Sasquatch
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Jun 15, 2005
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What do you all think of this?
Here are two emails I sent to [email protected]
"Greetings:
My friends and myself are enjoying a lot of your homebrew kits, but we have a couple of problems. First, we (as Canadians) regard the instructions that come with the kit (eg. Add 1 kg of sugar, malt, corn sugar, or some of Morgans Master Blaends . Make up to 23 liters ... with cold water.) to be insufficient or incorrect. This mix produces beer so pathetically insipid (with a starting gravity of something like 1.035?) that it is actually damaging to Morgans, as people think God, this beers awful when they drink it. Dont get me wrong, we believe the Morgans product to be quite good, but theres no way that 1.6 kg of extract in the kit and 1 kg of sugars, be they DME or dextrose, will get a reasonable starting gravity for anything but the mildest of mild ales. Beer in Canada starts around 5%, and when we brew a clone kit, of say, Alexander Keiths, we expect it to be similar. Thats the point. For our market, different instructions are needed, in order to obtain an OG of 1.045 at least.
Secondly, in exploring the various kits, we have discovered that Morgans provides all kinds of yeast packets, and seemingly at random. This would be acceptable, or even excellent, if the packets came with detailed instructions. For example, my Stockmans Draught came with ale instructions and a lager yeast, the Golden Saaz Pilsner came with an ale yeast (which seems a bit odd), and the Morgans Canadian India Pale Ale came with yeast that merely says yeast and NO instructions at all. If I was not an experienced home brewer, I could not have used the kit. As it stands, I substituted a lager yeast I know the parameters of, and have shelved the mystery yeast in case of emergency.
Is Morgans lager yeast to be lagered proper (brewed at 10 C and then cold aged at 5 C) or is it some kind of hybrid for homebrewing, providing lager-like beer at ale brewing temperatures? What is the mystery yeast that came with the India Pale Ale? Is it a lager yeast or an ale yeast? What temperatures should I use it at?
We will continue to use Morgans extracts as there is no doubt about the quality. But you folks could certainly help yourselves to a bit more market share if you bothered to explain how to make really good beer with what you provide in the kits, and explain how to obtain an acceptable starting gravity for the market you are in. I know a lot of people who are put off of homebrewing because kit instructions are vague, or produce mediocre (or worse) beer.
Thanks for your time"
And after not receiving a response for two weeks, I sent this slightly less verbose message:
"Why do you guys have an email address if you dont respond to questions about your products?"
Which brought the following response:
Todd - Firstly I must say, we do answer emails however yours went on the backburner for the following reasons
Lengthy emails are a problem to most companies as the time needed to answer all the bits and pieces is simply not available. Your email was sort of special as apart from saying our products were very good, it then rambled on fundamental mistakes, assumptions as well as you telling us how to run our business.
2. Our products go all around the world, if you had any idea how many different ways those peoples make
Beer, then you would understand why the instructions are as they are.
3 To suggest that we put different yeast on cans at random is offensive. Breweries brew lagers at 15C plus,
Others different temps. The reality in home brewing is that the lager yeasts used on cans are a bit tongue in cheek as the more lager types are very unreliable with short use bys. The Lager yeasts we use can be brewed at lower temps but they must be rehydrated at the chosen fermenting temp.
Regards - Grant Sampson, Director
Here are two emails I sent to [email protected]
"Greetings:
My friends and myself are enjoying a lot of your homebrew kits, but we have a couple of problems. First, we (as Canadians) regard the instructions that come with the kit (eg. Add 1 kg of sugar, malt, corn sugar, or some of Morgans Master Blaends . Make up to 23 liters ... with cold water.) to be insufficient or incorrect. This mix produces beer so pathetically insipid (with a starting gravity of something like 1.035?) that it is actually damaging to Morgans, as people think God, this beers awful when they drink it. Dont get me wrong, we believe the Morgans product to be quite good, but theres no way that 1.6 kg of extract in the kit and 1 kg of sugars, be they DME or dextrose, will get a reasonable starting gravity for anything but the mildest of mild ales. Beer in Canada starts around 5%, and when we brew a clone kit, of say, Alexander Keiths, we expect it to be similar. Thats the point. For our market, different instructions are needed, in order to obtain an OG of 1.045 at least.
Secondly, in exploring the various kits, we have discovered that Morgans provides all kinds of yeast packets, and seemingly at random. This would be acceptable, or even excellent, if the packets came with detailed instructions. For example, my Stockmans Draught came with ale instructions and a lager yeast, the Golden Saaz Pilsner came with an ale yeast (which seems a bit odd), and the Morgans Canadian India Pale Ale came with yeast that merely says yeast and NO instructions at all. If I was not an experienced home brewer, I could not have used the kit. As it stands, I substituted a lager yeast I know the parameters of, and have shelved the mystery yeast in case of emergency.
Is Morgans lager yeast to be lagered proper (brewed at 10 C and then cold aged at 5 C) or is it some kind of hybrid for homebrewing, providing lager-like beer at ale brewing temperatures? What is the mystery yeast that came with the India Pale Ale? Is it a lager yeast or an ale yeast? What temperatures should I use it at?
We will continue to use Morgans extracts as there is no doubt about the quality. But you folks could certainly help yourselves to a bit more market share if you bothered to explain how to make really good beer with what you provide in the kits, and explain how to obtain an acceptable starting gravity for the market you are in. I know a lot of people who are put off of homebrewing because kit instructions are vague, or produce mediocre (or worse) beer.
Thanks for your time"
And after not receiving a response for two weeks, I sent this slightly less verbose message:
"Why do you guys have an email address if you dont respond to questions about your products?"
Which brought the following response:
Todd - Firstly I must say, we do answer emails however yours went on the backburner for the following reasons
Lengthy emails are a problem to most companies as the time needed to answer all the bits and pieces is simply not available. Your email was sort of special as apart from saying our products were very good, it then rambled on fundamental mistakes, assumptions as well as you telling us how to run our business.
- A 1.7kg (not 1.6) plus 1kg of sugar will produce a SG of around 1038 being 4.5% plus .5% for priming
2. Our products go all around the world, if you had any idea how many different ways those peoples make
Beer, then you would understand why the instructions are as they are.
3 To suggest that we put different yeast on cans at random is offensive. Breweries brew lagers at 15C plus,
Others different temps. The reality in home brewing is that the lager yeasts used on cans are a bit tongue in cheek as the more lager types are very unreliable with short use bys. The Lager yeasts we use can be brewed at lower temps but they must be rehydrated at the chosen fermenting temp.
- As far as the marketing advice, were Ok with that and by the way, almost all people are very happy with
Regards - Grant Sampson, Director
There are very few producers (homebrew) of malt and/or extract in North America compared to other parts of the world, notably UK and AUS, obviously. The black malt my local HBS carries, for instance, is Hugh Baird, from UK. It just seems that it's more widely available for purchase.
