Improving flavour of beer kits...

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Trotters80

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Hello, I normally use beer kits using many different brands of lagers, bitters etc. However, to me they all taste similar. Is there any other ways I can improve flavour?.

I heard someone else told me he peeled an orange & left it in or honey. Not sure if that's in the primary or secondary fermentation stage though???.

Any other suggestions?.

Cheers
 
Steep some speciality malt (Crystal, any of the Cara-malts, Black, Roasted Barley etc) and/or add a hop tea and/or dry-hop.

Will make it taste 'fresher'.

If you like stout kits, try adding some coffee or lactose to get a coffee or milk stout. Adding both works especially well, too. Maybe a vanilla pod or two, too :D
 
Add hops, and or grains. Hops is the easiest way to make a big improvement. But steeping some flavour grains is also very effective.
 
Thanks. I'll try hops first. Ive been looking online but how can I tell which are bitter & which are the aroma/flavoured hops?.

The websites ive looked at don't say, they just give you the name of the hops with no description.

Thanks again
 
There's no simple answer. Generally speaking, high alpha hops are used for bittering, and low alpha are aroma. But a lot of high alpha hops have great aroma, and you may prefer them to a lot opf lower alpha hops! the alpha figure of hops is always quoted as a %, usually between 3 and 20%.

This might give you some ideas, for ales at least...

http://www.thehomebrewforum.co.uk/showthread.php?t=52909

And you can ask people on here for hop recommendations for different kits.
 
Is dry hopping better/more popular than boiling hops?. Im hearing a lot about "dry hopping". Im not new to home brewing, but new to fine tuning & improving my beer ie taking it a step further now.
 
Sorry to sound thick but why would one use a bittering and an aroma hop together? Is it not one flavour or the other, meaning you either want a bitter flavour or a flavoured beer?. I was thinking of trying Green bullet & Saaz, but again do I use em together or one or the other on their own?.

Cheers
 
All beers have bittering hops, some more than others. A lot of beers have both bittering hops and flavour hops. You can use the same hop for both, or different hops. Or several hops.

Green Bullet is used a lot to provide the bitterness in lagers. Saaz is used to flavour a lot of lagers. You could thus use them successfully in a lager, or a blonde ale.
 
Trotters80 said:
Sorry to sound thick but why would one use a bittering and an aroma hop together? Is it not one flavour or the other, meaning you either want a bitter flavour or a flavoured beer?. I was thinking of trying Green bullet & Saaz, but again do I use em together or one or the other on their own?.

Cheers
Click to expand...

The bittering addition is to balance out the sweetness of the malt. Then the flavour/aroma addition does exactly what it says on the tin. You can not have a flavouring/arome addtion such as in a stout or porter where the flavour comes from the grains, known as a malt forward beer but you have to have a bittering addition else your beer would be cloyingly sweet
 

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