What's Your Ideal 1kg Sugar Blend For K&k Lager/draught?

[Barley Belly]

I'm looking at starting to make my own sugar blends instead of buying the pre-mixed body blend/BE1 etc.

Just wondering on some ideas for the ideal 1kg sugar blend for K&K?

For say a Morgan's Blue Mountain Lager

I have been buying from my LHBS 1 kg Brew Cellar No10 Body Blend which I believe is a Dex & Maltodex blend and I add two cups of LDME.

 

[blackbock]

In my kit & kilo days I avoided maltodextrin like the plague. In my brewery if it doesn't ferment, it definitely doesn't go into my lagers. Therefore I would try a 50/50 blend of malt extract and dextrose as a starting point.

 

[wambesi]

I'm looking at starting to make my own sugar blends instead of buying the pre-mixed body blend/BE1 etc.

Just wondering on some ideas for the ideal 1kg sugar blend for K&K?

For say a Morgan's Blue Mountain Lager

I have been buying from my LHBS 1 kg Brew Cellar No10 Body Blend which I believe is a Dex & Maltodex blend and I add two cups of LDME.

I did the same as I liked to play around with the mixes, prior to AG'ing.
I also tried to get away from maltodextrin however it can be good to aid in head retention in K&K's, but I would not add any more that 250gm of it.

Play around with the figures your self but I usually ended up with 500g LDME, 250g Dex, 250g Maltodex when doing that mix, but after a while I ditched the other two and went mostly DME.

 

[DKS]

I'm looking at starting to make my own sugar blends instead of buying the pre-mixed body blend/BE1 etc.

Just wondering on some ideas for the ideal 1kg sugar blend for K&K?

For say a Morgan's Blue Mountain Lager

I have been buying from my LHBS 1 kg Brew Cellar No10 Body Blend which I believe is a Dex & Maltodex blend and I add two cups of LDME.

Half the fun is making it up for yourself and see how it goes, how you like the results. Plenty of recipes on AHB. You may notice the dry malt doesnt ferment out completely so to keep you alc levels up I think it works out about 1.5dm:1dex. Make sure you keep a record of all your brews. I also agree with not much more than 250 maltodextrin, any more it gets a bit too syrup like. :icon_cheers:
Daz

 

[Bribie G]

I have been getting very consistent results with kit + 500g LDME + 750g dex.

Using just a Morgans Queensland Bitter, the added sugars and a teabag of Cluster hops the result has been judged by the "tasting crew" as superior to some of the megaswills like VB or Toohey's New. Although of course a kit will never give the rich malt grain tones of an all grain brew, nevertheless a lot of commercial beers particularly CUB overpower the brew with excessive hop extract bitterness that tends to drown out any subtle grain flavours so kits do a good job by comparison. I find the LDME fills out the often 'thin' taste of kits, particularly the lighter Coopers kits.

On reflection, for me the alc content makes my current brews a bit strong for a session beer, so next brews will be 500 + 500 and see how that goes.

 

[solidghost]

For a draught, I think you can get away with a good amount of dextrose. It's meant to be easy drinking and doesn't need to have heavy on the body.
Cooper's BE2 seems to do the trick for me.

 

[boingk]

I'd have a punt at what I use as a stock additive: 500g LDME and 300g Dextrose. Incidentally, thats what the Coopers 'Premium Selection' cans recommend be added to them. I find it works well with pretty much any can to give a beer with decent malt profile, flavour, head retention, and alcohol content. Plus, its economical and dead easy.

Cheers - boingk

EDIT: If you were hard pushed to put EXACTLY 1kg worth of stuff in though...I'd throw 200g of some sort of grain in as well. This would vary depending on style.

 

[Thunderlips]

so next brews will be 500 + 500 and see how that goes.

When I'm not fermenting fresh wort or the 3kg ESB kits, 500+500 is what I always use.
Some dry wheat malt is also a good addition as it can really help with head retention.

 

[brettprevans]

In my kit & kilo days I avoided maltodextrin like the plague. In my brewery if it doesn't ferment, it definitely doesn't go into my lagers. Therefore I would try a 50/50 blend of malt extract and dextrose as a starting point.

so you had watery beers with little body? Malto dex gives body AND Alc. its fermentable, just not completely fermentable. in saying that, using some crystal would be better.

completely agree with Butters. it is completely dependant on what you want to make and what your recipe is. depending on these things, will detarmine how much of each ingredient you want to use. I never bothered with BE1/2 etc. Always bought bulk malt, dex etc and mixed my own for each recipe.

