Why do ALL of my can kits taste bad?

[peteru]

I'm still convinced that the most likely fault is the water and possibly the cleaning processes. In particular I would suspect that any chlorine / chloramine present will result in flavour components that some of us are sensitive to and find offensive. I made somewhere between 6 and 8 batches of kit beer that I was unhappy with. Initially I thought my equipment was contaminated and I went as far as replacing everything. Still the same problems. Then I brewed a full boil extract batch and due to bad weather did not clean with pink powder / bleach but instead just used boiling water. The result was excellent. Next batch was full boil again, but this time I used pink powder and hot tap water to rinse. The result wasn't utter rubbish, but it was not quite right. I started suspecting chlorine. At that stage I decided to completely change my cleaning processes and only use unscented napisan to clean, then dry overnight and sanitise with boiling water. Again, the results were not quite right. On the next batch, I again used chlorine free cleaning and sanitising procedures, but also used water that went through a two stage water filter with brand new cartridges, including a coconut active carbon filter. The result was excellent.

Most recently I made a plain old green Coopers can with 1.7kg of Black Rock Light malt extract and 60g of Columbus for dry hopping, plus 7mL of Citra Hop Shot. I had a friend over and she polished off about 1/3 of the keg in one evening and her comment was: "This is great! Much better than the lolly water they brew at Flat Rock."

Now, I would not go as far as that, but it was certainly very drinkable for a kit with minimal tweaking. The curries at Flat Rock are very nice and more than make up for the hit and miss brews. If at all uncertain, the staff at Flat Rock will let you have a taste test before you order a whole pint and it's walking distance from my place (if you are fit or pissed)

TL;DR - kits are not destined to be horrible, but to get decent results out of them, you still need to be careful about the process.

 

[Ducatiboy stu]

At the recent(ish) Grafton show there was a a fair few Kit beers, and all but a couple where really good. The best one you wouldnt pick it for a kit.

It was surprising as most brewers would not be as fanatical as us

I have also had kit beers at swap meets and they where on par with some of the AG beers ( Frogman rate a high mention here )


Saying that all kit beer is crap is nonsesne and just not true

 

[Deep End]

I remember, when I first started brewing, every second brew I made tasted "wrong". I put that down to poor cleaning, although it may have been something else. I still only brew K&K. It does what I need it to do from a beer and I spend more time mucking around on other projects. However, they all taste fine to me. Anyone I have ever shared a brew with has been quite surprised by the lack of early 80's to early 90's homebrew taste in the beer I make.

I put this down to a few variables. The first being decent water, straight from the tap. I drink a lot of water from my taps and I have no issue with it, Tasmanian water is good enough for me. Secondly, I bottle condition and prime each bottle, usually with carb drops, but sometimes with a measure. I just do not drink enough beer to justify needing to make the process any quicker or easier. Thirdly, which pertains to my consumption levels, my brews get plenty of time in the bottle to actually "condition". Three months would pass before the first bottle is cracked.

I have noticed beers, and ciders and other brews, change their flavour over the course of time. Usually in the first three months or so. I do not know anything about cold crashing and kegging and doubt that I ever will need to. But I would hazard a guess that if you bottled a K&K brew and forgot about it for 6 months it might taste a bit nicer, at the very least it would have nice small bubbles and hold a head; if it had the body to do so in the first place.

That is my ten cents worth on the subject :blink:

Cheers

Deep End

 

[Shadime]

Excuse my ignorance but what is K&K?

Cheers

 

[Yob]

Kit and kilo

 

[Curly79]

Kit and Kilo mate. As in a Coopers Can and a Kilo of Fermentables.

 

[stewy]

Kit brew tastes like kit brew; you can improve it with sound sanitation, yeast handling & fermentation control... But, you can't polish a turd.

Treating water is largely pointless with kits, the profile has been locked in (with the exception of excess chloramines, sulfides)..

It is a great starting point though, and I can easily sit back with a few mates & throw back several home made kit beers.

Just set your expectations accordingly.

 

[Vini2ton]

I reckon it's in the production of the extract. I love this thread, as I have a Coopers lager kit sitting there waiting for me to brew up .just as some sort of nostalgic exercise. Spare fermenter waiting to go. It won't be wasted even if I can't stomach it, as it'll be shandied with some stout or whatever. Fond memories of early brewing. The fears, the processes (sanitise, sanitise, sanitise) and the buzz of getting pissed on something you made yourself. I can definitely taste extract malt in beers. Liquid is worse imho. But all booze is good compared to the alterative.

 

[manticle]

Not sure.
I have two batches in cubes (all grain) that are still fermenting but taste like my memory of kk - thin and a touch lifeless.

Both these had mash and boil issues due to equipment malfunction and at the end of a long brewday got way too much hot break carryover.
Take that brulosophy.
Stuff does matter.

 

[contrarian]

I've always thought that something must happen in the process of reducing a 23L wort down to a couple of litres.

It's like dehydrated food that is then rehydrated. The end result is a close approximation of the original but is never the same. Like orange juice made from concentrate never tastes like juice straight from an orange.

That said I've had beers made from kits that have been really tasty and easy to drink. Normally they have had a few more bits and pieces than a kk though.

 

[megabyte]

I have two batches in cubes (all grain) that are still fermenting but taste like my memory of kk - thin and a touch lifeless.

