holland and barrat malt extract

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flash

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I started this brew a couple of weeks ago tell me what you think.
being a thrifty sort (tight git) I was drawn to some small jars of malt extract while wandering around Holland and barrat a few weeks ago and wondered if they would be suitable for brewing beer.
at £2.60 for 454g a buy one get one half price offer saw me walking out the door with four jars and a plan.

ingredients:

4 x H+B malt extract 454g
2 x medium spray malt 500g
brew sugar 300g
cascade hop pellets 75g
2.5lt water
11g Nottingham yeast

first got the water near boiling then added the spray malt and sugar and stirred until all nicely dissolved and then added the ME and brought up the boil.
next 50g of hop pellets and left to simmer for 20min then the other 25g for a further 10min.
transferred to FV through a sieve to remove most of the hop pellets (wont be using those again)
added rehydrated yeast.
put on landing where its a constant 21degrees

OG 1.052

took ten days to finish fermenting then was transferred to second fermenter through a jiffy cloth (boiled first of course) to filter out the rest of those bloody hop pellets.
its been in the second FV for 6 days now,smells lovely and is as clear as a bell so will be bottling later and taking FG, when done will update you on initial taste and FG.
 
Interesting approach and not unlike what I was doing 30 odd years ago with extract brewing.

The initial boil is not really long enough to get much bittering from the hops and this will be the main thing you get picked up on.

Yet I remember back then doing a 45 min hop boil with 4 oz of awful looking Golding or Fuggle hops and half DME and half sugar and thinking it came out OK.

So, it really is hard to make anything totally undrinkable, as long as it is infection-free.
 
bottled it last night and its a deep ruby red colour.
heavy aroma of cascade hops and tastes not to bad, but your right slid not very bitter, I've only been doing this since January so its a bit of a learning curve. how long would you recommend I boil to get the bitterness?

cheers


ps. forgot to take FG.:doh:
 
I have one conditioning now, did this extract brew.

6 cans of H&B malt extact 454g
3 of them boiled 3 put into fermenter
60g fuggles 60min
20g fuggles 15min
20g fuggles 5 min
plus 300g dextrose
made to 23ltr
Smell and taste was good at bottling, now the waiting game.
 
yea 60 mins, boiled about 12 ltrs as im using a big pan. hoping to get a boiler very soon though.
 
How much did thus cost and how much did you get out of it?

Just saying, because I made a lovely John bull ipa kit, 23 l for 13 quid..... If you are trying to get gd value, its hard to beat.
 
H&B malt extact £2.64 buy one get one half price so £11.92
hops from worcester hop shop £2.25 for the 100g
gervin universal ale yeast from wilkos £1.75
dextrose I had anyway so a totl of £15.92

To be honest the money saving is great but not why I do this.
I enjoy this hobby and had alot of fun making this brew, it was an experiment and I am going to learn what fuggles are like in this single hop brew.
This beer is mine I have total ownership and have cared for it each step of the way and by god im going to enjoy drinking it.:D
 
Fair enough, just thought I should offer you an alternative if u were looking at cheapness.

There must be cheaper places to buy lme than h&b though, they do a penny sale which is basically buy one get one free that might be fairly cheap...
 
been looking at this for a couple of days now and the best I can find is 5kg of organic malt extract £20.56 next day delivery from amazon.

must say this is all in one tub so could get a bit messy.
 
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I normaly buy dme from my local homebrew shop which isnt too expensive, I just thought I would try the H&B extract too see what it would be like.
I often see ingredients on my travels and wonder could I brew with that (I make wine aswell).
pretty soon Im going AG so the extract brewing is a good stepping stone, learning new things etc.
If price is your thing try the wilkos one can kits the pilsner is great, I brew that one alot, just use dextrose and it comes out light and refreshing. I overprime aswell to make it as fizzy as a comercial lager.
 
you have to be carefull buying malt extract often there are other ingredients mixed in which would give off flavours.
 
If it's cheapness you're after you probably can't beat AG brewing. Enthusiasts will tell you the quality of the finished product is better too - I couldn't say about that as my first BIAB is still conditioning in the PB.
Even cheaper would be to plant some hop rhizomes (hops can make up to half the cost of an AG brew if you're making a hoppy kind of beer) so you just have to buy the malt (costs about £5 for a 5 gallon brew) and yeast (about £3 - but you can re-use the yeast for the next brew at least and if you wash the yeast you can get several brews out of it).
 
you have to be carefull buying malt extract often there are other ingredients mixed in which would give off flavours.

too true mate.

i'm a natural bargain hunter/skip rat but to be honest once I've got an idea in my head all thought of how much it costs goes out the window.

I just love brewing beer and all the different approaches to brewing, i'm certainly no expert ,I've only been doing a couple of months.

the last time I was this enthusiastic about something it was the first car I drove that had a turbo.;)
 
Good point by Slid, Ref the boiling time.

I too did a similar brew with H&B extract with a top up of Muntons DME.
As for the hop additions I though I could get away with using a hop tea..? So I literately put my hops into jars of boiling water let them sit in it and added them on the timings, straining through a muslin cloth to stop it all going into the wort.
Havent had a go on the beer but I bet its going to be a Malty one...:doh:
 
Would I be able to use one of these for a mini stout brew? Like 1 demijohn size?
(maybe its not dark enough for a stout?)
 
Yeah you could use H&B Malt extract in a stout, just add some Muntons Dark DME if your adding sugar use dark brown.
 
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