 

[muckey]

I use a draught kit with approx 400 total malt (LDME and a small amount of wheat malt) + dex and a dry hop in primary

I tried a 500 LDME a while back, nice beer, good body - lacked a little in head retention (started out with a good head but died quickly) and was a little unbalanced (too malty for my taste) without the dry hop. I like to use asome dex in the blend as it makes balancing the final alc in the beer really easy

some brew blends have maltodextrin in them and while this boosts the body of the beer extremely well it doesn't provide anything else. If you want body and flavour, my preference is to use malt itself. If your happy with the flavour of your brew but think it needs more body the maltodextrin is likely your answer.

the amount of malt you can use depends a lot on what kit you start with and its bitterness

I've not tried any grain steeping but others have had some very successful results with it

I guess the real answer here is - take everything you've read here, try lots of different beers and decide what you're going to brew. It probably wont be exactly want you wanted on the first try so do what every other brewer does - tweak it until you get what you like - and even that may change over time.

for me the 2 most important things in any brew are care and patience. Care with cleaning and temperature and the patience to let it ferment properly

just my 2 cents

 

[blackbock]

so you had watery beers with little body? Malto dex gives body AND Alc. its fermentable, just not completely fermentable. in saying that, using some crystal would be better.

completely agree with Butters. it is completely dependant on what you want to make and what your recipe is. depending on these things, will detarmine how much of each ingredient you want to use. I never bothered with BE1/2 etc. Always bought bulk malt, dex etc and mixed my own for each recipe.

So in essence CM you have no real measurable contribution to make whatsoever to this thread (refer to original post) except to slag off someone else's suggestion with irrelevant garbage and figjam.

 

[Barley Belly]

Just got my cheap set of scales from EVILBAY h34r:

Now I'm off the cup measurements and onto grams

Have been doing 4 cups LDME and 3 cups Dex

So might start at 500/500 and see how it goes as my last coupla brews have finished at around 1014

 

[muckey]

good suggestion butters. mind you, your hop boils dont take you as long to work out as that first 1 did either.

if you have a quick taste after the ferment and it seems like its going to be still too far on the sweet side you can always add a dry hop to punch up the flavour a bit as well.
depends how sweet it is really. If its way too sweet you'll probably need a boil to get the extra bittering into it, if its close some extra hop flavour might be all the push it needs

 

[Barley Belly]

Might I suggest erring on the side of caution, and going 400 ldm and 600dex?

Thanks for the input

Will give your suggested blend a go for my next K + K

 

[boingk]

There's caution about adding extra malt? NO WAY! MORE MALT!

*Launches into tirade about more malt providing more body, taste and general goodness*

I tend to both wet and dry hop most of my stuff as well though, apart from being the ducks proverbial guts for aroma it gives good hop taste and balances the malt character somewhat.

 

[buttersd70]

There's caution about adding extra malt? NO WAY! MORE MALT!

*Launches into tirade about more malt providing more body, taste and general goodness*

I tend to both wet and dry hop most of my stuff as well though, apart from being the ducks proverbial guts for aroma it gives good hop taste and balances the malt character somewhat.

Boingk.
I cant even remember the last time I used dextrose. I always, always, go all malt. In fact, this is stated in my original post, along with the reccomendation that going all malt with a hop boil is preferable. Further to this, I also suggested the alternate strategy of concentrating the bitterness of the tin by reducing overall volume, thus allowing you to do an all malt brew without the need for a boil. I suggest you read my original post before criticising my later ones.

However, the original question was relating to the best sugar blend to use without any additional hopping, at least that was how I read into it, although this point is more implied rather than specifically stated. So my response was taking this into account, and the reality of the situation is that without additional hopping, there is only so much malt you can put in a kit beer before it becomes too sweet.

 

[boingk]

Sorry butters - I didn't mean to seem overly critical, in hindsight I probably should have said something about the 600g of dextrose as this would IMHO probably make the brew quite thin. I remember a brew I did with that ratio and it was quite thin indeed, and also quite sweet but this would probably be because it was only a 17 IBU kit.

Back to the hopping point, I think its a really simple improvement to pretty much any K&K brew to throw 10 or 20g of hops in a saucepan and boil them for 15 minutes or so. Or throw them in dry after 5 to 7 days as somone mentioned above. I can see why some brewers may not want to do this due to experience or expense, but I highly recommend it anyway. And then, yes, all or higher ratio malt brews can be done without having to worry about being underhopped/bittered.

