Tell me if this is a good idea....

Ok.. so my brewing resume is pretty short..

1 German Hefe
1 Nutbrown Ale
1 Porter

All from morebeer.com kits. They did me pretty well but I'm more interested now in building my own recepies. Here is what i want to do.

I was thinking about getting some 1 or 2 gallon jugs and also buying a bunch of light english malt extract and a few different kinds of hops and maybe some pretty common specialty grains and a common very clean ale yeast (WLP001 probably)

I'd like to start out and brew an all malt batch... see what that tastes like.. (and harvest the yeast) and then move on and do a few batches of malt and different hops.. then add some grains... and so on and so forth.

The reason i want to do this is because i don't really feel that i know what the ingredients in each of teh kits i brewed did because all of the kits were so different and because they had such different ingredients in them.

has anyone done this kind of experimenting.. and if so.. what did you learn? did it help? was it a hugh pain in the arse??

I figure at the same time i'll also end up with a large variety of boring but probably drinkable beers and in the process figure out how to do this whole brewing thing...

thoughts anyone?
ws

It's good to learn stuff for yourself. Doing them each as seperate batches will be a royal pain in the ass. What I would do:
Call B3, tell them what you want to do. Brew a five gallon batch partial boil with just light malt extract and some bittering hops. Then dillute this wort into several 1 gallon taster batches. Here's the key, you steep the different grains in the water for dilluting your wort. 1 should be without steeping grains as a control.

You could probably ferment in six of those gallon jugs of Carlo Rossie they sell at Safeway. With out the hops it will be sickly sweet, you probably won't enjoy drinking it. Also I would save some of the unsteeped grain, so you can have a nibble on the grain, then drink the beer with that grain, it might help you identify the specific flavor.

Also taste your beer at all stages. a spoonful of trub will keep you clean for a week.

gotcha..
i was wondering if that would be possible.. (steeping the grains in plain water and adding in after the boil)

wasn't sure if the flavors from the specialty grains needed to be in the boil as well.

thanks for the insight..
austinhomebrew.com has 3 gallon buckets with lids stoppers and airlocks for about 7.35 each..
probably cheaper than that wine... i'm guessing..

i'm gonna look around though.. maybe i can find a deal on ebay for half a dozen small demijohns or something...


thanks again
ws

waskelton4 said:

austinhomebrew.com has 3 gallon buckets with lids stoppers and airlocks for about 7.35 each..
probably cheaper than that wine... i'm guessing..

Click to expand...

I wouldn't be so sure...:cross:

You could just cruise by your local college campus, or glass recycling station, some Sunday afternoon, you should find several.

good point..