Canned Extract with no corn sugar

flyerdx · 03-25-2009, 09:08 PM

The owner of my local Homebrew store said you can brew a canned kit with no dextrose and have a nice light smooth beer. He said it would not have alot of alcohol, witch is fine with me. Just wondering if anyone has tried this or how it would turn out.
I like a nice light beer and only drink light beers when I actually buy Beer
I like Coors light and bud light.
I also read somewhere that people use 2 kits for one 5 gal batch. Wouldn't the flavour be too much. I've been brewing for years but never experimented alot.
one kit is for 66 bottle. So how would 2 kits together taste.

**brewmasterpa** · 03-25-2009, 09:26 PM

1 can of extract and thats it would be the eqiuvalent of a smash. nothing wrong with that. very light in flavor, however theres not much adjusting you can do either, especially with extract. youll never get your commercial light pilsner and lager flavors out of an ale no matter how little extract you use. 2 kits would be high gravity for one 5-gallon batch. nothing wrong with that. lots of flavor, lots of alcohol. no consequences, except for maybe some blowoff during fermentation.

**Yooper** · 03-25-2009, 09:32 PM

Actually, if you like "lighter" beers, you may like the regular kit with the corn sugar better than an all malt beer. Corn sugar will thin and dry out the beer a bit, leaving it a bit less malty.

Are you using the pre-hopped, no boil kits?

flyerdx · 03-25-2009, 09:35 PM

yes on the kits. I use Muntons, Morgans and Coopers.

billy_awesome · 03-25-2009, 11:14 PM

I have done lot's of different kits and I gotta say the Coopers are the best. Canadian blonde is good too, same with the wheat.

If you just brewed the can I think you would get somewhere like 3percent. I suggest instead of using 1kilo of corn sugar, use 1/2 a kilo. that should get your somewhere in the 4-4.5 percent rage.

I've brewed this kits with adding 1/2 kilo light malt extract, and 1/2 kilo dextrose and it was pretty good too, nice clean taste with medium light body.

Trial and error, just make sure you always write down you're ingredients for the future.

mlanoue · 03-31-2009, 07:49 PM

You can definitely do it.

I just finished up a nice little easy-drinking Cooper's Canadian Ale with no extra fermentables added. I did put in 4 0z of malto dextrin, but I don't know if I even needed that.

I am going keep making these Coopers kits without any extra malt or sugar. I don't miss the extra alcohol and they're pretty darned cheap to make them that way.

Still came out a lot better than the brewpub I was at last week, sad to say.

captainjay · 04-01-2009, 09:19 AM

How about a 2.5 gallon batch using just one can of extract (intended for 5 gallon batch), has anyone tried this?

I don't know if the math scales up like that, but I figure rather than double the LME just cut the water in half... I have a couple of cans I got very cheap that I'm not certain I want to have a full 5 gallon batch of.

Thanks!
Jay

mlanoue · 04-01-2009, 03:54 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by captainjay

How about a 2.5 gallon batch using just one can of extract (intended for 5 gallon batch), has anyone tried this?

I don't know if the math scales up like that, but I figure rather than double the LME just cut the water in half... I have a couple of cans I got very cheap that I'm not certain I want to have a full 5 gallon batch of.

Thanks!
Jay

I thied that waaay back when I first started brewing, just because I didn't have enough bottles collected, so I figured I'd do a smaller batch.

Whatever I did, it came out absolutely horrible. But, it could have been bad extract, or the fact that I boiled a hopped extract kit for an hour, or I just did a lousy sanitation job. Who knows.

But, I'm sure you could get something better than I did out of it.