Did I screw this up?

I'm new at brewing and I'm used canned kits so far. However I've recently discovered a local shop that'll sell me LME by the liter.

I'm using a blackrock all malt Whispering Wheat kit and added 1 liter of malt in lieu of the 1 kilo of dextrose suggested. I understand that this is cool however I think people usually add half a liter of malt, and half a kilo of sugar.

Adding 1 liter if fine I hear, but I didn't add any hops, or do a significant boil. Is adding extra malt without bittering hops bad? Will it be too sweet?

FYI I did boil in some ground coriander seeds (2 tsps), and ground lemon peel (4 tsps). I had to guess on the volume as most recipes called for weight and I don't have the means of measuring the weight.

I also plan on drop hopping with 20 grams (2/3 of an ounce) with saaz hops. This might be commonplace for other brewers but this is quite the experiment for me and I'm just wondering if I've screwed up up from the start by not using bittering hops. The fermenter smells like smooth caramel-ish beer, but I'm not sure if that'll translate into a good beer.

Cheers.

If you didn't use hops then you don't have beer. What you do have is perhaps malt liquor? Not sure but without bittering hops you likely aren't going to be very hoppy. (See what I did there?!)

Dry hop will not add bitterness. It will only add aroma and MAYBE a bit of flavor (at least perceived).

The less expensive kits use half malt and half sugar because its cheaper to produce the kit. When I was doing extract kits I always used brewers best that usually included 6.6 lbs or 2 kilos malt extract for 5 gallon batch. You'll be happier with that than the half sugar kits. The sugar only adds alcohol, no flavor.

Without hops, you've got gruit, I guess. Are you saying you didn't add additional hops, or any at all? Post your recipe.

blackrock kits use pre-hopped extract.

amandabab said:

blackrock kits use pre-hopped extract.

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Yes, the kit was pre-hopped. I just didn't add EXTRA hops for the extra malt I added.

And this kit was all grain hop, not a cheap sugar syrup kit. I know you can't really tell much about a kit by the smell when you open the can, but there was a big difference between this kit from new Zealand, and coopers cheaper beer kits. I'm gonna try a few more, and just want to know if adding extra hops is required if I add LME instead of dextrose.

Thanks

"just want to know if adding extra hops is required if I add LME instead of dextrose."

No, you don't need to add extra hop - unless you just really like extra hoppy beer.


If you are thinking about adding hops on your own, it sounds like you are ready to graduate to brewing from a recipe vs a can. Most of the big online brewstores will sell you all the ingredients in a kit. ie a bag of steeping grains, the extract, the hops and recommended yeast.

pgrebus said:

Without hops, you've got gruit, I guess. Are you saying you didn't add additional hops, or any at all? Post your recipe.

Click to expand...

And the recipe (if you can call it that), is;

1 Blackrock Whispering Wheat, pre-hopped beer kit (1.75 Kg)
1 liter of extra pale Malt extract syrup
2 tbsp ground coriander seeds
4 tbsp ground orange peel
Made to 20 liters (5 gallons)
Boiled for 10 minutes.
plan to dry hop 2/3 ounce of saaz in secondary for 3 weeks.

I'll apologize for the metric, I'm Canadian. That and apologizing is kind of our thing.

At least you're polite about apologizing.

I agree - sounds like you're ready to step up to a kit. I highly recommend Northern Brewer's kits - I've brewed quite a few, and always happy with the result.

re dry hopping schedule - 1 week is plenty.

Husher said:

I'm new at brewing and I'm used canned kits so far. However I've recently discovered a local shop that'll sell me LME by the liter.

I'm using a blackrock all malt Whispering Wheat kit and added 1 liter of malt in lieu of the 1 kilo of dextrose suggested. I understand that this is cool however I think people usually add half a liter of malt, and half a kilo of sugar.

Adding 1 liter if fine I hear, but I didn't add any hops, or do a significant boil. Is adding extra malt without bittering hops bad? Will it be too sweet?

FYI I did boil in some ground coriander seeds (2 tsps), and ground lemon peel (4 tsps). I had to guess on the volume as most recipes called for weight and I don't have the means of measuring the weight.

I also plan on drop hopping with 20 grams (2/3 of an ounce) with saaz hops. This might be commonplace for other brewers but this is quite the experiment for me and I'm just wondering if I've screwed up up from the start by not using bittering hops. The fermenter smells like smooth caramel-ish beer, but I'm not sure if that'll translate into a good beer.

Cheers.

Click to expand...

pgrebus said:

Without hops, you've got gruit, I guess. Are you saying you didn't add additional hops, or any at all? Post your recipe.

Click to expand...

