mangrove jacks northern bitter first time

[allanyork]

Hey all, I've done a few kits already and now I'm going to try a bag of this northern bitter. Has anyone made one of these kits before? How did it turn out? I have some light malt extract I'm going to use with some Nottingham ale yeast. What do you guys think? Should work out OK right? I'm also wonder what abv I'll get with this.
Cheers

 

[ukulele01]

Hi allanyork. I just notice your post. No doubt you are drinking this brew now. How do you like it? I made a batch of this and ended up not liking it at all. I used the follow recipe:

Mangrove Jack's Northern Bitter
150gm wheat DME
150gm light DME
400gm dextrose
1/4 oz EKG hops boiled x 2 minutes
2 pkg Coopers yeast
22 liters water (half of which was RO)

Initially it wasn't too bad, although very bitter; but the older it got, the worse it got. In the end it had very distinctive and unpleasant woody and skanky notes. I don't know, maybe my hops were stale, or maybe it got infected. If you liked it maybe I will try it again.

On the other hand I also tried their Brown Ale and loved it. I used this recipe:

Mangrove Jack's Brown Ale
450gm DME
650gm dextrose
1/4 oz Willamette hops boiled x 4 minutes
kit yeast (a.k.a. Workhorse)
21 liters of water (half of which was RO)

It had a fluffy head, nice mouth feel, clean, malty flavor with a hint of caramel and fruit, lovely Willamette perfume.

 

[allanyork]

Hey, that northern bitter was Deffinitly not very good. I'll never brew that again. This time around I picked up the 2.2 kg lme pilsner. Going to add 1.3 kg light lme and 1 oz of saz pellet. I'm also thinking of using two 2.2kg kits and 2 oz saz. With the Nottingham ale yeast.
Glad Youre brown ale turned out, I'll have to give that a try too. Do you usually dry hop?

 

[ukulele01]

No, I don't usually dry hop unless I am making a Blonde or lager; I prefer darker ales. I usually do a four (or two minute) boil in a small pot, in a bit of DME and water; just using a small volume like this (maybe a cup and a half) makes it easy too cool down. I made the Mangrove Jack's Traditional Pils kit too with half oz of Saaz pellets boiled for two minutes and US-05 yeast. The kit yeast (Workhorse) would probably have been just as good. It was tasty. I have made all of the MJ's kit in the Traditional series once and my favourite by far is the Brown Ale. I would rate the Northern Bitter 1/5, the Stout 2/5, the Blonde and Pils 3/5, and the Brown 5/5. The Brown Ales is the only one I would make again, considering the premium price vs kits in a tin. The benefits of cool packaging aren't that noticeable to my palate. I prefer to spend my money on DME and upgrading the yeast that come with canned kits. I always use dry yeasts and I am busy trying out some of the new Mangrove Jack's yeasts.

 

[allanyork]

Ok, so you take the pellets drop them in a separate small boiling pot for 2 minutes then strain, cool, and dump in the batch?

 

[allanyork]

I'm actually making the pilsner tonight. So I'll try that. But I have only 1 ounze of dry saz pellet

 

[ukulele01]

I don't bother straining them; they just fall to the bottom during fermentation. I read somewhere that a four minute boil strikes a good balance between flavour and aroma extraction from the pellets, giving you a good bang for your hops buck, plus you don't get too much bitterness from such a short boil. This is important if you are adding to a pre-bittered kit. A two minute boil does not give much in the way of flavour, it is mostly aroma.