Fresh Ingredients

[The King of Spain]

Sorry me again. Too much too soon and obsessed

I noticed in a thread I traced that the "home brew" taste can be due to the fact that the ingredients in so called K&Ks are not always fresh (other boo-boos notwithstanding).

I'm going to try some extract brewing using liquid malt with some helpfull suggestions from this site and wonder if anyone would support (or otherwise) the view that purchasing direct from Coppers will give me fresher products.

Tis all your fault - I'm already looking at grains. Just want to master the basics first.

Cheers

 

[Voosher]

Sorry me again. Too much too soon and obsessed

I noticed in a thread I traced that the "home brew" taste can be due to the fact that the ingredients in so called K&Ks are not always fresh (other boo-boos notwithstanding).

I'm going to try some extract brewing using liquid malt with some helpfull suggestions from this site and wonder if anyone would support (or otherwise) the view that purchasing direct from Coppers will give me fresher products.

Tis all your fault - I'm already looking at grains. Just want to master the basics first.

Cheers

An excellent step forward. I still think going the 'bulk malt and fresh hops route' was one of the great steps forward in appreciating real flavour in a home brewed beer.
However, last time I enquired of Coopers they were slightly cheaper but they wanted me to buy an entire pallet of the stuff.
Shop around though. I've seen the price of Coopers 28kg tubs vary from $80 to $160 in the last few months.
If I can remember who was doing it for $80 I'll let you know.

 

[lucas]

buying bulk liquid malt just sounds like a hassle. the dry stuff is easier to handle, easier to measure out and I'm sure I read it keeps for longer. if you're in Melbourne i have the number of a guy who was selling LDME in bulk quite cheaply earlier in the year though i dont know if he's still doing it.

 

[DrewCarey82]

Liquid would be a nightmare to handle, dry's bad enough.

Go dried for sure.

 

[Justin]

Yep dried ME in my opinion too. Just keep it in a dry place in a sealed, air tight container (or the heat sealed bag they normally come in). It's far less likely to go nasty than the liquid stuff. Freshness seems to be less of an issue with the dried ME too and it also isn't boiled down as concentrated as the liquid stuff is which is a good thing in my opinion.

However, no need to buy it in bulk necessarily. If you're going to buy it in bulk just be sure you'll use it all soon and your able to store it correctly, otherwise I'd just buy a couple of kilos of DME as needed from the brew shop when you get your other supplies like hops, yeast, specialty grains etc. I'd lean more towards buying it on a per kilo basis, because I will hazard a guess that if your going to start brewing non-kit extract beers you'll probably end up mashing soon anyway and may not use the rest of your bulk DME.

A lot of fun can be had when brewing this way with DME, you'll need to add specialty grains to your batch and also your hops-this is easy, so don't be intimidated. This will allow you to brew some great beers with flavour and styles based on your tastes. Use some good dry yeasts like US-56, T-58 and SO4 among others and you'll make some good brews, plus they are easy and hastle free to use.

Won't be long and you'll be obsessed like the rest of us. Best of luck, there is lots of info here if you search but there is also lots of info on the US sites as well.

Cheers, Justin

 

[Wardhog]

I'd lean more towards buying it on a per kilo basis, because I will hazard a guess that if your going to start brewing non-kit extract beers you'll probably end up mashing soon anyway and may not use the rest of your bulk DME.

A lot of fun can be had when brewing this way with DME, you'll need to add specialty grains to your batch and also your hops-this is easy, so don't be intimidated. This will allow you to brew some great beers with flavour and styles based on your tastes. Use some good dry yeasts like US-56, T-58 and SO4 among others and you'll make some good brews, plus they are easy and hastle free to use.

Won't be long and you'll be obsessed like the rest of us.

Spot on. I've just made the step from k&k to extract - my first extract brew isn't even ready yet, and I'm already making plans around what equipment I need to start making partials.

Justin's right about brewing from extract being fun, it most certainly is. And the tasting of pre-bottle conditioned beer makes me think I could never do a k&k again.

 

[DJR]

I think as soon as you go to partial type recipes you might as well spend some more bucks and go all-grain - as the ingredient cost will be smaller when you start buying grain in bulk either cracked or uncracked. The quality is easily better, the difference isn't great over partials but it definitely tastes a lot fresher and more like store-bought beer (in most cases actually better than store bought beer because of the freshness and the ability to create brews no commercial brewer would touch for a decent price) .

I think the original poster was talking about buying the cooper's extracts off the website - i haven't yet done this but i would assume that you could put a "comments" field entry in saying can you please send me one still warm off the production line! I was looking into it and the freight charge was a bit prohibitive.

Buying bulk DME is OK i guess, but it's hygroscopic as buggery, that is, it will absorb water from the air and turn into a brick like substance. You have to make sure whatever you store it in is airtight. Liquid malts have water in them and will oxidise slowly over time leading to some of the off flavours experienced by kit brewers. Personally i think the contribution of this flavour is a bit overdone, as a lot of these flavours also come from poor temp control, poor sanitation, poor yeast management (underpitching/wrong strain) and poor brewing methods, which we all get under our belt at about the same time as going AG/Partial etc.

 

[The King of Spain]

You are right. Found out today that delivery costs kill the idea.