First extract in years and a g'day

Australia & New Zealand Homebrewing Forum

Help Support Australia & New Zealand Homebrewing Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

dark_brew

Member
Joined
10/11/14
Messages
13
Reaction score
4
Location
Perth
Hi Guys,

Thought I would introduce myself and say g’day! I have just put down my first brew in a number of years (five or six) – and the information in this forum has been extremely helpful.
I had completed a number of all-grain brews years ago that were absolutely delicious. However due to a change in circumstance, yada’yada, I have not been able to brew and no longer owned any brewing equipment. So I have started from scratch and will be doing a number of extract brews to get my feet back on the ground and a good stock of beer in the fridge.
For the first one…. I have followed Dr Smurto’s golden ale showing off the Amarillo hops.
Coopers wheat 1.5 kg
Coopers light 1.5 kg
TF Crystal Malt 250 g
22 g Amarillo @ 60
15 g Amarillo @ 15
20 g Amarillo @ 5

One of the reasons I originally went all-grain was to eliminate any kind of “extract kit twang” that I could taste…yes I have come back to extract, but I am presuming that “twang” was more a younger brewer me than the extract….or so I hope, it is the one main objective of this brew to make sure there is no twang.

I will put the method I used below and am open to any critiquing / suggestions of improvement.

Method:

Yeast starter (1 Litre) of 1272 created using 100 g of DME. Left to ferment for three days at 18 degrees (shaken when I remembered, no stir plate yet).

Sanitised the sod out of everything

250 g of crystal malt steeped at 65 degrees for 30 min (using a paint strainer bag from green shed)

Topped up to 10 L, rolling boil and enough LME added to bring the SG up to 1040

Boiling schedule followed, rest of the LME added at 5 min (okay, I found a small black smear on the bottom of my thin bottomed kettle – a 15.1 L kmart stock pot, its not thick – i.e you cannot scour this off, but there is deffo a black burnt stain, tasting the beer from the hydrometer glass there were no burnt flavours…so hopefully okay! Perhaps I need to add the extract more gradually?)

Wort mixed with filtered cold water (3 degrees C) in primary fermenter, left another 2 hours to cool down to 22 degrees (covered and in fridge - should have ice bathed or immersion chilled the wort…) where yeast starter was pitched, OG 1043

Currently in a fermenting fridge at 17 degrees, aiming for a clean crisp ferment.

Going to leave it for 7 days and two full days of no SG movement, then cold crash for two weeks around 5 degrees C (not sure I can get lower than this) before dry hopping with 1 g/l of Amarillo 2 or 3 days prior to bottling.

I will keep you posted.... planning a nice strong stout next, thanks again and hello!
 
hello dark brew, welcome back
good to see you back on your feet with a solid extract brew, you'll be back AG before you know it.
 
I only get twang , off flavours or what I perceive as a stale grain flavour from pre-hopped coopers kits so I have stopped buying so many of them, I've still got a small stock pile to get through just to put down some quick keg fillers for personal consumption in between extract brews , I'm hesitant offering the kit brews to mates as I don't want to put them off my beer. I've now moved on to all extract and get very little if any detectable off flavours however I now buy fresh ESB brand malt extract from my LHBS. the beer is miles better than the kits. I Might have to do a coopers all extract to compare and see if I get any off flavours.
 
Thanks for the advised BigD, i'll have a look for fresh malt extract - I am pretty sure my LHBS sells them, I was just unsure if they were all hopped too... i'll have a look to see if they sell unhopped and continue from there
 
The only time I have ever tasted twang is with pre-hopped kits. I never use them. I only use DME now & get great (twang free) tasting beer
 
I've used DME before it made a great twang free beer. I just find tins of malt extract easier to use, mixing 3kg of LDME can be a real PITA however I will often use 1/2kg DME in my 5 litre boils.
 

Latest posts

Back
Top