Beyond Basic Kits

[Piemaster]

Hi all

I am fairly new to home brewing. So far I have made three kits and all of them have turned out pretty good. I am now thinking about moving beyond a basic kit, and I think the first step would be taking a kit and modifying it in some way. What are the different ways of doing this? The only ideas I can really think of are using a different yeast or experimenting with different types of sugar. Does anyone have any good ideas for things I could try that would make a noticeable impact?

 

[NickW]

"Dry hopping" is commonly used.

Basically adding hops into the fermenter after the main vigorous fermentation has slowed. This imparts aroma and some flavour to the beer. A quick Google search should provide you with more information.

Also - using dry or liquid malt extract in place of sugar is highly advantageous. You'll get better flavour and body in your beer. Sugar will dry the beer out and provide nothingelse apart from alcohol.

 

[Sandimas]

Sounds like you have got the basics techniques under your belt.

Different sugars aren't going to make a lot of difference, yeasts will, as will adding hops...but if you're going to go that far, why not go straight to Extract brewing? Simple recipes like Exmoor Gold just use malt and hops, and IMHO you'll get a far better result than modifying a kit:
http://www.brewuk.co.uk/store/beerkits/ ... -gold.html

 

[Paul Narramore]

Have you thought about dry hopping? I'm new here so don't just take my word for it, but when i used to home brew, I often added dry hops to the mix as I particularly like hoppy beers. Look up on recommended hop varieties.

 

[aamcle]

Here you go :-

http://www.aussiehomebrewing.com/Custom ... opers.html

Enjoy. aamcle

 

[Piemaster]

Thanks for all the responses so far. Dry Hopping looks interesting, but does it really do anything else other than make the flavour 'more hoppy'? I don't really mind a hoppy flavour, but I don't like beer to be overly hoppy, especially if it masks some of the other flavours.

I have considered extract brewing but I don't really have the equipment for it yet. I will definitely try it in the future though (especially as I developed a taste for Exmoor Gold when down in Devon last year).

Cheers for the link aamcle, that's the kind of resource I was hoping was out there. Seems like they all just take a basic kit and add some different extracts and sugar types. Has anybody tried any of these out?

 

[winelight]

Many of the people here who use kits will modify them as a matter of course. Adding DME or LME instead of sugar, brewing short, combining / mixing kits, and especially dry hopping.

Once you've done a few kits you can mix and match according to what you want in terms of flavour, aroma, mouthfeel, head retention, bitterness, maltiness etc. And/or adding tins of malt extract, etc. (edit) And, changing the kit yeast for another with different characteristics.

If you see the Coopers web site there are many kit-based recipes there. Usually enhanced with malt extract, and some will also add (cracked) crystal malt.

For example my current 3 brews (if I remember correctly, I'm not very good at making notes) are:

1. Young's Harvest Lager plus Saflager W-34/70 yeast plus 500g light DME plus I don't really remember (probably 680g LME)
2. One can from a Brewmaker Best of British IPA kit + Young's Harvest Bitter kit + Brewmaker yeast (2 sachets) + 340g LME + dry hopped with 100g Glacier
3. One can from a Brewmaker Best of British IPA kit + 500g medium DME + 200g sugar (goodness knows what this will be like, probably just a weak bitter)

 

[Piemaster]

I have tried brewing short and never really considered it modifying the kit. Although I suppose it is, in a sense.

Thanks for the suggestions. Using DME and LME do seem to be popular choices. I also wondered if using honey instead might be nice, especially on something like a Bock.