"home Brew" Taste

[manticle]

People on here talk about Mini Mashes and Partial Mashes. What is the difference between the two?

Essentially none.

A small amount of grain is mashed in both cases. With a partial mash, the rest of the fermentables are made up with a kit or some extract so part of the fermentables come from the mash (hence 'partial mash').

With a minimash, the same thing happens but it might be added to beef up a beer that's already full mash (or not - it's not really specified). A partial mash uses a minimash but a minimash won't always be made for a partial mash.

Steeping specialty grains to add to a kit/extract brew is different from mashing and is not a partial mash.

 

[sgw86]

A bog standard House Kit for me would include.

Kit
800g DME
200g Wheat Malt Extract (Lovely Head)
250g Dex Max. (Maybe)
200g Crystal 60 (cracked and steeped at roughly 65-70'c)
150g Carapils (cracked and steeped at roughly 65-70'c)
Specialty Yeast - For me US-05 has treated me well.

Crack the grains and soak in water 65-70'c for 30-60 mins (I like 60)

Strain the grains and rinse with 80'c water.

Depending on boil volume, say 4 lt, add 400g DME, Boil the resulting liquid for 20mins (lightly) add flavour hops when boiling, 10g of hops of choice, at 10 mins to go add another 10g of hops of choice. at 0 min add another 10g of hops of your choice. Leave for 5 mins and strain into fermenter. (or smaller amounts of hops depending on your taste / whatever you have on hand)

add the rest of the ingredients and continue as normal.

At 4-5 days into ferment add 1-2g per liter of hops of choice for a dry hop. allow to ferment out. Leave for 1 more week at 20'c (temps raised slowly toward the end of ferment) then cold condition. If you dont have access to a fridge you may want to consider using a bag to contain the hops... I only ever did once or twice though, it's just 1 more thing to bloody clean.

Temp control is critical for producing a clean tasting beer as is not using the kit yeast for anything but nutrient.

If you havnt got it, get the kit and extract spreadsheet on this forum HERE its a great tool for playing about with and getting to know the processes.

Yob

ed: clarity

Yob,

When you talk about soaking the grains in 65-70C water is that basically just boiling up the water to 70C and then turning the heat off and letting the grain soak for 60mins? or do you keep the heat on and boil it lightly?

When you strain the grain (Do I just use a grain bag) and then can I just pour the 80C water over the bag into the wort?

 

[manticle]

http://www.aussiehomebrewer.com/forum/inde...;showarticle=80

Check out the articles section for various how tos - there's a lot of quality info in there (just gloss over the ones that obviously shouldn't be there where a noob has posted an 'article' instead of a thread by mistake)

 

[ekul]

The knk has the homebrew taste that you can't get rid of though. To minimise that the twang you're going to want to start investigating malt extracts, hops and grains, thats where things start getting expensive.

So my usual recipe was as follows

3kg liquid malt extract @ $9.90 a kg (I was being ripped off though maybe)
.5kg dex $2
50g of hops $4

Cost $35

Compared to a fresh wort kit for $40. PLus the fresh wort kit will taste like beer, ands it quicker as well.

FWIW an all grain aussie ale will cost me around $15-18 per 23L...

 

[manticle]

Extract brewing is good for learning about hopping schedules etc, which FWK can't really do.

FWK will usually make high quality beer for no effort and at points where I have been to busy to brew, I have happily made and drunk a couple. Definitely worth a go, just to see the difference between extract and AG.

 

[iralosavic]

Ah thanks for breaking your costs down. When I brew extracts, I just grab a <$15 can, add some DME and dex if applicable and a single flavour hop late in a 10-20 min boil. $7-11 for a good dried yeast. I don't include the hops in my cost as it's only ever surpless stuff I use. My total cost is usually under $25, assuming I have to buy yeast. I'm gearing up to split and store yeast to save on this front.

That being said, I'm contemplating buying a fresh wort kit as I'm taking a keg full of whatever style my mate requests to his 30th which is only a month away, so I don't have time to get it wrong...

 

[Arghonaut]

The knk has the homebrew taste that you can't get rid of though. To minimise that the twang you're going to want to start investigating malt extracts, hops and grains, thats where things start getting expensive.

I've gone back to extract recently as i dont have the time for AG at the moment. It isnt that much more expensive. A sack of dry malt extract from craftbrewer comes out at $5.50 a kg. I usually use anywhere from 2.5 - 3.5 kg per 23l batch. A few hundred grams of spec grains costs $1 - 2. By buying hops in 500 gram lots and reusing/harvesting yeast you can easily do $20 batches for a simple beer or max $30 for a bigger beer.

Frankly any hop driven styles like APA's, IPA's, are almost indistinguishable to the AG versions i have done. If you look at some US sites where extract brewing seems to be far more popular, you can get some well reviewed recipes for alot of styles, next on my list are a couple of belgian ales, an ESB and an irish red that i have found popular extract recipes for.

Extract seems to get a lot of knockers on this forum, but i think it is a valid option for those of us who cant spend 4+ hours making beer, but want more control then a kit gives you.