Just when I thought I knew what I was doing...!

I now have 2 brews under my belt. The first, I made good beer, but messed the carbonation up and had a 'thin' beer because of a high sugar content. So, for my second brew I did the same kit again, but upped the malt content and sorted the priming out. This brew has been in the bottle for about a week and already tastes great and is quite carbonated.

I decided to buy another kit in the hope it would make me a little more patient while the previous beer is conditioning. So I bought a diferent kit, and the instructions in it are completely different to the other brew! The first two brews (same kit) I had to boil up the wort with a hop and grain bag for 50 mins, but the instructions for this brew simply advise to place the two cans of hopped extract supplied in hot water for 5 mins, before putting in my fermenter and adding boiling water!!!

What do you guys reckon? Is this the best way to make the beer? When I do a kit, I want to do as much as the process as possible before moving on to making my own beers, that was always the plan. This kit is almost a 'just add water' kit it seems.

Any help or advice will be appreciated.

Since your extract is already hopped there isnt much of a reason to boil your wort, all you really need to do is sanatize it. They have already made the wort for you, and condensed it down to a thick syrup so all you really need to do is get the proper amount of water back into solution. If you do boil it you're going to boil off the hop flavors and aromoas and just be left with the bitterness the provide and the malt flavors and sweetness.

Looks like you went a step backwards in brewing progession but it's no biggie.

here is a link from my LHBS that sels "kits" . . . actually what they do is list all the ingredients out for ya then sell the individual ingredients you need to make "the kit" . . .http://www.frugalwestallis.com/recipes/FHWArecipes605.pdf

IMHO I would say stay away from the hop extracts and look at doing extract with steeping grain recipies. Find a recipie you like and get the individual ingredients and you basicly have your kit, it's just not in 1 fancy package.

Adam's Apples said:

This kit is almost a 'just add water' kit it seems.

Click to expand...

Yep, that sounds like what you purchased. I've heard these kits can make good beer but they are more like a Mr. Beer kit than a grains and extract kit.
I think most of the online stores have some good kits. I've purchased Brewer's Best kits at two different LHBS and a Midwest Supplies kit. These kits have the extract and specialty grains all pre measured and come with good instructions and everything you need except bottles and perhaps caps.
You can throw away the instructions on your kit and make something more complex by adding specialty grains or other additions but it will be somewhat of an experiment. For my first few brews I wanted more of a known thing.
Good luck
Craig

First if you have hopped extract of about 1.8 KG weight, than that is usually enough to brew a 5 gallon batch of beer using more unhopped extract ,and sometimes, (though not recommended) corn sugar. Doubling up on hopped kits may (depending on who made the recipie for you) increase your bitterness of the brew.
I have made those type of kits for years and it really don't make much difference if you boil or not. You are not going to get much hop flavor from them anyway. But if you boil then you should add some hops for flavor.

so your fist two batches were a partial mash kit? (a few lbs of grain and like 6 lbs of liquid malt extract) and your second batch was beer in a can basically right? if u really wanna, just do what boo boo said n get some hops to throw in the boil n call it good. boil them for about 15 muinutes or so to get more aroma thain bitterness.