New to Extract Brewing

[BlackQueenBrews]

Greetigs!

I am new to the forum and homebrewing. Since I live in an apartment, I have started with extract brewing. I’m very interested in extract brewingnand what types of beers work well with the process.

Since drinking wise, I really like fruit beers and sours, I’d like to know if they are able to be brewed with good results using extract techniques. I also like flavored porters so, the previous inquiry applies to porters as well.

Looking forward to your thoughts and suggestions. I’m starting out with pre-made recipes from the Mr. Beer kit but hope to advance to my own brews in the future.

Thanks and Cheers!

 

[kh54s10]

Welcome

As far as I am concerned you can brew any type of beer you want using extracts. To really do what you want you will have to progress a little past the Mr. Beer kits.

Look at Northern Brewer, Midwest, Morebeer, and several other online sites that have kits with specialty grains. There are also kits from Brewer's Best. These add much more depth to the beer.

At first I would stick with the kits. Some will have flavorings. Later when you get your processes down you can start adding things.

Sours are something of their own and from what I have gleaned they will take up to a year or so to produce. They also need to keep plastic equipment segregated from the rest of your equipment. So those might be something to put off for a while. I haven't yet tried one.

 

[JPW]

As far as I am concerned you can brew any type of beer you want using extracts. To really do what you want you will have to progress a little past the Mr. Beer kits.

Look at Northern Brewer, Midwest, Morebeer, and several other online sites that have kits with specialty grains. There are also kits from Brewer's Best. These add much more depth to the beer.

At first I would stick with the kits. Some will have flavorings. Later when you get your processes down you can start adding things.

Can't agree with this more. Learn to make beer before you try to make a complex beer like a sour.

As for fruit beers, that can be as simple as brewing a basic beer to start and doing a secondary fermentation with mashed up fruit added later.

 

[Calder]

Graduating from Mr. Beer only gets you better beer at a cheaper price; I don't know why anyone would want to move on from Mr. Beer!!!!

You can brew fine beers with extracts, and they actually lend them selves well to the styles you mentioned (sours, fruit, and Porters) because they do not need to be particularly dry. Extract has a tendency to finish a little sweeter than all-grain beers.

For sours, extract is an excellent choice. Check out the wild/lambic forum for guidance. Just a note; a Berliner Weisse can be made in a month, whereas a Lambic or Gauze will take a couple of years. A Berliner is low gravity, refreshing and somewhat one dimensional, whereas a Lambic is a much more complex sour.

Welcome to the forum.

 

[deadwolfbones]

Making kettle sours (Berliners and goses) is actually super easy with extract. I wrote up a thing about it here: https://brew4fun.wordpress.com/2019/01/21/how-to-brew-a-kettle-sour/

Literally the third beer I ever made was a partial mash wild ale and the fourth was an extract kettle sour. You can make whatever you want whenever you want. Don't feel like you need to "graduate" through styles you find boring before attempting the ones you like.

A nice side effect of the kettle souring process is there's no need to keep any separate "sour equipment."

 

[BlackQueenBrews]

Thanks everyone! Your comments are well appreciated! I really want to do more with extract brewing and will definitely move up from Mr. Beer this summer. I was kinda nervous about starting with a 5 gallon kit first and wanted to make sure this was something I really wanted to do. I plan to investigate the sites kh54s10 recommended to find my next adventure.

I do have an interesting question outside of homebrewing, do any of you or anyone else that cares to answer knows of a nanobrewery that does only extract beers? I’ve been looking but can’t find any and have also heard that it would be more expensive than all grain beers to produce for a brewery or distribution.

Thanks again and really looking forward to engaging with everyone in this forum!

 

[TwistedGray]

I am new to the forum and homebrewing. Since I live in an apartment, I have started with extract brewing.

Since drinking wise, I really like fruit beers and sours, I’d like to know if they are able to be brewed with good results using extract techniques. I also like flavored porters so, the previous inquiry applies to porters as well.

Looking forward to your thoughts and suggestions. I’m starting out with pre-made recipes from the Mr. Beer kit but hope to advance to my own brews in the future.

Apartment doesn't preclude you from one things instead of another. You can easily brew-in-a-bag (BIAB) on your stove top using just one pot. You can also buy something like the Mash & Boil, Robobrew, or similar which is even more hands-off. Hell, you could do either in a tiny home.

In regards to an extract sour, a lot of us started here (https://www.homebrewtalk.com/forum/threads/training-wheels-berliner-good-intro-to-sours.579458/). Otherwise, continue reading through the extract sub-forum.

Sours are something of their own and from what I have gleaned they will take up to a year or so to produce. They also need to keep plastic equipment segregated from the rest of your equipment. So those might be something to put off for a while. I haven't yet tried one.

