The Next Step From Kit

[will]

I've done a couple of kit brews and I've experimented with some other brews in demijohns (mainly ginger beer) and am now wanting to move on to something a bit more exciting.

I would really like to improve on quality and get some more interesting flavours going on in my beer. The full mash brewing described on the site seems a little beyond my ability and equipment budget at the moment.

Is there any kind of intermediate step? If not what can I do to improve the quality and uniqueness of my kit brews, moving towards grain brewing?

[Reg]

Extract only brews would be the next easy step. Essentially you're only mixing extracts with inactive adjuncts and hops.

Pretty much the same process just a bit of recipe work.

You'll soon step up from this, however, mashing is not as hard as it seems, it just takes longer.

Reg

[boingy]

First off, be assured that Full Mash (aka "All Grain" or "AG") brewing is not difficult. It takes more time (allow a full day!!!) and does require a bit more equipment but you can get good results by following some fairly simple steps.

A good halfway house is extract brewing. Rather than use a kit you use either liquid malt extract (looks a lot like the kit "goo" you already use) or spray dried malt extract ( a powder) plus you add hops either in loose form or in pellet form. These are then typically boiled together with a gallon or two of water (or 5 gallons if you have a suitable boiling bucket or pan) and then you proceed as for a kit. Cool it and pitch in some yeast. You can make quite a few adjustments to the basic extract recipes by adding smallish quantities of grains and stuff but I would suggest you keep things simple to start with.

In my opinion it is the loose hops that make the single biggest improvement over a kit (where the hops have been processed and turned into concentrated extract), especially if you brew traditional English bitters and light ales.

Take a look at the Extract section of this very forum for lots more details:

www.jimsbeerkit.co.uk/forum/viewforum.php?f=3

[will]

Thanks for the responses Boingy and Reg. I'd seen this recipe on Self Sufficientish and was planning on giving it a try next. I guess this would class as an extract brew.

Is the sort of malt extract you get from health food shops okay to use or should I source something better from elsewhere?

The ultimate goal is to brew full mash beers. How little equipment could I get away with? From what I've seen it looks like I'll be needing a lot: mash tuns, spargers, boilers, chillers...

I have so many questions, sorry

[Andy]

Is the sort of malt extract you get from health food shops okay to use or should I source something better from elsewhere?

Get extract specific for brewing from a homebrew shop.

[Reg]

Brewing suitable extracts broadly break down into:-

• Spray - dried powder (inactive)
• Tinned extract - Inactive syrup
• Diastatic extract - Enzymically active syrups for partial mash brews

As Andy says all are best sourced from brew shops or online stores. An extract brew will need a boil to get the primary hop bittering in, so you'll need either a boiler, a second hand tea urn or a large vessel for the top of your stove. (Re: The last... you can boil at double concentration and then add pre-boiled water to the final wort, as long as your final aim is not a very strong brew, things could start to get a bit caramelly otherwise).

Reg

[yashicamat]

Agreed with the above. If I can make one suggestion, try and get the biggest pot possible. It's actually very easy to do a small all grain beer once you have a decent size pot (at least 20 litres) with just two pots and a grain bag (a large, mesh bag basically). If you do a few extract beers first, you'll familairise yourself with the routine of boiling, adding hops for different times etc., just a small step from there.

All grain beers do take longer (I can actually now get my brewday down to about five and a half hours if I am organised, but I didn't get there immediately!), but it is definately worth it when you get to it! Extract beers are a massive improvements over kits though in my opinion, you'll almost completely lose the dreaded "homebrew taste" and instead you'll start wanting to refine the flavours . . . at which point you hear the sound of sacks of crushed grains calling you.

[will]

Some great advice here from everyone, thanks!

So what are the advantages and disadvantages of extract versus spray malt? I notice spray malt is a lot cheaper to order over the net due to its lighter weight.

[Reg]

Some great advice here from everyone, thanks!

So what are the advantages and disadvantages of extract versus spray malt? I notice spray malt is a lot cheaper to order over the net due to its lighter weight.

Think about freshly squeezed OJ, orange juice made from frozen concentrate and so on... OR even a freshly prepared curry house meal, a supermarket chiller counter curry and then a frozen ready meal.

The closer you get to fresh, quality ingredients the better your overall result is likely to be.

Reg