Friend's first batch / kit needs improvement

Hi all,

I'm helping a friend brew his first batch today and I was hoping to "augment" his kit with some fresh ingredients.

He's got a "Brown Ale" kit which consists of 5.3 lbs dark extract and no steeping grains. I was hoping to add some grains for body, but don't know what would work given the dark extract he's got.

Any thoughts?


I also want to replace the hops in the kit, was thinking of fuggles or kent goldings to give an english brown feel to the batch. Just 2 oz (1.25 at 60, the rest at 10 minutes).

Thanks for any input! Cheers!
-funky

that dark extract has specialty grains in it, so be frugal when adding more, you don't wanna add to much unfermentable sugar to it.

fuggles and/or EKG are always nice in a brown.

Can you post a link to the "kit"?. As NordEastBrewer pointed out, Dark extract is pretty tough to augment. With Light extract, its wide open on what you can brew...just add the right steeping grains.

Awesome. Yeah, that's what I found after looking up the difference in dark malt extract.

Plenty of roasty grains already in there, so I dropped the chocolate malt in my planned recipe and just got a pound of C 40 plus another of extra light dme.

Ended up grabbing 2oz of willamette since they were recommended in the recipe and half the price of fuggle.

Thanks for the help!

broadbill said:

Can you post a link to the "kit"?

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It's the True Brew brown ale "all malt" kit. The extract is 3.3 lb munton's dark lme and 2 lbs munton's dark dme.

funky_brewster said:

Plenty of roasty grains already in there, so I dropped the chocolate malt in my planned recipe and just got a pound of C 40 plus another of extra light dme.


Thanks for the help!

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good idea to add the extra light DME to augment the caramel 40, ya know there's not much other than base malt in the DME.

how about some nice fresh liquid yeast.

fixitoscar said:

how about some nice fresh liquid yeast.

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what does yeast, liquid or dry, fresh or dead, have to do with mouthfeel and adding grains to achieve this?

NordeastBrewer77 said:

what does yeast, liquid or dry, fresh or dead, have to do with mouthfeel and adding grains to achieve this?

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guess i looked at this

I'm helping a friend brew his first batch today and I was hoping to "augment" his kit with some fresh ingredients.

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and skipped over the "body adding" portion. oops

fixitoscar said:

guess i looked at this

and skipped over the "body adding" portion. oops

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yeah, s'pose it was pretty well hidden in the OPs post.

I know it may be to late but let us know how this turns out. The willametee is a very interesting choice for this beer. You could just bulk up on the fuggle.