What's your fav extract beer recipe?

[bendog15]

So far I've just been ordering malt extract kits from Midwest. Pretty good stuff so far- brown ale, blonde ale, etc. what company do you order from and what are some of your favorite kit recipes?

 

[Thunder_Chicken]

Not a kit, but BierMuncher's Centennial Blonde extract recipe is a crowd-pleaser. I made about 30 gallons of this last summer, goes quick.

I've got a batch of NB Helles in primary now (I actually just bought the ingredients separately, but it is the same bill as the kit). We'll see how that goes in a few months.

I'm looking hard at the NB Baltic Porter extract kit to pitch on my lager yeast cake when I rack it to secondary.

 

[FlyDoctor]

The Innkeeper from NB is great. Tasty and low alcohol. Also, get the book "brewing classic styles". It has an award winning recipe for every style category of the BJCP and each is given as extract and all-grain. I've made a few of the extract recipe's (Best biter, Dubbel) and they are great. I am mostly an all-grain brewer but the ease and high-quality of these extract recipes keeps me coming back

 

[aiptasia]

Ben,

There's quite a few to try. With kits, what you want to look for are buying them from a shop with a good turnover rate. Bigger beer supply stores do more business on volume, which means they sell more kits to homebrewers. Companies like Williams Brewing, Midwest, Northern Brewer, Rebel Brewing, Austin Homebrew and others have quite a bit of turnover. That means fresher ingredients go into the kits and better tasting beer in the finished product.

Kits are step-by-step and generally fairly easy to execute and have a wide margin of error for beginners through advanced homebrewers. They are a great entrance into the hobby for novice brewers and a convenient time saver for advanced brewers. The only major concerns that I have with kits are as follows:

Limited shelf life: Kits usually contain extracts (dried or liquid) and some contain pre-crushed grains for either roasted grain soaking or partial mashing. Kits also usually contain yeast (dried or liquid) as well as pellet hops. All of these ingredients have a limited shelf life and are best used as fresh as possible. I'd recommend not selecting kits from smaller homebrew stores because who knows how long they've been collecting dust on the shelf.

 

[Zuljin]

The Home Brewery (has a balding, vested guy stirring a pot as a logo) Irish stout and London porter. That was my favorite brand of kit to buy.

 

[82cabby]

Rouge Dead Guy extract kit with the Pacman Yeast my number one favorite.

115th Dream Hopbursted IPA from northern brewer - takes a long time to brew but it's worth it. high alcohol so it is more of a sipping drink. "If you serve this beer to a Michelob Ultra drinker, he or she will cry."

I just brewed Jamil's Evil Twin from northern brewer and it came out great.

 

[TexanRudeboy]

I've been working through Jamil Zainasheff's Brewing Classic Styles, a few times repeating them but changing up the hops. Its all developed for extract with steeping grains. I'd suggest it. My local library system had it so I didn't even have to pay for it.