Using All Dried Malts In An Extract Brew?

[flattop]

Well done Jase, i am up to brew 5 and still using kits, i have picked up some US05 and 100g of hops today though
I have a backlog of kits i picked up "on special" to use up (grabbed 2 more today) Got an ESB kit $10 off.

As for the financial's depending on which size and flavor a carton of stubbies = approx 8 litres beer for $40 (approx $5 a liter), a K&K kit say $15 and $3 for dextrose (approx 1.25 a liter) obviously expenses go up depending on which kit, how much dex or malt, cost of crown seals etc (plus labor) but the quality of product (should) be better.

 

[0M39A]

Main point of argument with the missus will be "But you drank the cheaper stuff you made, why can't you keep drinking it??"

Still cheaper than $15 a 6pk at the local bottle-o though

Might continue with the Real Ale idea for now (I have 3 sitting in my big plastic box of goodies) and work on finding me some cheap LDME...

go 2 cans of real ale, and dont bother with a bittering hop addition, the two kits will do a great job.

then just use a little dme, and your crystal malt and do a short boil with whatever hops you feel like, and most important, a decent yeast.

 

[Tyred]

Grain and grape has 20kg bags of light dries malt extra for $125. From memory, they sell Bintani DME.

As said before, talk to your LHBS. You may be able to do some sort of deal with them.

 

[Gavo]

Main point of argument with the missus will be "But you drank the cheaper stuff you made, why can't you keep drinking it??"

Word of warning, once you do an extract and steep some grains do your own hop additions you won't want to drink the cheaper stuff. Better still if SWMBO drinks your beer she also will not want to go back to the cheaper stuff. So everyone's a winner.

Just to add to the idea of buying your malt in 25Kg bags, I walked into a HBS on one of my trips to the big smoke (no affiliation to the sponsors, didn't know them at the time) and asked about the price of LDME this way and he offered 25Kg fo $138. That's only $5.52 a Kg! certainly makes extract brewing cheaper. Damn wish I had bought it then but I was using kits at the time. :angry:

Just jump in, do an extract and see how it goes, Hell you have the ingredients right now, why wait any longer. If you like the result, check out buying in bulk. I Know next time I go back to the big smoke I will be looking to buy my malt in bulk.

Cheers
Gavo.

 

[Bribie G]

Still cheaper than $15 a 6pk at the local bottle-o though

You've hit the nail squarely on the head there mate, If you want to drink something a cut above megaswill, for example Stella - which isn't that much better - you're up for more like $18 at the local Liquorland. Sometimes I scream at paying $30 to make a good brew but let's keep it in perspective :icon_cheers:

 

[Pollux]

mmmmm, many opinions to take on board....

I can picture the missus response "I thought you started homebrew to save money??" She doesn't drink beer.........

Thanks to all my reading and people's replies, I'm starting to wonder if I should just take the plunge and start doing partials, Get a bucket with a snaplock tap, a wide mouthed grainbag and just jump right on in.......

 

[Fantoman]

I can picture the missus response "I thought you started homebrew to save money??" She doesn't drink beer.........

I think just about every married hb'er has had to justify the costs to SWMBO

My only suggestion is that the response "I did, but now it's turning into a life consuming obsession!" probably isn't the best response

I was lucky... I got my wife to pop into Uncle Dans to pick up a case each of LCPA and JSGA shortly before I started brewing (the 2 cases came to around $110) so she doesn't see the $30ish per brew (all extract) as too bigger problem :chug:

 

[Gavo]

I can picture the missus response "I thought you started homebrew to save money??" She doesn't drink beer.........

Oh well, it was just a thought.

I'm starting to wonder if I should just take the plunge and start doing partials, Get a bucket with a snaplock tap, a wide mouthed grainbag and just jump right on in.......

As the Nike add says, Just do it.

Cheers
Gavo

 

[Pollux]

Wife has just read this over my shoulder after getting home from work.....

I think she must have been helping herself to the drug cabinet at work (she's a nurse) as the words "Provided it doesn't go over $50 a batch" just came out of her mouth....


