Get er brewed American Pale Ale extract kit

80th Brew Get re Brewed American Pale Ale. This is an extract kit with three hop additions, 2 cans of light malt extract, speciality grains, a whirlfoc tablet and Gervin GV12 yeast. Using my buffalo boiler with the brewing thermostat I added 20 litres of water and when it reached 66 degrees I held it there (on setting 3.5 for my boiler) and steeped the grains for 30 minutes as per instructions. When the 30 minutes was up I sparged this using the dipping method in a pan of 2 litres of hot water and added the results back into the boiler. I then set the boiler to boil but had difficulty reaching boiling point as it doesn't like being plugged in via an extension cord and keeps cutting out, much to my growing frustration and anger! Luckily my wife was calmer and set me up in our outside boiler house directly plugged in and away it went..to major relief on my part 👍. I then added the extract and when it was at 100 degrees added the first hop addition which had 60 min written on it. I took advice from the forum that the numbers represents the time to be in the boil not the time from the start of the boil. After 40 minutes I put in my wort chiller to sterilise and after 50 minutes added the second hop addition. Worth noting that the hops come in large tea bags and this makes it really easy! I have one hop addition left with 0 minutes on it and will use it for dry hopping. Once the hour had been reached I removed the hop bags, then attached the water to the wort chiller and it worked like a dream (first time I had used it...thanks cousin Kevin for making it for me). In about 20 minutes I was down to around 25 degrees and took out the chiller and poured the wort via the tap into my FV, allowing a long pour for oxygenation. Added the yeast at around 23 degrees and the OG seems to be around 1046 to 1048 for the 23 litres. To calculate this finishing amount I took on board the suppliers suggestion of making 26 litres to the boil to cover for wastage/evaporation. I therefore had put in 20 litres originally, calculated around 2.5 for the two cans of wort , 2 litres for the sparging and the other 1.5 litre from the water I used to get the rest of the canned extract out.

Smell at pitch very malty with the grains coming through, very little hop smell. Taste at pitch, quite smooth, sweet but not overly and very little bitterness. Quite a bit of smooth lingering mouth feel...like a cold sweet mild coffee...will be interesting to see what it ends up like.

Interested by your comments about the lack of bitterness and hop smell prior to pitching. I had the exact same thing with the Get Er Brewed English Bitter extract kit I did, and it followed through to the finished beer, which has a lovely malty sweetness and loads of grainy stuff going on but virtually no bitterness or hop flavour to speak of. I'm blaming the fact that the hops were in tea bags rather than floating around loose in the boil, but I could be wrong so I'm intrigued to hear how yours turns out.

Speccy said:

Interested by your comments about the lack of bitterness and hop smell prior to pitching. I had the exact same thing with the Get Er Brewed English Bitter extract kit I did, and it followed through to the finished beer, which has a lovely malty sweetness and loads of grainy stuff going on but virtually no bitterness or hop flavour to speak of. I'm blaming the fact that the hops were in tea bags rather than floating around loose in the boil, but I could be wrong so I'm intrigued to hear how yours turns out.

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Thanks for that. I didn't understand the instructions and the last hop addition which had 0 minutes on it, I took for a dry hop...until I saw a BIAB posting on YouTube and realised that you can stick hops in for the cool down. Anyway, I don't think that would have added massive hop profile so maybe you are right about the tea bag. I am doing the English bitter one too but am using a mash of Maris Otter as the base malt as I used the cans that came with the kit in two Blackrock APA kits to bulk them out. I wonder if I will get any bitterness with that one or will it turn out like yours.