Improving a Weak Tasting Kit Recipe

[STStunner]

A friend gifted me a wheat beer kit last year, I put it away and forgot about it before rediscovering it again last week. It's already a couple of months past it's best use by date. I'm uncertain whether the yeast it still viable or not, but judging by my past experience, it probably still is. I've brewed this exact same kit in the past and I wasn't too impressed with the end result. It produces an inferior tasting and weaker ABV take on Shock Top or Blue Moon. It's supposed to come out at 4.6% ABV. I was thinking of purchasing some wheat LME and adding that in with the kit ingredients to try and improve both the poor flavor and alcohol content. I'm usually done after drinking a single bottle of beer these days, so I like to have my beer at around 6% ABV, so I feel a little something, but not too much or nothing at all. About how much LME would be suggested to get this brew up to the 6% ABV mark, and hopefully produce a better tasting and more flavorful beer than what the not so high quality kit ingridents alone would make?

 

[JohnSand]

How much extract to add depends on the batch size. I use Brewer's Friend recipe calculator, there are others, or refer to any basic brewing book. It occurs to me just now that 6% is about a third more than 4.6%, so if you increase your extract by 33%, that should do. (Assuming it's an extract kit) I would increase the hops the same way.
Good luck, keep us posted.

 

[BrewnWKopperKat]

@STStunner is this (link) the kit? If so, reply #4 did the math and has the answer.

 

[STStunner]

It's a six gallon extract brew kit. I've brewed two different wheat beer kits before, one I added table sugar to. I think somewhere between maybe a pound and a pound and a half, judging by memory. The other wheat beer kit I simply brewed as the instructions said to do without altering it in any way. Neither one turned out to be anything special. They were quite drinkable, but I still wanted them to be a whole lot better and more nuanced and exciting in the flavor department. I believe the kit that I intend to use now is the one that I didn't add anything to the last time that I made it, which is why I'm asking this here again. In a hope to do it right, and that it would come out better than before during this go around.

 

[fluketamer]

this sounds like a classic "kit and kilo" kit

that means you need a kilo of brewing sugar to add to the kit to get the expected abv.

to improve any kit you have several choices which you can do alone or in combination to make better beer:

substitute yeast
use bottled or at least filtered dechlorinated water
brew to 4 ish gallons rather than 5 to 6
substitute at least half preferably more of the kilo of sugar for DME.
steep grains to improve flavor and body like any extract kit.
add hop teas or dry hop your brews
USE TEMPERATURE CONTROL

the issue you may have had with the low abv is that with almost all of those kits you need to add 2.2 lbs of sugar to bring it up to the intended abv (which is usually low to begin with). and this much sugar as opposed to malt will make a very thin watery beer.

using your canned kit and substituting 1 lb of wheat or even just light dme for one of the pounds of sugar and brewing to 4.25 gallons will immediately improve your kit.

that will increase abv body and bitterness/ hop flavor. the beer may still be a little thin or dry with the lb of sugar but if you add more malt instead of sugar you may need to add more hops also to balance it out.

a little maltodextrin will also add body and a foamy head.

i have used brewers crystals also with success. just about anything is better than straight table sugar with these kits. IMO


this is a great forum for kits :

https://www.thehomebrewforum.co.uk/forums/beer-kit-brewing-discussion.76/

good luck

 

[Miraculix]

Old extract is not worth the water and time. It's oxidised and tastes like crap. You cannot fix this unfortunately. Especially liquid extract oxidizes quickly.