no boil prehopped beer kits

[BrewnWKopperKat]

the large amount of sugar to be added, and them being prehopped.

Braggot is wort made from barley and a large amount of honey.

 

[fluketamer]

zbob - dont worry too much about the bitterness when shorting or even doubling these kits the bittering hops tend to be on the lighter side in most of these kits i imagine to keep price low., i have doubled stouts kits without a problem . they just take a long time to ferment and age with all the malt. doubling the lager kits dont work cause it makes the beer too dark remember these are made to be diluted to 6 gallons so shortening any amount will darken them and increase bitterness ( and malt and decrease dextrose percentage.) as said many times a kilo of pure dextrose doesnt work because that gives 30 percent or more corn which will make it taste like bmc. which in a stout doesnt really work at all. but in a lager may be enjoyable to some.
i have done lager kits to 4.5 gallons with 1 lb of dextrose to ,make a great lawnmower beer.
island lizard hi welcome. i think i have seen in past threads that you have brewed can kits i appreciate any input to the thread. yes the main limit is the unknown hop additions. the only way to get past this is to experiment with them and brew them and adjust bitterness to taste with hop infusions. the sugar to me is not a limitation cause i never brew them with just sugar (but i seem to always add at least a little sugar so as not to get a super malt forward brew.) if i were to add malt only i would add hop tea as i stated before.
ramprat - hi very welcome. someone accused me of getting commission for these kts. lol - i must admit i started these threads to find others to talk hopped kits about so yes i am getting something out of it. i also am super psyched about the price point . as someone mentioned these kits are usually more expensive then AG beer. i figured a way to stock up on kits without having them expire. i plan on buying many kegs with the money i saved and brewing all the stouts way before expiration in order to age them long term. and maybe even superhopping an ale kit and increasing the abv to age one of them as well. if i had cold storage i would brew all the lagers and lager them for 3 months as well. i may invest in a large fridge also with money saved. you really summed up the can kit brewing process well and my method is almost same unless i add hop tea or steeping grains./ btw the stouts do really well with a pound of chocolate and half pound of roasted malt. and plus or minus 2-3 oz of black patent., all kits do well with 4 oz carapils steep . thanks for posting the enhancers you really cant go wrong if you just add a kilo of the enhancer instead of dextrose. be1 for lagers be2 for stouts. i have also added only dextrose to ciders with no ill effect. im not sure where you are getting the 15 dollars for dme it usually runs me less than 10 bucks to mix up a kilo of enhancer. or other added fermentable so these beers will cost me less than 20 bucks for 4.5 gallons ( a little more for the stouts with the steeping grains)
mac- i find boiling hops in dme is unnecessary you can just add hop tea in water. and dry dme at flameout. but it prolly doesnt matter. i think with no sugar at all the kits wouldn't be balanced. but try it if you like its a 10 dollar exbeeriment. i would add tho that i have never seen that on the sister site homebrewforumuk. they have a whole seperate discussion board devoted to can kits and i urge everyone to check it out . they have years and years of threads with people with experience brewing these. and proven recipes to adjust your kits. the coopers stout threads in particular are very helpful.
the maltodextrien addition prevents the dextrose from overthinning the beer by leaving some sugars unfermented to add to the mouthfeel and body as implied many times throughout these threads. it also gives great head (wink wink)

seriously i love MD head it last for days is thick and creamy makes the bubbles smaller imo and adds to the lacing. its expensive tho and a white suspicious looking powder and i dont add it unless i have it on hand. to me i dont get the same head form steeping carapils.
i really like that recipe you did but i would have added dextrose to get abv of at least 4 really 4.5 better on my palette. and i doubt you would have noticed the dextrose in there.

prehopped kit beer is the best option for me. at present .

thanks for all the replies



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[fluketamer]

forgot to mention honey brown sugar turbinado agave syrup treacle( uk molasses sort of ) fruit syrups etc are all great experimental additions. im down to the last gallon of agave lager in my keg today that i made with a coopers kit and 11 ounces of blue agave nectar and miss it already.

 

[mac_1103]

Dextrose and Maltodextrine are two different sugars. One ferments and the other doesn't.

I know that. I've used both. I was trying to understand why adding maltodextrine would help if one left out the dextrose, but apparently he was suggesting to use it whether the dextrose was included or not.

 

[smata67]

Got the Brown Ale Kit going, here are some findings.

If you want to get at the yeast and hops, you can carefully slit along the area indicated in red on the pouch pic with a razor blade. This should leave the LME bag intact. You might want to do this if you purchase two bags of the same type to double up on the stock yeast.

