the price. I don't think there's any way you could do a full mash with 'real' hops etc and then boil it down into a tin that could retail for under a tenner.

I suspect there are only a small number of manufacturers that have the facilities to produce malt extract, which may or may not be primarily intended for the homebrew market - food manufacturers use a hell of a lot of the stuff, and given that things like breakfast cereals and mars bars are all made with malt extract it would be entirely possible that homebrew concentrates are merely a sideline and not big enough to have any clout with the basic extract production process.

It would be nice to hear from someone who knows for sure, but my guess is that the base malt extract itself is a relatively generic product, and probably wouldn't differ from kit to kit - it would just depend on which producer it came from. Then the kit manufacturer would add a few colours and flavours to tweak it into a specific style and stick it in a tin with a sachet of yeast under the lid.

 

[blackbock]

That's an interesting point too - I had never considered that. I always figured that your average tin of goo was simply LME with a bit of coloured malt extract and hop extract added. It never occurred to me that they deliberately increased the body to compensate for the addition of sugar.

Is it a fact?

Wortgames this topic was also touched upon in another thread recently in which MHB was discussing sugars. I think it was here.

Given that nearly every can I've seen around tells you to use "brewing sugar" with these kits, it seems very convenient to the can manufacturers that sugar also reduces the body somewhat. It could just be a coincidence, but I think there could be something behind it.

It would be nice if Coopers and the others provided more information on the subject, but I guess its a bit out of the scope of the average K+K brewer. In reality most people don't want to try anything more than the basic K+K.

 

[boingk]

It would be nice if Coopers and the others provided more information on the subject, but I guess its a bit out of the scope of the average K+K brewer. In reality most people don't want to try anything more than the basic K+K

Definitely be great if we could be provided with some info...I mean, we're the ones using the products! I personally would like to know exactly what I'm doing, and with what ingredients, so I can produce a more enjoyable beverage

The 'in reality...' comment is probably true - I'm fairly satisfied with my efforts so far with just using K&K methods. Hell, I use white sugar to prime instead of dextrose and I'm happy. That said, I do enjoy researching different and sometimes more advanced recipes, brew modifications and techniques. I don't think I'll be venturing down the AG road within the next few years, but maybe eventually.

For now, moving on to a partial mash would be the most advanced thing I'd attempt - which I probably will within the next few brews...curiosity of how much better things can be is taking hold!