And yes, volume reduction is a good way of getting higher IBUs - I usually brew to 21L because of this, I find 22.5L a bit much for the bitterness to be spread over and also the body suffers etc etc.

Sorry for any misunderstandings.

Cheers - boingk

 

[Bribie G]

I've been out of brewing for a decade or so. I used to do AG in the UK with my Baby Burco and my bible was Dave Line's "Making Beers Like Those You Buy" where he goes very deeply into the chemistry of what's happening. So I was well aware of the fact that at the end of a mash, you end up with Dextrins which are not fermentable but give body, mouthfeel etc to the beer.

So getting back into it I noted the availability of maltodextrin and thought "aha, the clever buggers have managed to package up the Dextrins that you can just add to the recipe". Then I did some research in the last few days and discovered the following appalling facts:

1. Maltodextrin does not have anything to do with malt whatsoever - apart from the first four letters of the name.
2. It can be produced from rice, wheat or even potato starch
3. It is not really a beer related substance.

I wonder how many home brewers out there are under the misapprehension (as I was) that maltodextrin is related to brewers malt. I note that it is an ingredient in my ALDI soy good milk like substance. And there let it stay!

PS One huge leap forward in the last decade or so, IMHO is the availability of grains such as Carapils which do exactly what I referred to in first paragraph, i.e. provide REAL dextrins etc to add body to the brew and I now include them in most of my beers.

 

[buttersd70]

Boingk, in my opinion anything lighter in body than a mild or a cream ale is too thin :lol: . Seriously, your points are absolutely valid.....but early in the thread it was mentioned that the blend was specifically for a lager kit. I dont know the particular IBU for this brand, but I would bet my left one it is somewhere in the region of the 17 IBU you mentioned in your post. (basing this on the ibu of coopers tins, which is known, as they publish it. lager is 17 IBU bang on.) So the blend of 600d 400m is a compromise to get as much malt in without hopping as you can, without reducing the volume too far.

So no worries, boingk. I agree with you, 110%. It's just not what this thread was aiming at. (at least, not what I thought it was aiming at.)

My opinion is, when you do start adding additional hops, why not go that little bit further and add all malt? If you need to up the IBU anyway, a few more grams of hops will allow you to do an all malt beer. It has always mystified me how people, after taking the great leap forward into doing hop boils, continue to use blends. :huh: . I can understand having hesitancy to do a boil for the first time. I was there, once, and am not having a go. Confidence and experience will get you to the point where you feel ok in using hops. But continuing to use ingredients other than malt after you have re-hopped a couple and have confidence in the technique is just strange to me.

And Bribies post is 100% bang on the money. I have never used maltodextrin, ever. (at least, not since I stopped using pre mixed blends that have it in.) Malt extract contains a certain amount of dextrins (but not enough for a good amount of body), carapils and other forms of crystal malt are definately the way to go.

 

[brettprevans]

so you had watery beers with little body? Malto dex gives body AND Alc. its fermentable, just not completely fermentable. in saying that, using some crystal would be better.

completely agree with Butters. it is completely dependant on what you want to make and what your recipe is. depending on these things, will detarmine how much of each ingredient you want to use. I never bothered with BE1/2 etc. Always bought bulk malt, dex etc and mixed my own for each recipe.

To be more eloquent in my response to the original question.

IMHO I dont think there is a general ideal sugar blend as every style of beer is differant and your ingredients bill should be tailor made for each batch (ie buy bulk and mix your own). Yes I think there are probably better blends to use for lagers, for dark beers etc.

All I can offer you are these suggestions.
- dont be afraid to experiment or mix your own.
- feel free to ask people's opinions about ingredients recommendations (specifying what beer you want to make is great for getting answers).
- get to know what each ingredient really is and what it does, so you can make a good decision on how it will affect your beer and how you can make adjustments.
- Nothing wrong with all malt. just adjust the bitterness to compensate for the extra sweetness of the malt.
- nothing wrong with throwing in some dex for extra %alc and no change in taste if your want to. Just dont overdo it cause it makes it thin, watery and a little dry.
- lagers want some body but not too much, a 'draught' (probably wants a little more body than a lighter lager). so some crystal or malt (or maltodex) and some dex if you want the %alc.