Brewing from extract kit ideas.

I have been brewing from extract kits for a few months now and really enjoy it. Was wondering what I could do to make my beers different from all my friends who also brew from the same kits. What could I add, when and how. Cheers guys.

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Steeping freshly cracked grain adds a level to the brew as does using some extra hops in the recipe.
What style brews do you make?

 

Just go allgrain biab (boil in a bag) and you can do lots of stuff diffirent and its just as easy just adds an hour at the beginning of the brew session

 

I brew mainly dark ales and stout. Have brewed some lager for friends. I'd love to go all grain but looks so hard and expensive!!

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Dry hopping will add a whole new dimension of flavor and aroma to a beer. It's easy, inexpensive and you can do it to a beer you've already got in the fermenter.

 

+1 on steeping grains and +1 on dry hopping

 

Just look in the recipe section of this forum. Lots of good recipes that are not difficult to brew.

I have done several and been very happy with the results.

 

The thing that seems to be getting popular on many forums about all extract is two canning (toucan on some sites). Say,a can of hoped extract with a can of plain malt. Or,as I did,a can of hopped malt,& a 3lb bag of plain DME. All instead of dextrose/brewer's sugar. Or,even with dextrose,but only 250-300g of it added to the 2 can or can-n-bag.
You can tweak the color & flavor that way,to your liking. That's the kind of recipes I'm gunna do for a while longer. It's easy to do,since there are so many hoped & unhoped cans & DME bags out there to play with. And I've seen that DME's come in extra light,light,amber,etc. It seems to me so far to be a great way to slightly tweak a can kit to more closely fit your particular rendition of a style.