Where to go after starter kits

Good afternoon,

I'm a newbie. I have recently been brewing my first beer from an American Pale Ale starter kit. Over the last couple of weeks I've been imagining all the ways I might have gone wrong but to my surprise when I took a gravity reading the other day and tasted the sample, it tasted just like beer and should be ready for bottling at the weekend. My plan is not to get ahead of myself and do another batch or two from a similar kit but this time I will make a couple of small investments such as better temperature control and compare the results.

Tasting my first beer however has got me thinking about how I can eventually experiment with the flavour a little and create my own unique taste. My question is, when i'm ready to throw away the rule book and try something new, what's the best route to go down?

Thanks in advance

Adding hops and changing the yeast is the first step imo.

If you want to up the abv - brew short or add golden syrup / dme / candi sugar.

I went from kit to extract brewing and got stuck there 'cos I was happy with the results.

(I do sometimes steep/mash some grains when i'm feeling frivolous )

Hi monkeybutler, welcome to the forum.

There is no one set route to progress in home brewing, but generally I would advise doing a few kits to get your techniques perfected. You can try adding hops to your kit brews, as a dry hop or hop tea, to add to the flavour/aroma.

If you think about taking it further, get yourself a book, Home Brew Beer by Greg Hughes is rightly regarded as the bible. This should give you some idea of the options you can follow. But beware, as it can become addictive and expensive.

Agreed, very addictive and lots of fun too. The Brew Your Own British Real Ale by Grahame Wheeler is another great resource with plenty of easy recipes to get you going. This forum is a fantastic place to learn and improve your brew skills, loads of top peeps here ready to help out. Welcome and have fun brewing

Thanks for the replies, the kit I got came with some hops which it says to add towards the end of the process so i'll probably do that tonight. I'll have a look into those books, there are so many out there it's good to get a recommendation. I'm still at the point where I'm learning the technical side of the whole brewing process so this forum is helping a lot with that.

The homebrew shop I buy from is really small so when I go buy bottles there tonight i'll familiarize myself with what they stock. I'll stick to the pale ale until I improve my techniques and maybe occasionally experiment with the hops and yeast and have a look at some recipe books. My long term goal is to eventually make a fruity pale ale.

Thanks again for the advice!

Greg Hughes and Graham Wheeler are both good books, I recommend them both. And recipes in both all-grain AND extract. Randy Mosher and Ron Pattinson have recipes too, but more aimed toward culture and history.

Greg Hughes has a series of pale ales with a standard small and easy malt bill, and different single hops. Run through those 5 (or 6 or 7, not quite sure) to get the process under control, get to know your equipment AND to recognise the different hops. It's a nice learning curve. And in the process you get to drink a lot of pale ales

Agree that adding hops and changing yeast will give you a taste for experimentation. But I can recommend the "have a go at a simple AG" thread in the "how to" section of the forum - Clibit's simple guide strips out a lot of the mystique from all grain brewing and shows how it can be done with very little additional gear to what you'll already have for kit brewing. If you are interested, this will give you a feel for the different processes, so if you decide you want to go down the AG route you'll have a better idea of how you want to do so to suit your own situation and pocket.

I started with extract Kits and got given a 10gallon water cooler, so I thought I'd try partial mash which was hardly any different, now I've just finished my second all grain recipe (kit recipe from malt miller)
and am kicking myself for not going all grain sooner, it's cheaper and i find it easier than trying to mess about with Liquid malt extracts etc.
I also find AG alot easier to get gravity readings (worth trying these asap) as extracts have to be really mixed in for a proper reading.
anyway have fun and try not to worry to much :)

My first brew was a kit. My second is AG, al I added was a better grain bag (BIAB) and time as you need to steep the grains.

No idea how either brew is turning out yet, first is carbing and second is in the FV - although it is looking great!

So to answer your question you can go AG whenever you want, after that look at recipies that are similar to what you want and tweak them. Then take a leap and create your own unique beer!

All Grain can require a certain amount of equipment if you're wanting to do anything other than smaller batches of beer. This isn't to put you off as some people on here only brew in smaller batches and have a great time doing it. It's also pretty time consuming - 60 min mash plus 60 min boil = 6 hours of brewing, somehow! Again, don't let that put you off but similarly, be warned it's nowhere near as quick as the extract kits.

Might be helpful to know what sort of equipment you have at the moment, what the largest size saucepan you have to hand, what sort of cooker hob you have and whether you have a bit of budget to invest in something else. It's perfectly feasible to do your first AG brew by spending £40 on a large saucepan and getting a bit Heath Robinson with some of the stuff you already have knocking around.