I've brewed bad AG batches too - too many hops, too many cacao nibs, crappy malt choices, high finishing gravity, oh and the time I tried to toast and smoke my own wheat for a dunkelweizen (thanks iron brewer comp!)... but in all cases they still tasted like beer, never like a KK. Do let us know if you've come up with an AG KK clone

It's like dehydrated food that is then rehydrated. The end result is a close approximation of the original but is never the same. Like orange juice made from concentrate never tastes like juice straight from an orange.

Good analogy. In this case I'm brewing the Coopers Australian Pale Ale kit which is meant to be similar to Coopers Pale Ale. I know the commercial beer is all malt (no adjunct) so it's going to be impossible for the K+K to clone it using BE2 which is 25% Dex and 25% Malto, plus as you say, even the malt in the kit has been dehydrated making matters worse. Still, I just want them to taste like proper beer (jokes aside about mega swill) even if it's not the same as the commercial brew.

 

[petesbrew]

Michael, the only kit that seems to be mentioned here is the Coopers Pale Ale.
Dare I ask, have you tried any other kits?

One of the things I mean to do this year is go back and do a KnK brew for the hell of it.

Personally I've never been a big fan of Coopers Pale Ale, whether it's from the brewery or out of a tin. The extra stout is my port of call.

I've done crap KnK's and crap AG's... obviously I've shed more tears over the bad AG brews.

 

[megabyte]

Michael, the only kit that seems to be mentioned here is the Coopers Pale Ale.
Dare I ask, have you tried any other kits?

Yep, in my early days I brewed many K&Ks, Home Brand Draught, Tooheys Special Draught, Coopers Mexican Cerveza, Coopers Lager, English Bitter, some experimental "Toucan" batches and many more that my mother in law kept buying for me... I never stomached more than a few glasses of them before they went down the drain. I'm sure most people would have given up and I'm glad I got into extract brewing before throwing in the towel.

I've been fixated on the Coopers Pale Ale kit lately because it gets good reviews over on the Coopers forum, I know the hopping schedule is simple and should be easy for Coopers to reproduce in a kit, and I know I can get the exact yeast that I culture up from a bottle. It's a simple beer, there really aren't any excuses why this kit should taste like piss.

If water is the problem, well I'll be surprised because my tap water tastes fine to me when it's not in beer, but I love learning new things! I'll know once this batch is kegged. If it's the BE2 that makes them taste like piss then that would be a terrible shame, that homebrew gets a terrible reputation and people are likely quitting the hobby because Coopers was selling a shitty brew enhancer that ruins anything it touches. I doubt it and I think they're better than that but still I'll test out that theory too if the water doesn't pan out.

The extra stout is my port of call.

I've heard (a long time ago) that this is Coopers' best kit.

 

[petesbrew]

I meant the coopers black n yellow tallie, but yes I always liked the stout.

My favourite kits would've been the Stout, and the Canadian Blonde, a great base kit for experimenting.

 

[Grott]

Could this be the reason for some peoples dislike of k & k?? (need to enlarge to read?)

 

[Droopy Brew]

So you didnt like your kit beers to start with, then went to AG and liked the beers. Then went back to kit and still didn't like them. My best guess is that the water is not your main issue.
Oh and the LHBS guys saying they reckon they are great may have an ulterior motive, or low expectations.

 

[pcmfisher]

I don't think its the water either. Nor the dehydrated malt.

All I know is my kit brews all have an underlying kit taste.
My extract brews made with liquid malt, dry malt and dextrose don't have the same taste.

That said, when these subjects come up I get compelled to revisit kits, so I have a Coopers Pale and BE2 fermenting this minute.
We shall see.

 

[Nick667]

For me it was all about HWA (hot wort aeration ) but no one believes me!
Lots of air going into the FV while the goo and boiled water is still hot.
I have a really good sense of smell/taste that can be a problem sometimes and now I only brew AG but I was sometimes getting 'that taste ' in some of my grain beers until I learnt about HWA. Especially during summer and yes I have temp control.
Now I dont aerate in any way until under 26C and it works for me.
It used to be a whole lot cheaper to do those kit and kilo things once, and I use to drink them no matter how bad and after the initial shock friends would hoe in as well.
But now I am muuuuuuuuuch older.
Good luck. Good topic.
Nick.

 

[megabyte]

For me it was all about HWA (hot wort aeration ) but no one believes me!
Lots of air going into the FV while the goo and boiled water is still hot.

Wait, I thought HWA was no longer in vogue. Did it start affecting beers again after that german paper on low oxygen brewing was published last month? h34r:

But seriously I do like your suggestion. Whether HWA (or HSA or HWO) is fact or fiction, I will try to eliminate it from my next K&K. While I was splashing the cool water onto my hot wort I wondered if brewers from the BN Army would protest about hot side aeration, but on some level I thought "it's a K&K, surely there are going to be bigger issues to worry about". Next time I'll be more diligent now that you've brought it up.

 

[contrarian]

I call shenanigans! From what I've heard hot side aeration is only a concern in massive breweries who are pumping huge volumes at high speed. If you could reproduce those conditions while warming a can of goo and then mixing it with room temp water, just prior to pitching yeast I would be very surprised.

Michael, I think that there have been a wide range of possibilities raised here but ocham's razor needs to come into play. A home made carbonara will never taste the same as a packet pasta. Both can taste good it they will never taste the same.