Traditional sours take months to years, and kettle sours are no different from regular brews (weeks). They add in a step of souring your wort; however, that's only adding a few days.

Can't agree with this more. Learn to make beer before you try to make a complex beer like a sour.

As for fruit beers, that can be as simple as brewing a basic beer to start and doing a secondary fermentation with mashed up fruit added later.

Souring wort is not complex assuming you have the right equipment to be able to maintain the souring temperature (for kettle sour). For traditional sour, you make your beer, ferment it off, and then add in the souring blend. There is nothing else to it, so no more complex...just needs time to age (traditional sour).

Fruiting is as easy as JPW says...ferment your beer out then add in fruit. Some people vote for sanitizing raw fruit, others don't. We all agree that you need to freeze the fruit first (breaks down cellular wall, does nothing for bacteria on the fruit) assuming you are using real fruit and not fruit extract.

Graduating from Mr. Beer only gets you better beer at a cheaper price; I don't know why anyone would want to move on from Mr. Beer!!!!

You can brew fine beers with extracts, and they actually lend them selves well to the styles you mentioned (sours, fruit, and Porters) because they do not need to be particularly dry. Extract has a tendency to finish a little sweeter than all-grain beers.

Graduating from Mr. Beer does much more than just giving you "better beer at a cheaper price." It also allows you to craft your own beer recipe (grains and quantity of grains); whereas, extract does not let you choose which grains went into the extract. Basically, you get to fine tune your recipe.

Making kettle sours (Berliners and goses) is actually super easy with extract.

A nice side effect of the kettle souring process is there's no need to keep any separate "sour equipment."

While not super hard, they are not super easy. There are precautions that you have to take when kettle souring that you do not have to take with regular beer. For example, you need to maintain the kettle souring temperature (approx. 100f) throughout the souring process which is dependent on how sour you want your beer to be. If you want to have more control then you also need a good way of measuring pH. Also, oxygen ingress is a major concern during the souring process. See...not super easy...not super hard...just more precautions.

Also, the reason that DeadWolfBones says you do not need separate equipment for kettle souring is that you are boiling the bacteria BEFORE the liquid comes into contact with other equipment. In traditional souring you add the bacteria after fermentation, so anything that comes into it later in that pipeline must be dedicated to sours.

Thanks everyone! Your comments are well appreciated! I really want to do more with extract brewing and will definitely move up from Mr. Beer this summer. I was kinda nervous about starting with a 5 gallon kit first and wanted to make sure this was something I really wanted to do. I plan to investigate the sites kh54s10 recommended to find my next adventure.

I do have an interesting question outside of homebrewing, do any of you or anyone else that cares to answer knows of a nanobrewery that does only extract beers? I’ve been looking but can’t find any and have also heard that it would be more expensive than all grain beers to produce for a brewery or distribution.

Thanks again and really looking forward to engaging with everyone in this forum!

I will also add that for me doing smaller batches (1 gallon, for example) is much easier with all-grain, brew-in-a-bag (now I'm on e-biab) process.

I don't know any brewery that using extract only...run the numbers; it's likely cost prohibitive. If you are trying to make a business out of it and you are conscious about your BOM you wouldn't be running extract batches though. You would be buying grain in bulk, milling yourself, and brewing with that.

 

[deadwolfbones]

For example, you need to maintain the kettle souring temperature (approx. 100f) throughout the souring process which is dependent on how sour you want your beer to be.

Not true with L. Plantarum. Works fine at room temp.

If you want to have more control then you also need a good way of measuring pH.

Nice to have, but not necessary if you know how you want it to taste (or aren't super picky).

Also, oxygen ingress is a major concern during the souring process.

Also not (necessarily) true.

 

[Kirkwooder]

First of all let me say welcome. Beware, this hobby easily becomes an obsession.

If you are totally new to brewing then extract is certainly the way to go in an apartment setting. Most recipes can be scaled down from the 5 or 10 gallon level to just 1 or 2 gallons. This is a great way to get started and learn the process. You can do these on your stove top and use smaller fermentation vessels. You can find some great info on small batch brewing in the "One gallon brewers unite" thread here on this forum, as well as at northernbrewer.com. They have a ton of one gallon kits with recipes and procedures listed so you can buy the ingredients and put your own kit together. Handy if you want to brew a couple different beers that use the same malt extracts, hops yeast, etc..

This wheat beer with some raspberries added to the fermentor would be a good first choice.
www.northernbrewer.com/collections/small-batch-kits/products/cascade-wheat-1-gallon-recipe-kit

Give it a try and let us know what you think.

 

[TwistedGray]

Not true with L. Plantarum. Works fine at room temp.

Nice to have, but not necessary if you know how you want it to taste (or aren't super picky).