Note to self, waiting till tomorrow when she gets home to ask for kegs....

 

[fergi]

just thinking here,why dont you guys just spend your own money instead of asking the wife,spend your own and she doesnt have a clue what it costs,or for that matter she probably wouldnt care, i dont get it, old saying,,,never let the left hand know what the right hand is doing
cheers
fergi

 

[Jase71]

just thinking here,why dont you guys just spend your own money instead of asking the wife,

LOL, someone had to come out and say it. Maybe our poor ol' beer brother doesnt get any pocket money from his missus.
You could always brew up a kilo of dextrose and cheap yeast in water, add some red cordial and wa'la... designer RTD's to keep the finance manager happy while you go shopping on your own :icon_cheers:

Alternatively, selling some of those hospital pharms on the side might help fund the brews. I'll place my order now for a litre of morphine please.

 

[Pollux]

While we have one income (mine) while my wife studies, all purchases are a joint decision......
And given I allocate a certain amount of my pay to the grocery shopping, she may get a bit peeved if my brew budget exceeded that.....

Welcome to the joys of having an open and trusting marriage, I know what she does, she knows what I do...No secrets in this house.



Plus, and this is the major one, if HB starts to piss her off, I will lose my bottling assistant, and I can't be arsed doing it by myself....

 

[Weizguy]

<abbrev>
I can picture the missus response "I thought you started homebrew to save money??" She doesn't drink beer.........
</abbrev>

So did I, dear. So did I, but now it's becoming a situation where it's about the flavour, and I can't do that on the same budget. Then you might need to buy a mixed 6 from Dan's (or wherever...I'm not fussy) including a German Pils, Czech pils, Munich Dark, English bitter, Weizen, Witbier, and a Tripel, for example. Tally that up and then advise that you could have made a batch of any of these for about the same price or less.

I didn't have this problem, as I was only drinking a 6 pack of beer or less each week, so the (now ex, but unrelated to this topic) Missus was happy to see me making beer and enjoying its consumption at whatever price. It was cheaper when I started with K&K, but then I moved on. In the times when you can't afford a batch, you stretch the supplies until you can afford it.

Remember it's not about the money, it's about the beer. You don't need to brew as often if you enjoy it every time you have a beer. The Unibroue credo is "Drink less, drink better", and a lot of brewers should keep that in mind.
Testify!

 

[fergi]

yes well i can appreciate your circumstances pollux, if thats the case then you have to be a bit carefull,but one day when your missus works youll be able to do what you like with your hobby,i know theres a lot of guys here that spend a lot of money on their gear and i certainly dont have that sort of expendable cash either, but i do spend my own money and then you dont have to justify to the missus what your buying.and as Les the weizguy said better to make less but make quality, i know since i have just got my keg system i drink a lot more ,this will pass though as the novelty bit is still on,
cheers
fergi

 

[Gavo]

Wife has just read this over my shoulder after getting home from work.....

I think she must have been helping herself to the drug cabinet at work (she's a nurse) as the words "Provided it doesn't go over $50 a batch" just came out of her mouth....

Well I can see it now, one extract coming up. Then another, then another....... well you get the idea. No turning back now.

Cheers
Gavo

 

[Hefty]

mmmmm, many opinions to take on board....

I can picture the missus response "I thought you started homebrew to save money??" She doesn't drink beer.........

Thanks to all my reading and people's replies, I'm starting to wonder if I should just take the plunge and start doing partials, Get a bucket with a snaplock tap, a wide mouthed grainbag and just jump right on in.......

This is the advice I was given and I'm sooo glad I listened. I went from Kits and bits straight to my first partial mash this weekend just gone.

The only extra expenses above and beyond the ingredients for me were $20 for a digital probe thermometer and $20 for a hops/grain bag (I used it for both within the one brew day) and both should last me for quite a few years I expect.
Did my mash in the grain bag in a six pack esky, strained the mash liquor back throught the grains in the bag to clear the runnings a little and then boiled it up with the hops and a little extra DME for my utilisation calculations. Added the rest of 2.5kg of DME at flameout.
Even got into fast wort cooling with some pre-frozen 1.25L PET bottles of ice sanitised with acidulated bleach solution and submerged in the wort with the lid over them. 10L From >90*C down to 24*C in about half an hour!

