Changing flavers

[1foru2forme]

Is there anything I can do to experiment with flavors if I only use extract kits? I mean beside mixing 2 cans. I just want to expand if possible. Not sure what I'm looking for just want to try new things. Also how long is a typical brew if I wanted to not use caned extract. I'm thinking about switching over. I can do my caned in about 25min.

 

[zoebisch01]

I think it may be a good idea to look into steeping grains in your brew. How to Brew - By John Palmer has a good section on it. I am not sure if the wiki has information or not. Steeping grains is the easiest method to add new flavors and complexity to an extract brew.

 

[Revvy]

Start brewing extract with grain recipes...from here and in books. That way you are buying your ingredients fresh. My first non kit recipes were from here...Yooper's especially.

Another think that helped me was using brewing software, I started with Beer Calculus . homebrew recipe calculator then later I bought beersmith.

What I did was to take all recipes including my old kit recipes and imputted them in..That way you can see how change the amount of ingredients OR swapping ingredients will affect things like the gravity, the bitterness and the color of the beer.

 

[GroovePuppy]

+1 on steeping grains if you read the section in How To Brew first. It's pretty straight forward to do, just watch the temperature.

+1 on BeerSmith. If you can only find an All-Grain recipe for the beer you like it'll make converting to an Extract and Steep recipe pretty straight forward.