HomeBrew Taste

[slash22000]

The thing is a Coopers kit isn't just "extract", it's basically a complete wort that has been dehydrated. It's malt, bittering hops, and flavour/aroma hops all in the can.

Boiling won't "ruin" the extract exactly but it will drive off the aroma/flavour/etc that Coopers have put into the kit and only leave behind the bitterness. The IPA can is one of their most bitter so if you boil off the flavour/aroma you'll just end up with a bitter beer that tastes like nothing.

If you're going to boil things, add the kit can last once the boil has finished.

 

[carniebrew]

I was told by a friend that boiling the kits cool help rid it of that home brew taste but could boiling it also ruin the kit extract?

I'm afraid your friend's advice is very poor. Don't ever boil a pre-hopped kit can. That's already been done for you. You're not ruining the extract itself, but you are undoing all the work the brewery has done with their hop addition timings. For example any late hop additions they did for flavour and aroma will be boiled off.

Instead you should have added ~250gm of LME to 2 litres of boiling water, and done your hop boil in that. Once complete, pour that into the fermenter, then add the rest of the LME and the kit can, mix well, and top up with cold water to your desired batch volume.

 

[Shanta]

Wow no kidding, thanks for your sound advice "carniebrew" I have been doing this for a while (boiling the kit can) as I had never stumbled across this website before. Its great! Hopefully now I might start brewing something serious. Thanks again to all your helpful comments. I will put this advice into practice on my next brew.

 

[Bribie G]

Unfortunately there's not a lot you can do to override the kit twang. I have a heap of rellies arriving for Easter so I got smart and did an All grain lager brew then added two of the blandest mildest kits (Coopers Canadian Blonde), used some aroma hops and a top quality lager yeast. The intention was to make 2 kegs of a bland but clean tasting version of megaswill to keep the herd happy, but do it in half the time.
I kegged it a few days ago - it has ended up tasting like kit beer.

Mate from Sydney usually arrives for the weekend with a slab of something fairly drinkable like Henninger or a James Squire and after a couple we get onto the home brew (AG) and it holds its own nicely against the commercial.
This time we both agreed the home brew tastes like..... would you believe home brew.

It will be going down the drain later today - both kegs.

:unsure:

Sorry to be a purist and not trying to put off new brewers, but after several attempts at modding a kit (actually I did have one isolated success using a can of Cerveza) I've decided that it's not possible, or at any rate unlikely, to polish a turd.
I used a different yeast, hops and a good whack of Aussie barley malt and some wheat malt and can only put the twang down to the process by which the kit wort is concentrated to give that "sour" nasty extract taste. Occasionally some of my all grain wort sits in a "forgotten" place - for example when filling a cube some might run down the side and pool in a recess on the top of an esky, or a bowl I had some in to take a refractometer reading - and for some reason it dries up too quickly to get a wild yeast fermentation so I've ended up with a very small amount of my own "liquid malt extract". On tasting it, there is a lovely malt freshness and I could eat spoonfuls of it. Completely different to the sour, almost acidic twang you get from a bit of kit syrup. When I was a kid they used to dose us with liquid malt extract - I can still taste it and it aint anything like all grain wort.
It gets vacuum boiled in the kit factory and I reckon that just has to be the reason it tastes so vile.

Put it this way, if Coopers Et Al indeed take a whole wort and concentrate it to 80/20 then you should be able to reconstitute it and it should be indistinguishable from, say, a fresh wort kit from Bacchus to that style. I'd put it down to the vacuum boil they do.

In the 1980s before tins, Coopers used to sell 20L fresh wort kits which turned out very similar to their bottled beers.

 

[carniebrew]

Just don't assume that what's being said about 'kit twang' applies to every extract, or every person for that matter. My first brew was a Thomas Coopers Wheat tin and 1kg dextrose, with the kit yeast, fermented under my stairs at around 21 degrees. I still have some, and nobody who's tasted it to date has been able to detect any kit twang. Boring, lifeless and fizzy, but no twang (and surely in a beer that bland the twang would have every opportunity to rear its ugly head). My 2nd kit brew used wb-06 yeast, so I'll ignore that one, 'coz the flavour from wb-06 could hide an elephant. My 3rd brew was a kit Irish Ale, with a tin of Coopers Draught, dme, dex, maltodextrin & golden syrup....kit yeast. No twang detected by the 10 or so people that have tried it.

