Would like to advance from extract kits

Hello,

I have been brewing with extract kits and juices for a few years and have got steadily better resulting in brews that I really enjoy, mostly ciders and wines.

Anyway today I was at my local homebrew store and had a great conversation with the owner.

He was talking to me about all the processes and letting me taste all different grains, smell hops and see all the equipment needed.

Well he was saying that I should instead of throwing myself right into all grain just proceed in stages. I came away with some 6.6AA fuggles hops for a hop tea to add to my general IPA beer kit.

I brewed that just an hour ago and wow the smells of the hops were just great, I boiled 30g for 20mins which gave a nice golden brown liquid that smelled great.


So my question, what should I do next? I have 2 kits that I got really cheap from a closing down sale a while ago. A lager kit and a barley wine kit.

Is there anything I could add to these that doesn't require a full mash and all that equipment?

Can some types of malted barley be boiled in a muslin bag like hops to add something to an otherwise plain kit?

Do a search on Brew In a Bag. It's the technique I use for 95% of my AG.

dougdecinces said:

Do a search on Brew In a Bag. It's the technique I use for 95% of my AG.

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At this time I only really have a maximum of a 2 litre pot. Maybe in the future I will be able to get a bigger pot for that sort of thing.

You are limited in the size of your batches, but BIAB is fine for smaller batches. If you can get another small kettle, you can mash your grains in one, and then sparge by dunking the bag of grains into the other to rinse the sugars. Then combine the two for the boil.

If you really only have a single 2L kettle, then you can still do what you are doing, but mash some grains in a bag before adding extract. That's partial mash, or PM brewing.

thrall said:

At this time I only really have a maximum of a 2 litre pot. Maybe in the future I will be able to get a bigger pot for that sort of thing.

Click to expand...

Then your next step is to definitely get a bigger pot. I'm not sure how it is in Scotland, but here in the states you can get a 6 gallon pot from a big box store for about $30 (20 euros or so?). That's big enough for 3 1/2 gallon all grain batches and 5 gallon partial batches.