I'm not even at AG level yet but already I feel like the possiblities have just become endless!

Cheers!
Jono.

 

[olde]

Pollux, your preferences are pretty much exactly the same as mine, so you might like to try the following. I was aiming for a Golden Ale knockoff but didn't have all the exact ingredients as Smurtos famed clone called for.
Can Coopers Real Ale
Can Coopers Liquid Wheat Malt Extract
Brought 1Litre water and approx 200g of wheat malt to the boil, tossed in 12g Amarillo hops.
After 10 mins of that boiling threw in 12g of Cascade.
Boiled further 5 mins and tipped into fermenter with remaining ingredients.
Topped up to 22L and added sachet of S-04. (Preferred to use US-05 but had none handy).
Yum.

 

[Pollux]

Okay, I have just been reading on howtobrew.com.........

yeah, I can do partials, seems easy enough...

Plan now is

1) Find two foodgrade buckets to build a bucket in bucket mashtun
2) Purchase some grains from LHBS
3) Work out a system which would allow me heat my strike and sparge water easily in the kitchen (I currently have a 15L pot for boiling, thinking heat the strike water in it, get the mash started, meanwhile heat sparge water in same pot and funnel into cube with tap until needed for sparge)
4) Workout a recipe
5) Purchase some brewing software to make step 4 easier
6) Make tasty beer
7) Wait
8) Drink tasty beer....And simply alter my consumption levels so I still drink $X worth of HB a week, but it's better.


Thanks to whoever it was on the chat last night who suggested doing partials, I can't remember who it was now, but thank you....

 

[buttersd70]

Pollux...
extract brews are good, partials are....so much better. Theyre surprisingly easy to do, and they're fairly forgiving as well. Even if the grain side of it goes a bit pear shaped, and say you miss your targets and efficiencies....you can just up the extract side of it on the fly, and it's still great beer. I skipped partials entirely and went from extracts to AG. I've only just recently gone back to partials (cos stocks are low, and on my AG rig, if I do it as a partial it means I can easily do it as a double batch). I have to say that a well made partial rates right up with AG in the end result.

 

[seemax]

I do brew K&K for guys at work, and whilst cheap (<$20 for 23L) and easy (< 1hr) they tend to produce what I would call average beer. A few have surprised me (APA with Coopers bottle yeast) though.

Extract really does open up the doors for brewing a wide range of great beer. The end result is in your control and you get to use 'real' hops, not hop extract. You can decide how malty, or how bitter. It also means you can choose a quality yeast, dry or liquid. Cost wise, it's only marginally more. I buy LME in 5kg bags at $7/kg. Dry yeast is $4-5, but I'll sometimes get a 6mth old Wyeast for $7. Hops, $4-8 per brew. So for 23L using 2kg of LME, it's around $22-25.

Partial mashing- now things are getting interesting. Use LME as your base and steep some well modified malt for additional flavour. It might be as simple as crystal for sweetness, carapil for body, or choc malt for a lovely roasted edge. The extra time to steep (30mins) is worth it. IMO, you can produce fantastic beer using this method without the time and equip needed for all grain. It only adds $1-2 to the price of a 23L batch.

Although I prefer and enjoy all grain brewing, with a busy job, 2 young kids, house renovations, etc I struggle to find the time. I have done what i call fast track all grain. I boil 2L water + 200g LME and do my hop schedule in that for 60mins. At the same time I do my mash in the esky tun for 60mins. Once mashed & sparged I split boil the wort for 15mins on my kitchen stove. I then no chill into a cube and pitch the yeast at midday the next day. This method can be done in 2-3 hours. In terms of cost, my last few brews have been using mostly Powells malt at $3/kg. So a 5kg mash + yeast/hops is about $25!