MikeG

Recipes 

I received two kits of the "True Brew" kits for Christmas and found out they both use pre-hopped LME. My first two batches were pre-hopped and I didn't care for them and is why I haven't used them since.

Well, I have them and hate to not brew them (the gift givers would like to try them after I brew them). Any recommendations on what I can do to improve the beers? Boil in more water, add fresh hops/dry hop?

The two kits are the Amber True Brew kit and the Irish Stout.

Thanks for any advice!

cuinrearview

Recipes 

Use some flavor and aroma hop additions. Also think about steeping some additional grains.

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Rezilynt

Recipes 

Dob a full boil with some added hops on the amber
Maybe steep and ass some specialty malts like crystal and chocalate to the stout with a full boil

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If farmers make wine and engineers make beer, what the hell am I doing here?

david_42

Recipes 

Full boils will make the brews more bitter, don't know if you would want that.

For the Amber, I'd get an ounce of Fuggles and add half at 15 minutes & half at 5.

For the Stout, I'd make a flavor add at 15 minutes. EKG would be my first choice.

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Loweface

Recipes 

Are these "no boil" or "kit-and-a-kilo" kits?

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Rezilynt

Recipes 

David_42 - Thanks for the catch - I forgot about the PRE-Hopped part.

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If farmers make wine and engineers make beer, what the hell am I doing here?

Shawn Hargreaves

Recipes 

Why would a full boil make these more bitter? Prehopped extract already has the alpha acids extracted from the hops - there's nothing more there to extract, no matter how long you boil it.

I suspect the main thing that will happen if you boil is that you'll burn off all the hop aroma and flavor (assuming the extract had any such in the first place :-) So my guess is you won't want to add any bittering hops, but will want to add flavor and aroma additions at the end of your boil, especially for the amber.

McGarnigle

Recipes 

The True Brew kit I used had pre-hopped extract plus finishing hops as well. Is that the case here? They probably already have steeping grains as well.

If so, I guess it depends on what you didn't like about the kits. My beef was the Munton's yeast didn't work so well.

Ale-ing

Recipes 

I would suggest he not ass his specialty malts. They never taste right when you do that to them.

cuinrearview

Recipes 

First post and a flame??? Any brewing advice to ass, or just knocking members?

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Looking forward to brewing some beer