A mate of mine dropped off a bottle of his very first home-brew on the weekend, an amber ale kit from his local Ballarat HBS (their extract & yeast...I suspect it's Coopers rebranded?). It's too fizzy, very bland, and needs a LOT more hops....but there's no 'homebrew twang'....and he's had at least half a dozen of his family and mates try it, asking every one of 'em if they can taste that "home brew taste".

The beer that first got me into home brewing, from a mate Adam at my work, was a Coopers Australian Pale Ale kit...I never asked his exact recipe, but it was a really, really good beer...and this was back when I hadn't tried a homebrew in 10 years, so I was waiting to taste something very ordinary (I'd done heaps of 'on premise' brews, but was a bit afraid of home brew after a mate's failed experiments many years before). And just to be clear, I've always despised VB, would only drink Carlton Draught on tap if there was nothing else on offer, and have enjoyed 'micro' or 'craft' beers for many years, Sierra Nevada, Weihenstephan, Schoffer...and James Squire/Matilda Bay/Little Creatures type beers. So it's not as if I hadn't ever tried anything but megaswill.

I'm about to do a full extract collaboration brew with a fellow AHB member who's only done kits and FWK's to date...he has a brew of his that he thinks has 'that homebrew taste', so he's bringing me one. Maybe I'll discover something that I've been tasting all along but just haven't known?

 

[slash22000]

I've never had any body be able to explain to me exactly what this "kit twang" tastes like. Apparently, if it comes from a kit, it tastes bad. End of story.

I wonder if it's purely psychological. I've made a number of kits and never tasted some kind of mystery, terrible taste that I've never perceived before in any commercial beer. Not that kit beers are as good as commercial beers or anything, but surely if this "kit twang" was so obvious you would be able to taste it ONLY in a kit beer and not in any other type of beer.

I've never drank an all-grain home brew, but I've drank kit brew, extract brew and commercial beers and I've never perceived anything in the kit beer that really stood out as a fault only perceivable in those kit beers.

Maybe it's something I'm tasting that I just don't perceive as "kit twang" like everybody else does.

 

[Bizier]

I am sensitive to oxidised extract flavours and it is rare not to have them from a kit, esp when stored under hot aussie conditions. Same goes for large proportions of sugar in a light beer. Always tastes like fermented sugar. Combine them with stressed yeast flavours and possibly a mild infection and that is most kit beers I've tasted.

When I made my first one of these I felt like I was the first on the planet to discover beer.

Decent beer can be made of a kit, but in my opinion it requires it to be fresh and use lots of hops and spec malts plus another yeast.

If you are going to boil something, boil your water that you will use, or at least heat it over 60ºc and let it slowly cool. Mains water is not sterile at all.

 

[Bribie G]

It could well be that it's a flavour combination that a lot of people just can't pick - like some people can't taste diacetyl. Using the best malt extract and hops and yeast I still get it. In a way I wish I too was immune as it would surely make my brewing life a lot simpler and I could get the car into the garage once again :lol:

 

[Tony]

Some froieds of mine at work went and had some beers made at the brew by you place, and when i tasted them....... they all had the twang.

Aparently they use large amounts of malt extract.

The beers were nice, clean, no infection etc etc, but they had that artificial kind of taste that sits on top of your tongue. I used to get it in all my kits when i started, which is what drove me to experiment with bashing a kilo of pilsner malt wrapped in a teatowl with a rolling pin............. but thats another story

 

[bum]

I've never had any body be able to explain to me exactly what this "kit twang" tastes like. Apparently, if it comes from a kit, it tastes bad. End of story.

I wonder if it's purely psychological. I've made a number of kits and never tasted some kind of mystery, terrible taste that I've never perceived before in any commercial beer.

As I recall it, you also said something similar about brewing at 30C a little while ago. I think I remember you talking about a fridge or something since then. I'd be interested to see if you've noticed any change yet.

 

[Pickaxe]

As a noob brewer, i've only got about 14 brews under my belt, I am learning from these experienced guys that temp control is all important. I brewed in Sydney in a basement apartment that had no temperature problems, I could brew at the temp i wanted and on a stinking hot day, all I got to was 22 degrees.