Also not (necessarily) true.

I guess we will have to agree to disagree on a number of those

 

[Steveruch]

You can brew fine beers with extracts, and they actually lend them selves well to the styles you mentioned (sours, fruit, and Porters) because they do not need to be particularly dry. Extract has a tendency to finish a little sweeter than all-grain beers.
Welcome to the forum.

Briess pilsner dme will ferment 80%, I've gotten from 1.050 to 1.010.

 

[BrewnWKopperKat]

Briess pilsner dme will ferment 80%, I've gotten from 1.050 to 1.010.

Last fall, I used MJ M31 in a small batch Belgian Tripel recipe. Attenuation fell within the estimated range for the yeast.

You can brew fine beers with extracts [...] Extract has a tendency to finish a little sweeter than all-grain beers.

As many have noted, DME/LME is a great ingredient for a lot of beer styles.

Rye malt is also a great ingredient for various beer styles.

But if you don't like the taste of rye, you may want to find another recipe.

And if the recipe you have for a beer is coming out too sweet, you may want to find another recipe.

Nothing wrong with using the right ingredients to make a good beer in the time that you have for brewing.

 

[Werner]

Welcome to the brewing hobby (soon to be obsession and then affliction).

All the above is great info, for the fresh into the hobby I can offer the following.

Dry Extract, liquid, prepared grains, whole grains, they all can make great beer. Extracts have value of convenience when home brewing, and even the craft and industrial will use it to supplement their own milled grains either as a base or for specific flavor profiles (big breweries don't use extract as their base malt because of cost but at the homebrew level the difference isn't as critical). Like everything food, quality and freshness is key, dry malt extract has a longer shelf life (but can absorb moisture, odors and flavors over time), liquid extract degrades and darkens over time (and some can contains less fermentables and will lead to sweater beer).

1) Start simple and small, the kits will make first drinkable beer, when your process gets good they make good beer and potentially great depending on the kit and how fresh it is. When you are relaxed brewing from a box/can/bag, start with some DIY recipes posted here or on things like brewersfriend or other sites, getting ingredients from your LHBS or one of the sites noted. Learn what your ingredients are and what they do. Then start experimenting with fruit (aka Adjuncts), sours etc. Making 5 1-2 gallon brews is way better than 1 10 gallon brew, so what if its only a box of beer worth, this is art not industry!

2) No matter what you are brewing, where or how, it is key that everything that your beer touches after it has boiled be both immaculately clean and sanitized. Get some good no rinse sani (recommend starsan and a dedicated spray bottle for it diluted as a good starting point).

3) few things to avoid:

• Temperatures far out of recipe/instructions dictate for boil (scorching), fermentation (too high/low can cause it to freak out and then eventually die), storage (too hot can cause beer to foul, freezing can bork it as well)
• Chlorine (its in your water!), depending our your source you could be 'ok' with tap water, but may need something like an activated charcoal filter, campden tablets or even buying bulk/bottled water (reverse osmosis)
• Sunlight, this can ruin your fermentation, bottled storage, and cause your beer to spoil.

4) The primary 'measurables' with brewing that you should learn about and pay attention to:

• Volumes (your water in really effects your beer out)
  
• Temperature (boil, ferment, storage, anything too high or low for your particular recipe can make for sad beer)
  
• Gravity (this is the amount of dissolved solids, aka sugars that allow you to see before and after to calculate % alcohol, track fermentation progress and a few other geeky numbers, get either a hydrometer or other measuring device like a refractometer or digital if you stick with brewing longer)
• PH (its a pretty big ballpark range to make drinkable beer, but the better you can control this the more refined your beer can be)
• After this you start getting into adjuncts, salts and chemistry...
  
  And lastly, like baking, the little changes are often the big effects, hence how 1 oz of Hops can be the difference between a 'beer' (lager, etc) and ale, or an IPA (more hops).

 

[kh54s10]

• And lastly, like baking, the little changes are often the big effects, hence how 1 oz of Hops can be the difference between a beer and ale, or an IPA.

You may wish to rephrase this line. It makes no sense. An ale and an IPA are both beers. An ale and an IPA are both Ales. "Beer" encompasses many styles including Ales, Lagers, Sours, Fruited, Smoked and others.

 

[GnenieGone]

Welcome to the Home Brew Funny Farm. As a suggestion, come visit this thread on No boil/Cold Brew extract brewing. A number of us are interested in easy peasy brew days. 15min?? Hell yeah!

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/forum/index.php?threads/660329/

 

[GnenieGone]

To answer your question about sours absolutely you can do a sour extract wise. I'm doing a sour next week, but it'll be full all grain. However, the next one will be an extract sour possibly with specialty grains.