The yeast in this kit (perhaps MJ M15 Empire Ale) is a half dose of 5.5g or so. Some would say the ABV might justify that low a dose, but I say why are you even considering a 4.4% ABV Brown Ale, are you crazy? They are trying to hit a low price point, use your ingenuity and adulterate as necessary. More fermentables and yeast are a must here.

The dry hops appear to be about 1/2 oz. I would dry hop 6 gallons at about a 2oz rate, so you will need to make a hike over to your hop stash and make amends for their feeble attempt at dry hopping.

The yeast in this package smelled foul. I went ahead and used it anyway, but I have serious reservations about it and will take remedial action in a day or two if things aren't looking kosher.

The hops were green and fresh, I detected some citrus elements. I was thinking this would be EKG given the kit's origin, but I'm not sure what is going on here. I will supplement with something similar, probably cascade. Cascade is just a great dry hop for brown ales, can't lose proposition there. And so cheap.

I split the batch into two 2.5G batches and will pitch some 2nd generation S05 into one and the stock yeast into the other. Probably dry hop at 1oz for cascade in the S05 batch and stock hops plus cascade in the Empire batch.

Given the yeast dose is light, the dry hops are scant, I suspect they also shorted the LME of specialty malts, given they are not cheap. So I steeped 4oz chocolate, 4oz C40, and 2oz black malt and split between the two 2.5G batches. Also some carafoam, as I have had occasional bad luck getting decent head with LME batches. Also used a total of 2 lb Briess Pilsen LME for each of the two 2.5G batches.

OG seems off, way low, but fact is that the LME is probably sitting at the bottom. Will try to mix things up better and see if I can get something resembling the predicted OG of 1.065. I am shooting for about 7% ABV for this.

 

[lmaa]

i use to use Cooper and Muntons, they never tasted right to me. Could have been that I kept screwing things up during the brew. I've started to use Festa Brew. I find it quite good for a lazy beer drinker like me. Empty the bag into a barrel add yeast, wait, bottle. No fuss no muss.
I save a litre of the wort before adding the yeast, this is a just incase thing. I try bottling when the sugar content is about 5% this gives me the head I like and a real loud pop when I open a flip cap bottle.
Just in case I miss the the 5% I can wait until the sugar content is almost 0% add the litre of the saved wort and bottle. I try and stick to the Reinheitgebote from 1516 as much as possible and avoid adding sugar for the secondary fermentation. The beer in my opinion taste better unsugared.

 

[bellhp]

I try and stick to the Reinheitgebote from 1516

No offense , but that's funny right there ... we are talking about the cheapest of the cheap ... shortcuttiest of the shortcuttiest , quick and dirty homebrew and you are going to abide by a 500 year old political/religious regulation to make it? Dude you ain't gonna taste priming sugar . Thanks though , I needed a laugh.

 

[Ramp_Rat]

im not sure where you are getting the 15 dollars for dme

Unfortunately (for me), this is the current price for a 1kg bag of light DME at my LHBS . Or $40 for 3kg. Keep in mind these are Canadian $ lol. Especially after getting this most recent deal on kits online, I don't really mind paying a little more for the expertise/ advice/ BS session at the store whilst filling my cart or grabbing another doodad.

 

[smata67]

The yeast that came with the Brown Ale kit (possibly Empire?) is impatient, got a 1/2" krausen 5 hours after pitching. Smelled terrible right out of the package, but appears to be doing its job.

 

[fluketamer]

https://www.amazon.com/Briess-DME-G...r_1_1?keywords=3+lb+dme&qid=1688350221&sr=8-1
do you have amazon prime in canada. i have been getting some decent dme off there last few months ,

the taste i took out of the fv of the pilsen kit tastes a little light on the malt and hops. . i think this one will need more tweaking. steeping grains and hop tea next time. the yeast in the pilsen kit didnt smell off it just smelled faint like not as strong as when you open a pack of so5. but it took off like a rocket.


on another note the dry hop has screwed with my schedule. i generally primary my lagers for 10 days then raise them to 70 degrees over the next 24 hours to have the yeast finish up. then keg on day 14. the dry hops on day 7 started the fermentation bac up a little and then when i raised it to 70 its like full bubbling with kreusen and the beer clouded up.

i think its called hop creep and im not sure what to do now. the dry hops have already been in there 6 days and i wanted to get the beer off there into keg but now its not done fermenting.

have you ever had hop creep and what do you guys do with hop creep?

 

[DollarStoreChili]

Newbie here, I received my kits last week. I've never brewed beer before and I'll outline my experience so far.
I started the draught lager kit on Saturday. I'll report back again throughout the process.

I'm following the directions as they exist in the kit. I'm making no changes and following no conventional beer
making strategy. What's on the paper is how I'm doing it (except the one that says to leave your fermenter
bucket lid half cracked, I decided not to follow that one).

