My LHBS has a 12 days of Christmas promotion. From the 12th to the 24th of December they have a daily special that heavily discounts certain items. This year one of the days they had half off if you bought a canned kit, a Munton's beer kit enhancer and a package of Munton's Kreamyx beer primer. I chose the Cooper's English Bitter and was out the door for less than $20. These three items on their own will make 23 litres of pretty decent beer at about 31 cents a bottle at the sale price. But...
I like Hobgoblin, a lot. Coopers has a recipe on their site called Hop Gobbler:
•1.7kg English Bitter
•1.5kg Thomas Coopers Amber Malt Extract
•500g Coopers Light Dry Malt
•100g Chocolate Malt grain
•100g Crystal Malt grain
•25g Fuggles Hop pellets
•25g East Kent Goldings (EKG) Hop pellets
•Coopers commercial ale yeast , English Ale yeast or yeast with the kit
•Coopers Carbonation Drops
You steep the grains and dry hop with the Fuggles and EKG. This is meant to be 25 litre batch.
I'm going to make a slightly modified version this coming weekend. Instead of the LME and DME I will use 2 Munton's Beer kit enhancers (I already had one I bought on sale previously). I bought an ounce each of Fuggles and Styrian Golding hops (couldn't get EKG), a quarter pound each of Crystal 40 and Chocolate malt and a package of Danstar Windsor yeast to use instead of the Cooper's yeast. These extra ingredients cost another 12 or 13 dollars.
My plan is to steep the Crystal and Chocolate malt for a half hour and then add both Munton beer kit enhancer's and bring that to a boil. Once the boil is going I will add 10 grams each of the Fuggles and Styrian hops and boil for 10 minutes. Then I'll combine that wort in the fermenter with the English bitter kit and top off to only 23 litres and pitch the rehydrated Windsor. Once the krausen has fallen I will dry hop with the remaining hops. After a week or so of dry hopping I will bulk prime with some (or all?) of the Kreamyx primer instead of using carbonation drops in the bottle.
Small (no?) chance this will come out tasting exactly like Hobgoblin but if it's anywhere close I'll be happy. With the deal I got over Christmas this batch will be slightly cheaper than a same sized all grain batch would be (for me) and way, way cheaper than buying Hobgoblin at the liquor store (~$0.55/340ml vs $3.99/500ml)
Here's hoping it turns out all right.