Geordie Bitter Adaptations

[TheMumbler]

I bought 3 geordie bitter kits a while back when they were cheap in Morissons and was thinking of some additions for the first time. There was some discussion of adapting geordie kits a while back and I was wondering how any of it turned out.

My current plan is to steep some crystal malt 200g at around 67 degress in around 500ml of water in a thermos for an hour or so and then boiling the extract to sanitise. I also intend to add some hops the boil and/or dry-hopping in the barrel. So is this a good or a bad plan generally? Will the extract from the crystal malt provide enough liquid to boil hops in or should I add some more water or perhaps make a hop tea instead? I'd be really grateful for any advice regarding procedure, hops to use and so forth. Cheers

[legion]

I also have 3 Geordie Bitter kits to use and look forward to any tried and tested adaptations. I will brew my first one as per instructions, bottle a few pints and dry hop the rest in the keg with challenger hops. As my friend will be giving me a load of fresh challenger hops used to decorate a village hall for beer festival at the weekend.

[mshergold]

I adapted a Geordie Yorkshire (I think) kit a while back and steeped 200g crystal malt (can't remember how much water I used though). I also steeped some goldings, fuggles or challenger hops and the brew turned out well. I forgot to make up a kit with adaptation to see how they differed, so thanks for reminding me that I ought to do so. If I made a note of my ingredients/method, I'll post them.

[TheMumbler]

thanks for the replies

mshergold if you have a recipe that would be nice. I'll probably brew at the weekend and will post up what I did.

[TheMumbler]

Brewday a week later than intended
I went with 200g of medium crystal malt put in a thermos with about a litre of water for 90mins. I then emptied into a pan through a sieve and rinsed some more water through the grain. 1kg of medium spraymalt also went into the pan of warm water with a good stir and the whole lot was boiled for 15 mins. This was cooled and added to the Geordie Bitter can in the FV and topped to about 23l. Yeast was (previously) hydrated as per the advice here and pitched into the FV. I'll dry hop in the barrel I think, or possibly in a secondary after a day or two.

OG was 1038.5 on my hydrometer

[TheMumbler]

Tastes OK, a fairly standard dark coloured bitter, reasonably malty. Much better than the coopers bitter + BKE I made, in the region of but not quite as good as wherry, I would say. Very flat, due to a leak in the pressure barrel while priming (I don't have a Co2 system). Still not really cleared yet so I'll give it another couple of weeks. Overall not a bad beer and pretty cheap as the geordie kit was got on offer at morrisons for £4.

[scottmoss]

Tastes OK, a fairly standard dark coloured bitter, reasonably malty. Much better than the coopers bitter + BKE I made, in the region of but not quite as good as wherry, I would say. Very flat, due to a leak in the pressure barrel while priming (I don't have a Co2 system). Still not really cleared yet so I'll give it another couple of weeks. Overall not a bad beer and pretty cheap as the geordie kit was got on offer at morrisons for £4.

I didn't realise they sold kits at morrisons!