Now I live on the Sunshine coast and I'm having trouble. With this summer weather and my less than isnulated house, I've had massive fluctuations in temp and had problems with taste. This summer has been a bitch with ultra high temps one day, then cooler days the next which can make me complacent or unprepared.

Pitch at lowest temp possible. Maintain those temps as much as is physically possible. Don't underestimate the power of a wet towel, ice cubes and a fan ( i don't have the luxury of better equipment yet. Temp is a bigger factor than I realised, until I hit QLD.

Good ingredients + good temperature + good sanitation. It sounds simple, but every brew I keep learning, and these old hands keep drumming the same simple principles for a reason.

 

[Shanta]

As a noob brewer, i've only got about 14 brews under my belt, I am learning from these experienced guys that temp control is all important. I brewed in Sydney in a basement apartment that had no temperature problems, I could brew at the temp i wanted and on a stinking hot day, all I got to was 22 degrees.

Now I live on the Sunshine coast and I'm having trouble. With this summer weather and my less than isnulated house, I've had massive fluctuations in temp and had problems with taste. This summer has been a bitch with ultra high temps one day, then cooler days the next which can make me complacent or unprepared.

Pitch at lowest temp possible. Maintain those temps as much as is physically possible. Don't underestimate the power of a wet towel, ice cubes and a fan ( i don't have the luxury of better equipment yet. Temp is a bigger factor than I realised, until I hit QLD.

Good ingredients + good temperature + good sanitation. It sounds simple, but every brew I keep learning, and these old hands keep drumming the same simple principles for a reason.

Hi Pickaxe,

I recently bought myself one of these http://www.orso.biz/ProductsDetail.aspx?ID=4692 to put my fermenter in to keep the brew cool, when its not in use its easy to pack and store away. I usually freeze some 1.5 litre bottles and place them around the side of the fermenter within the cooler. Cuts down on water costs and I can reuse them on and off.

Hope something like this might work for you - goodluck

 

[slash22000]

As I recall it, you also said something similar about brewing at 30C a little while ago. I think I remember you talking about a fridge or something since then. I'd be interested to see if you've noticed any change yet.

I've been brewing in my controlled freezer for a long while now, but I also haven't made a basic "Coopers kit + Coopers yeast" beer since I started using the fridge, so I don't actually have a direct comparison. I use a Birko urn to make extract brews at the moment. Will get bulk grain to Darwin one day.

I have something of the opposite problem. I have "yeast twang". <_< Maybe I'm doing something wrong but it seems every beer I make with US-05 has this off-putting yeasty vibe to it, despite cold crashing for days etc before kegging. I never had that with the Coopers kit yeast, and a brew I made recently with S-04 doesn't have that same taste to it either. The search for a solution continues.

 

[bum]

US05 is a often stated to be a slow floccer. The Coopers kits yeast is a famously fast floccer.

Time will probably sort it out. Two days of CCing will help but isn't a silver bullet.

 

[Bribie G]

If you have room to spare then a dead fridge - especially large bar fridge if you can get one - makes a good fermenting cabinet with the frozen bottles as used by Shanta above. You can always pick one up free and some electrical stores - the ones who advertise "we'll remove your old fridge" - will give them away with a delivery charge to get rid of them if you explain what it's for and that you aren't a fridgie trying to steal their business.

That was the only method I ever used (and won a couple of medals) till I got a couple of working fridges that I could use a temperature controller on. When you get good at it you can control your temp within a couple of degrees, but can't go on holiday and leave it :huh: so you are a bit of a slave to the method.

 

[Hodshon]

Possibly advice from Americans. They sure do love boiling things.

If it ain't boilin over, it ain't cookin'... ; ) Cheers from the U.S.

 

[kierent]

I was told by a friend that boiling the kits cool help rid it of that home brew taste but could boiling it also ruin the kit extract?

The thing with boiling is that it brings the bitterness out of the hops. As far as I understand it, if you boil the IPA kit it will increase the bitterness. I don't think boiling extract will affect it other than if you do it for any great length of time it might caramalise it a bit more. Unless they only use hop extract in the IPA kit, would that increase bitterness? Someone might know the answer to that?

When I used kits I never boiled the kit, but I did boil extract.