Alternatively, some people will try extract brewing as an intermediary step. There are ways you can do a small-scale boil but still end up with a full-sized batch at the end. Advantages are that it tends to be quicker, cleaner, easier and less prone to failure but at the expense of full flexibility and more expensive raw ingredients.

The Extract Brewing section of How to Brew is a good starting point on the reading front if this is likely to be of interest: http://howtobrew.com/book/section-1

I really don’t have much equipment available at the moment and no large saucepans. I do plan on investing over the coming months but that will probably be one item at a time. Sorry for the newbie question but I thought my starter kit was extract brewing as it uses malt extract?

AG is something I will definatley try but time constraints are just as much of a problem as equipment at the moment so i’ll probably do another 2/3 batches and improve my technique on other areas before trying an AG. Hopefully by that time i’ll have all the equipment I need.

monkeybutler said:

I really don’t have much equipment available at the moment and no large saucepans. I do plan on investing over the coming months but that will probably be one item at a time. Sorry for the newbie question but I thought my starter kit was extract brewing as it uses malt extract?

AG is something I will definatley try but time constraints are just as much of a problem as equipment at the moment so i’ll probably do another 2/3 batches and improve my technique on other areas before trying an AG. Hopefully by that time i’ll have all the equipment I need.

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The extract kits have pre-flavoured malt extract, i.e. they already contain the hop bitterness. Extract brewing takes a non-hopped extract, i.e. a plain malt extract, which you water down (as you would be with the kit) and then boil with the hops to add bitterness (like you would with AG). Or another way of thinking of it is that the extract replaces the mash step with AG and you just pick it up from that stage. The malt extract either comes in liquid form, so like the cans you'll have with the kit, or dry (powdered) form.

One of the good things about this approach is that you only need to boil half of the malt extract with hops for the full brew. You chuck this into the fermentor and then add a load of plain malt extract to top up the SG, as required, which then brings everything back to normal. This means you don't need to find a 30l saucepan but can potentially do a decent-sized brew with a 10l pan, which you can pick up cheap online - perhaps £15. If you then move on to AG and need something bigger, well you just have a nice big pan for making curries in!

Edit: You can also do a partial AG brew in a 10l pan and top up with extract too. Or do full extract but steep some grains for additional flavour.

I spent over a year gathering bits and pieces of AG equipment

Just take your time gathering what you need, better still, what you want to end up working with (batch size, how many vessels, heat source etc)

No point rushing and wasting money on something you'll regret and outgrow too soon

skulltat280 said:

I spent over a year gathering bits and pieces of AG equipment

Just take your time gathering what you need, better still, what you want to end up working with (batch size, how many vessels, heat source etc)

No point rushing and wasting money on something you'll regret and outgrow too soon

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I agree here, i saved a little more and brought a bigger pan, when it arrived I thought WTF have I ordered (the wife said the same) love it now great size no chance of a boil over :)

That's a very good point @steve denholm, boil over is a nightmare, so the biggest you can get away with is best all round.

Portreath said:

That's a very good point @steve denholm, boil over is a nightmare, so the biggest you can get away with is best all round.

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But within reason - and I guess that's part of the "can get away with" point. All but the highest power gas hobs in a kitchen are going to struggle with a 30l boil. Not sure what electric (non induction) hobs are like.

-Bezza- said:

But within reason - and I guess that's part of the "can get away with" point. All but the highest power gas hobs in a kitchen are going to struggle with a 30l boil. Not sure what electric (non induction) hobs are like.

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yeah mines on a wok burner on my range and it did struggle at a bit like 99.8c without the lid (26l)

my induction really struggled with about 10 litres when doing partial mash but the pot is vast

I have electric hobs so i’m worried about how much they will take. I’ll look into it properly when i come to do an extract brew. They also take forever to cool down unlike the gas ones where you can just turn the gas of. Perhaps if I had two on, one ready at a lower heat just incase it starts to boil over.

monkeybutler said:

I have electric hobs so i’m worried about how much they will take. I’ll look into it properly when i come to do an extract brew. They also take forever to cool down unlike the gas ones where you can just turn the gas of. Perhaps if I had two on, one ready at a lower heat just incase it starts to boil over.

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i watched a video on youtube, (all the gear with no idea fat ginger, im sure someone knows who im talking about)

he stayed with his kettle and stirred the foam until it disappeared then the threat of boil over was gone. his kettle must have been filled to about an inch from the top