dme

[theratroom]

Can someone tell me if I can use just dme and hops to make a decent beer I currently make adapted kits

[TheLastSuppa]

Hi thera!

There's no reason why not. It's malt extract either way. You'll have to add more bittering hops than you do for an adapted kit (if you add any at the moment). If you want to give it a bit more depth of flavour you can steep crystal malt or a bit of chocolate malt for some variation, before the boil.

[sparky Paul]

Absolutely no reason why you can't start extract brewing with spraymalt.

I would advise checking out this section on here for techniques... You will need a boiler, but you can do a smaller boil and add further extract later - lots of ideas in the extract section of the forum. If you are looking for fuirther reading material, I would highly recommend Graham Wheeler's book 'Brew Your Own British Real Ale' which explains the techniques involved and has extract conversions for many of the recipes in the book.

[theratroom]

Thanks for the info guys will give it a try and I will get a copy of that book it sounds good

[Fuggled Mind]

Can someone tell me if I can use just dme and hops to make a decent beer I currently make adapted kits

If your looking for a recipe using only malt extract and hops, John Palmer has a recipe on his website for an American style pale ale. It's a relatively simple recipe and was the first extract brew I ever did. I was more than happy with the results and brewed it three times in all.

The website and recipe is http://www.howtobrew.com/section1/chapter1-1.html

I can also recommend the Graham Wheeler book and have had a lot of fun using this book. Adding speciality grains like crystal, chocolate and black malt is actually very easy to do and gives excellent results compared to using just extract

Cheers

Jason

[theratroom]

I have now ordered a copy of the book I will let you know when I try a recipe