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.