Designing my third brew

[avillax]

Hello, so Winter's coming and I think my next beer will have to be a dark one.
I'm a beginner and I only want to brew with liquid malt extract for the moment. (I can only get liquid extract).

Notice that I have very basic equipment. Help me make the tastiest possible with the little I have available.

The Dark extract I can get is from Malthouse Bruntal, according to the description:

Malt extract coloring - dark beer, is designed to produce dark beers at a microbrewery. It is a thick viscous liquid, brown, caramel malt flavor and aroma of dry matter of 81%. The wort extract infusion is prepared from a mixture of malts (Czech, Munich, caramel and Colouring) and drinking water.

What dark beers do you recommend to brew with this?

Thanks.

 

[bobeer]

You could make any kind of darker beer with that. Have you used steeping grains yet? They can add a little more complex flavors and even some body to the beer.

Doing a quick look in the recipe section I see this one which looks pretty good...

Recipe Type: Extract
Yeast: London ESB Ale
Yeast Starter: yes
Batch Size (Gallons): 5
Original Gravity: 1.072
Final Gravity: 1.02
IBU: 21.22
Boiling Time (Minutes): 60
Color: 20.4 SRM
Primary Fermentation (# of Days & Temp): 3 Weeks, 65 Degrees
Additional Fermentation: 2 Weeks in the bottle
Secondary Fermentation (# of Days & Temp): None
Tasting Notes: It tastes like a warm gingerbread cookie and finishes with slight warming of booze.

Fermentables:

7 lbs. of pale liquid malt extract
2.1 lbs of carmel/Crystal malt -80L
.5 lbs of Cara-Pils/Dextrine
1 lb table sugar

Hops/Spice:
1 oz. of cluster for 60 min.

8 oz. of Fresh Ginger Root at 45 min.

8 oz. of Ginger Root at 15 min.

1.25 tsp of cinnamon powder at 15 min.

2 tsp of Nutmeg in bottling bucket.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=284331

 

[avillax]

Thanks, I don't to do steeping at the moment, also, the only malts I have available are the one mentioned and Light Bohemian Pilsner malt extract, also, don't think I can access most of the spices you mentioned.

 

[jrgtr42]

out of curiosity, where do you live that you don't have access to those spices, not even worrying about the grains and malts?
Any market should have them. Mail order for spices and grains may also be an option, (from different places of course)
Anyways, working with what you do have, dark LME doesn't really get all the way to porters / stouts, typically. You can probably get something like a brown ale.
The biggest thing that will help when brewing extract is the freshness of it. Older liquid extract can become stale, and give what is know as the "extract twang" a set of slightly off flavors that a lot of people associate with homebrew.
You should plan to boil as much of the batch as you can, use a fairly neutral hop, a decent bittering charge and a smaller aroma / flavor contribution.
Make sure your yeast are happy; that there are plenty of them and there's enough to do the job.
Make sure your fermentation temps are under control. Both of these things will go a long way to keep those off-flavors from showing up.
If you can make a starter for the yeast (a quart of medium-low (about 1.040) gravity wort, a couple days ahead of brewday.) that would help a lot, if you are using liquid yeast, if dry, a packet is theoretically enough for a batch, in that case rehydrating will help.
You'll want to keep ambient temps in the fermenting area in the mid 60s. The wort will go higher as the yeast do their job, so you need to keep it lower to avoid more off-flavors.

 

[avillax]

Hello, I could get spices, it is just that this is Czech Republic and I don't speak Czech so it is quite of a challenge, plus also I would have to go to specialized herb stores of which I haven't seen any.

 

[Calder]

Hello, so Winter's coming and I think my next beer will have to be a dark one. I'm a beginner and I only want to brew with liquid malt extract for the moment. (I can only get liquid extract).

The Dark extract I can get is from Malthouse Bruntal, according to the description:

Malt extract coloring - dark beer, is designed to produce dark beers at a microbrewery. It is a thick viscous liquid, brown, caramel malt flavor and aroma of dry matter of 81%. The wort extract infusion is prepared from a mixture of malts (Czech, Munich, caramel and Colouring) and drinking water.

I assume the 81% means there is 19 % water. That would align with regular LME. This will give you about 36 points per lb. At 1.5 lbs per gallon (US gallon), you will get an OG of 1.054, which with a decent yeast will get you a beer of about 5.5% abv.

You can't get grains; I hope you can get hops.

I'd suggest adding bittering hops to get about 30 IBUs, and maybe an ounce of a 'noble-type' hops at 5 minutes, and see what you get. This should be good for a basic dark beer.

Since we don't know what the make-up of the LME is, it is hard to say what you will get.

I think I would also replace a pound of the extract with plain table sugar to help lower the FG.