woolworths home brand draught help and tips please

[chaos666chris]

ok ill let you know i love carlton drought and love a micro brew called sun down lager that is for my taste buds

now i had a recipe for using home brand draught can for a near Carlton draught taste whitch is one i want to get close to for me and mates to drink but the recipe grew legs with all my home brew ino when a mate borrowed it all my notes and all (now a ex friend)

im thinking from reading a few sites

POR hops (havent got quantity in mind yet)
250g ish grams of light DME
150g of table sugar
600g dextrose
home brew drought can
to make a 23L batch

45 min addition of the hops
15 min addition of the hops
5 mins addition of the hop

have any of you done this or anything like this and could anyone help me with the amount of hops also will be using the safale 65 (fake lager yeast one ??) i think it is will be fermenting in a insulated old fridge in the outside weather

primary fermentation 1.5 weeks
secondary 2 weeks

 

[citizensnips]

Just 60 minute POR hop addition. No others. Sugar and dextrose will do the same thing and will thin the beer out too much for Carlton draught. More malt, about 15% sugar max. Use either the kit yeast or some us-05, doesn't matter too much for that type of beer....If you have good temperature control go a lager, only if you can control well, otherwise don't panic with ale. Sorry to not be more helpful. Cheers

 

[chaos666chris]

ok cool thanks for that this is more a experimental brew than anything else iv been out of the game for some time the fridge works btw i need to get a thermostat for it at some point
ill beef the malt up some more
do u have any idea on how much POR hops to add for a 60 min boil?

 

[citizensnips]

To be honest I wouldn't bother with hop additions at all. Carlton draught is such a very low hopped beer with so little hop flavour that adding POR is going to turn it more towards coopers pale ish than the big malt flavour of Carlton draught. The kit you have would have enough bitterness for your batch. So little flavour is hard to mask any faults in your beer though so if you wanna do the kit up a little bit I'd think about steeping some grains to get a bit better malt profile.

 

[r055c0]

+1 for eddy22's tip about steeping grains, nothing helps make a cheap can of homebrew taste better than bigging up the malt taste with some fresh grain. I'd try steeping 200g of crystal malt (crack it in a mortar & pestle or use a $12 coffee grinder from kmart) in 2L of hot water (about 80 degrees C) for 30 minutes, strain and then boil the liquid for 15 minutes (important to strain the grain out before boiling), then use that liquid to dissolve your sugars and the juice from your can, then top up to 23L and pitch your yeast.

 

[mkstalen]

I'm with eddy22 and ro55c0.

You LHBS should have packs of pre-cracked crystal, probably 180g - 250g, grab one of these, it'll save you bashing or grinding it yourself.
If your original recipe added extra hops (and you liked it) then all I'd go for is probably a 15g "tea-bag" of POR either dry in the fermenter, or for the 15 minute boil with the steeped grains.
As for LDME/dex/sugar mix, to make it easy, I'd look for one of the Coopers Brew Enhancer 2 or equivalent (LDME/Maltodex/dex 2:1:1 mix)

 

[chaos666chris]

thanks guys this is only a play around i have coopers drought in the keg at the moment but looking at other options my HB shop doesn't have grains and if they do i pay a small fortune for the orded in crap they charge like $18 for 1kg of Chrystal same for most malted grains i need to make a trip to melb for some supply's again i think
i may just put off the brew for a few weeks till i move to melbz and can buy this stuff at normal prices at local HB shop less to move aswell

 

[r055c0]

check out core brewing concepts, most of thier grain is $3/kg, hops are well priced too, they can post or sometimes can arrange pickup in cranbourne. I've been using them a bit lately, good customer service, friendly and enthusiastic.

 

[chaos666chris]

check out core brewing concepts, most of thier grain is $3/kg, hops are well priced too, they can post or sometimes can arrange pickup in cranbourne. I've been using them a bit lately, good customer service, friendly and enthusiastic.

that sucks as i dont have the money this week and will be passing their on sat