It is, especially with the additional herbs. This is common in some of the alternative brewing options some people have posted in the past. It's not to a "Style" but should be good.

Husher said:

Yes, the kit was pre-hopped. I just didn't add EXTRA hops for the extra malt I added.

And this kit was all grain hop, not a cheap sugar syrup kit. I know you can't really tell much about a kit by the smell when you open the can, but there was a big difference between this kit from new Zealand, and coopers cheaper beer kits. I'm gonna try a few more, and just want to know if adding extra hops is required if I add LME instead of dextrose.

Thanks

Click to expand...

The real benefit and saving grace is you are doing a wheat beer kit. Which requires relatively little hops, so the lack of adding additional bittering hops is really irrelevant. Now while no hops would make a very malty wheat, as mentioned, the malt was pre-hopped, you should be fine with a slight bittering. The method of adding extra LME will add more body to the beer vs the dextrose. Very good decision there. The extra body will weaken the hop character, HOWEVER, due to this being a wheat beer, that is largely not going to matter. If you were going for an ESB, you won't get there.

The process you described of boiling for a shorter time, using pre-hoped malt, etc, greatly resembles the method my friend uses in doing Mr. Beer kits. He's brewed over 40 batches using Mr Beer doing a method similar, he's made some darn good beers, and some not so good (Barleywine Mr Beer kits suck).

On your style you are fine, for more hop forward styles you may want to add slightly more hops. Or begin using the non-prehopped LME (normal LME/DME) and add all your own bittering hops to gain more control over the bittering aspects.

As mentioned, sounds like you are either ready to move to kits, or search the recipe section using the extracts.

Baby steps! I'm not ready for grain and I'm not ready to give up the simplicity of kits. I was surprised by how good some of the kits could be. I mean, not great beer, but pretty good. That and the wife hates me in her kitchen, so 1 hour boil brews will be occasional, though I am looking forward to doing something with cascade...

Husher said:

the wife hates me in her kitchen

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If you can't boil in the kitchen, you can boil outside using a turkey fryer-type burner. Always a nice excuse to set up a lawn chair, don't worry, relax, and have a home brew.

You can't brew every style with just extract, but you can still brew great beer with extract. People go to partial mash or all grain for various reasons, including having more control over mouthfeel, the cost of ingredients, and having a wider range of beers to brew. There are a lot of things you can do to improve your beers while extract brewing that carry over to methods involving mashing. These things include sanitation, monitoring the vigor of your boil (preventing boil-overs and scorching), the purposes of different hop additions, finings, some things related to water quality (it's more important when mashing), temperature control and pitching rates.

landshark said:

The extra body will weaken the hop character, HOWEVER, due to this being a wheat beer, that is largely not going to matter.

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Ok, Well for my next experiments in beer alchemy I've already ordered the IPA and Nut Brown pre-hopped Kits from the same manufacturer (blackrock).

I was planning on dialing it down to see the difference by adding a half kilo of Sugar and half a liter of Malt instead of a whole liter of malt. I'm guessing at that level, the hopping won't really matter for whatever kind of can kit I use.

But what if I decided to go all the way with 1 liter of malt with other pre-hopped kits? Such as the (apparently) hoppy IPA. Will this make bad beer, or just beer that tastes different/sweeter than intended?

Anyone have experience with say..a pre-hopped IPA can kit and adding malt without bittering hops? What about lighter styles like draught and lager?

Cheers.

Unless you want a thin, dry beer, use extract.

If you want to take a bit more control of the product by supplementing the kit ingredients, Get you hands on a copy of a book, like brewing classic styles, that publishes an expected IBU range for each style. You will find that 25 IBUs in a wheat beer is quite different from 25 IBUs in a porter. Poke your recipie into a beer calculator and see what the extra malt does to the bitterness. I have found that my pallet is happiest with recipies that are at the bottom end of the style range for bitterness. YMMV

william_shakes_beer said:

If you want to take a bit more control of the product by supplementing the kit ingredients, Get you hands on a copy of a book, like brewing classic styles, that publishes an expected IBU range for each style. You will find that 25 IBUs in a wheat beer is quite different from 25 IBUs in a porter. Poke your recipe into a beer calculator and see what the extra malt does to the bitterness. I have found that my pallet is happiest with recipes that are at the bottom end of the style range for bitterness. YMMV

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Thanks. I've been going through palmer's online book, but It's a lot to go through. I also use beer calculus (love that thing), but the IBUs don't really give me an understanding yet, other than 'I'm on target for what other people like for this style'. I guess time and experience will fix.

Listen to the Brewing Network podcasts. "The Jamil Show" covers styles and clones and "Brew Strong" covers specific topics in brewing.