Improving beer kits.
If you go to your local supermarket you may find a lot of beer kits available, Wilkos is our closest. Incidently they have woodefordes Wherry at 15 quid. Bargain!!! They have Geordie bitter kits at £4.99 which is great.
The only problem with the geordie kits is that they have a homebrew taste. For the different brews I’ve tried this is caused not because of the water but the sugar. Cane sugar, imparts that homebrew taste. A kilo of sugar is way too much for a beer. Now you can use things like candy sugar in beer recipes because you want to add a tangy flavour, but you only use say 100grams of the stuff.
Now if you really want to improve the flavour, personally I think you have to add fresh ingredients. Save that bag of sugar for your morning tea. Use some glucose, instead of sugar 400grms, they use spray dried extract. Dark is good, for the darker ales. I used a kilo of light sprayed dried malt in a geordie kit, it was lovely nice full body.
The best results I’ve found is using crystal malt hops. Heat a pan of water as big a pan as you have. You need the water to be about 60-70C add crystal malt, for about 20 mins. Using a muslin bag helps, as it makes it easy to remove all the grain in on go. Then add an 1oz, of hops and boil for 15 mins, no longer. This will bring the hop flavour from the hops and shouldn’t add any more bitterness. For a ale you can’t be fuggles, or golding hops. If you have a light ale use cascade hops, they add a slight citrus flavour excellent for a summer ale. Remove the hops from the water and add this water into the barrel and make up the kit then with you mix of malt and sugar.
Doing this shouldn’t add to much cost but will make the beer tastier and give it a personal touch. Give a whirl on your next beer kit.
May 20th, 2008 at 4:49 pm
I am glad that I found this website. I love to make beer. You have some awesome tips here. Thanks
May 22nd, 2008 at 5:10 pm
I just finished my beer kit brew. This brew doesn’t have any sugars, just malt extracts. You can really feel the difference in the mouth feel compared to the brews I have done with sugars. Really nice.
May 31st, 2008 at 10:44 am
I hate when beer has too much sugar. I have always been big on a stout taste and not too sugary or sweet tasting. thats just my personal opinion about it.
November 8th, 2008 at 8:19 am
Just made my first batch and can’t wait to try it.
I allways experiment when brewing and used a Firkin dog-bolter kit which is cracking on its own, brewing sugar and spray dried malt extract.
Sounds great and am calling it ”Trooper Ale”.
Keep up the good work and ill keep you posted on the result.
January 23rd, 2009 at 5:32 am
Wow. This is a great post. It’s good to see someone who understand how to make beer. Too much sugar will definitely ruin it, but I didn’t know how to fix it. Thanks for the advice.
February 7th, 2009 at 1:41 pm
Hi’
I’m about to brew a 3 kg woodforde wherry kit ,shop said i wouldn’t need to replace sugar with malt or Glucose.Whats the best thing for great results
mick
August 14th, 2009 at 6:39 am
If you are using one of the cheaper kits which generally require 1kg of sugar, it’s best to substitute at least half with a bag of spray malt. slowly mix it into a pan of cold water and bring to the boil before putting into the bucket otherwise it does tend to create a few lumps. A bit like making gravy! If you can make good instant gravy without lumps then you can do this. Personally I would use two bags and leave the sugar completely out.
It brings the overall price of the brew to nearly the price of the better brews but you can experiment using light medium or dark or mixing them. Personally, I tend to use 1 med and 1 dark but thats me.
August 15th, 2009 at 6:59 am
Thanks for the heads up about the Wherry. It’s old info but Wilko still have it at £15 a pop, so I’ve just ordered 3! The Georgie stuff is now £8.
@ Mick - I have brewed this before, and just follow the kit instructions and you won’t go far wrong. Let it settle for 28 days not 14, and you’ll have yourself a cracking beer!
August 30th, 2009 at 2:04 am
Hope you don’t mind me going a little off topic, but I was curious as to what extent you have found keywordluv has helped you get more comments…and if they are good comments or just thank you for the post type comments. I found when using this plugin I got a whole heap of “Thanks” type rubbish which didn’t add to my blog at all…it sure did get a lot more people making comments though!
September 2nd, 2009 at 12:41 am
Thanks for that nice one. It will be my first beer making try don’t know how it will be. But i am sure that it will be better than other some other products. Why don’t you try to make some business of it? You’ve got great taste.
September 3rd, 2009 at 3:59 am
Hi…
Thanks for sharing this nice information on improving beer kits. I prefer brew with malt extracts to brew with sugar. It gives a completely different taste.
October 2nd, 2009 at 6:56 am
Apart from the taste - too much sugar in a beer causes nasty hangovers!