Kit vs True Home Brew

[John]

I've been brewing a couple of years, pils and bitter kits, and got to adding additional malt in various quantities. Yes, the stuff is more than drinkable, really quite good, but what I miss is the aromatics you find in the better pub real "ales."

Looking around I see people spending considerable money and time making their own wort and stuff. Is this for the hell of it or because you get the bit my beer's missing?

If it's the former, can anyone recommend a really good bitter kit and any treatment/brewing tips not mentioned on the instructions that will improve the finished product?

Much appreciated.

 

[ano]

Yes beer is better from grain.

The 'considerable money' can be mitigated somewhat by building your own equipment. For the cost of 5 or so two can kits you can make your own all grain brewery. Once done you spend a lot less per brew on ingredients, but a bit more in terms of time.

To increase your kit quality add half a crushed campden tablet to the water you're going to brew with before you add the kit or malt extract. This will remove the chlorine and chloramine from the water and relieve the finished brew of some off flavours.

Also the technique of dry hopping can be used to approach that fresh aromatic quality you miss.

 

[Vossy1]

All grain brewing gear is relatively cheap and the results really do speak for themselves John :thumb:
Here's just one example of a 10 gallon brewery

 

[gerrytds]

Hey that seems very very good, I think ill be ordering one of those kits real soon.....

G :party:

 

[trunky]

I am very glad to get back to all-grain brewing after a 20 year break. OK, so it takes about 5 hours to make a brew, but it's not a very active 5 hours and there are periods when you can do other things without worry.

From pitching yeast to clear beer in a week or less is easilly done, you can drink it sooner (but should leave it to mature - if you can). Quite honestly more time is wasted piddling around with kit beers because they have a stuck fermentation or won't clear than with an AG brew.

The costs are not high for equipment and are cheaper in ingredients.

Example of what I get away with (5 gallon brewery);

Mash Tun is a coolbox, as little as £7
Fermenting bin x2 around £15 (you would need one anyway for kit beers)
A cheap kettle should be £5
Copper pipe and fittings - lets be generous and say £20

With some ingenuity that's all you need, you might want to add on a wort cooler at some point - that will be around £20

As for ingredients;

For a 20 litre brew with an OG of 1.044 you need about 3.9Kg of malt - about £6
Some hops - about 50 grams - around £2
A sachet of yeast £1

That's the basics, an allgrain brewery for under £50 and a decent brew for less than a tenner. This beats the ass off kit brewing, however, I'll still brew Cooper's stout from a kit because it's bloody lovely and if woodforde's Wherry was less of a pain in the ass with it's stuck ferments and refusals to clear then I'd still make that.

 

[tubby_shaw]

Those kits have been showing as out of stock for a while now
The problem it would seem is that the 60L buckets are no longer available in the original specification and the wall thickness has reduced to an unacceptable standard

 

[Muddydisco]

The home brew shop still has some buckets clicky
and speaking to Greg at BrewUk ( forum sponser) he's looking into geting some 60ltr bins?

 

[ano]

They thought they could get some more towards the end of May though so fingers crossed in the coming weeks they will get some in.

 

[John]

Thanks for the overwhelming response. I guess I'll try dry hopping to start, and keep my eye on the grain brewing eqipment.

 

[bramswell]

i used to brew kits a few years back and they had a certain taste to them, since going all grain i can say you would not look back, the initial outlay is worth it, but do look into building your own as it is a lot cheaper, i have only been doing AG for the last 6 months and have all ready moved up to 10 gallon brews and am looking at expanding.