FNG question... (Sorry in adavnce.)

[CaptainJackBeard]

Okay, so... I'm lost.

I've been making wine for a while and gotten fairly proficient at it IIMSSM... I finally looked at all the equipment sitting in the basement the other day and thought "Hey, I could be putting this stuff to better use..."

So I did quite a bit if research and off to the local Homebrew Emporium I went... I was set to try a kit for my first attempt, and the BrewFerm Abdij came highly recommended.

The guy at the store said that I would need to "boost it" and so he added 2 lbs. of Muntons Dark dried malt extract and 1 lb of Candi sugar.

Turns out the instructions don't say anything about "boosting" or what I'm supposed to do with the malt extract.

Can someone point me in the right direction?

 

[MistyMountainHops]

When you bring it to a boil and add your other malt extract, add the Muntons Dark. As for the Candy Sugar - you can add that at the last 10-15 min of your boil. Good luck and welcome.


My bad man - I didnt read your whole post. I have never brewed one of those before. I apologize.

 

[mitch171]

I too made a similar jump from wine making to beer. I see beer making as something I can do anytime of the year, this time of the year however or soon at least comes the GRAPE HARVEST!!!!! Couple weeks I will be working on around 100 gal of wine and helping others with about another 100 gal worth.

I also may have to decided if I want to keep perusing my teaching career or take a job as an assistant wine maker here in the finger lakes.

Anyway to your question when I did kits the grain was crushed (is yours?) and I steeped it before adding the extract to keep things from getting too messy. Look up other threads on this forum about working with extract.

 

[CaptainJackBeard]

When you bring it to a boil and add your other malt extract, add the Muntons Dark. As for the Candy Sugar - you can add that at the last 10-15 min of your boil. Good luck and welcome.

Aye... there's the rub. I assumed that to be the case, but according to the provided instructions (translated through at least 11 different languages before it landed on English) there's no boil involved.

The instructions provided:
1. Heat up the canned extract.
2. Add to carboy, rinse w/ 1 L warm water and add.
3. Add 2L warm water.
4. Dissolve sugar.
5. Add 5L cool water.
6. Add yeast.
7. Allow primary ferment 7-10 days.
8. Transfer, add sugar, bottle, secondary 6-8 weeks.

I also wonder now, the only sugar involved is the Candi sugar... which time (step 4 or 8) do I add that?

I thank you for your patience with my ignorance.

 

[ISLAGI]

Aye... there's the rub. I assumed that to be the case, but according to the provided instructions (translated through at least 11 different languages before it landed on English) there's no boil involved.

The instructions provided:
1. Heat up the canned extract.
2. Add to carboy, rinse w/ 1 L warm water and add.
3. Add 2L warm water.
4. Dissolve sugar.
5. Add 5L cool water.
6. Add yeast.
7. Allow primary ferment 7-10 days.
8. Transfer, add sugar, bottle, secondary 6-8 weeks.

Just to start with a baseline, in an extract brew (like this kit) you would normally take the extract and boil it in at least 7,5 L of water for 60 minutes adding the candi sugar to the boil pot after 45 minutes of boiling, cool the resulting mixture down to around 25 C, top off with preboiled water in a sanitized container to an approximate final volume of 23 L.

I would recommend at least 3 weeks in the primary fermentation then the 6-8 weeks in a secondary fermenter.

Sorry if the measurements are somewhat off, but I don't do much metric.

Hope this helps