I ordered draught lager, wheat beer, red ale, and brown ale. In the package I received a letter from the company
that said something to the effect of "the yeast in the kit isn't right, so we sent you more yeast". Alongside my kits
there was four 11g pouches of LalBrew Premium Series Nottingham high performance ale yeast. I discarded the
yeast in the kit and pitched a whole 11g pouch of this into my draught lager.

I ordered a jug of dextrose from Amazon and used the full recommended amount of 1kg.

The bucket is happily fermenting in my pantry, quite aggressively in fact. The airlock is bubbling wildly. The bucket lid
does start to distend a little with gas so every 8 hours I burp the brew by pushing on the lid a little and let it bubble out
of the airlock. I don't know if this is bad or not, but it's fun .

 

[fluketamer]

hmmmm

i definately wouldnt suggest that much corn sugar i think its like 35 percent - it will make a cidery beer especially if fermented warm like in 70's.

and definately not in that style. brown ales dont go well with corn adjunct imo.

i would have added 1kg dme to the brown ale kit. and extra hops.

i dont know what that sugar is i think its health supplement its definitely not brewing sugar. it prolly wont make a difference but maybe someone else can chime in. it may contain preservatives or drying agents

i wouldnt burp it cause you can get suck back from the airlock into the fv.

it will make beer it might not be any good. if it does make good beer with all that sugar than these kits are better than most but its unlikely. sorry.

next time add 50/50 dextrose / dme or all dme.

i think you can still add dme now even halfway through fermentation. i bet that would save it.

i would add 2 pounds of dme and ounce of hops looking for og of around 1060 and hoping to get this up to 6 percent abv to hide the sugar . thats still like 25 percent dextrose tho.

 

[mac_1103]

I received a letter from the company
that said something to the effect of "the yeast in the kit isn't right, so we sent you more yeast".

Good on them.

The bucket lid
does start to distend a little with gas so every 8 hours I burp the brew by pushing on the lid a little and let it bubble out
of the airlock.

You shouldn't need to burp the lid if you have an airlock.

i definately wouldnt suggest that much corn sugar

Yeah, but it will be interesting to see how the kits turn out when brewed as directed.

 

[smata67]

Anyone getting low starting gravities? I am measuring 1.040 with 4 lb of added LME, .5 lb carafoam, .6 lb of demerera into 5 gallons. Beersmith is telling me should be 1.072. Does the LME just not register when mixing cold? Shook it like one would a redheaded stepchild. Even drew the sample from the bottom. Doesn't taste as sweet as I'm used to either. It is as if the mix itself is not registering at all hydro.

 

[z-bob]

Anyone getting low starting gravities? I am measuring 1.040 with 4 lb of added LME, .5 lb carafoam, .6 lb of demerera into 5 gallons. Beersmith is telling me should be 1.072. Does the LME just not register when mixing cold? Shook it like one would a redheaded stepchild. Even drew the sample from the bottom. Doesn't taste as sweet as I'm used to either. It is as if the mix itself is not registering at all hydro.

It's very hard to get it to all dissolve, especially in cold water. Most of the malt is probably sitting at the bottom of the fermenter. The yeast will find it. If you have some yeast nutrient you might want to add a little for when the yeast it mostly eating the demerara.

 

[smata67]

In reading the instructions, it appears they want you to boil 3L of water and mix in the pouch, so maybe that is how they get things dissolved in? I will probably just heat the 5G up to about 120F next time to ensure mixing. Somewhat complicating things, but don't feel comfortable not having measured an accurate OG.

 

[mashdar]

but I say why are you even considering a 4.4% ABV Brown Ale, are you crazy?

You do you, but IMO low 4s is the sweet spot for a malty brown.
BJCP says 2.8-4.1% for a southern brown, 4.2-5.4% for northern. (Not weighing in on the great BJCP-re-foreign-beer war.)

Maybe these kits are actually low ABV styles!

 

[BrewnWKopperKat]

BJCP says 2.8-4.1% for a southern brown, 4.2-5.4% for northern

Are you referring to the 2008 guidelines for northern/southern brown? I could not find these categories in the 2015 or 2021 guidelines; but did see a "27: Historical Beer: London Brown Ale" in the 2015 & 2021 guidelines.

 

[mashdar]

Are you referring to the 2008 guidelines for northern/southern brown? I could not find these categories in the 2015 or 2021 guidelines; but did see a "27: Historical Beer: London Brown Ale" in the 2015 & 2021 guidelines.

Oh, yeah, I forget that they rearranged everything. Haven't been back long and don't look at styles much. You're right, they call the "southern brown" "historical london brown" now, and the "northern" is now "british brown".

 

[BrewnWKopperKat]

It's very hard to get it [LME] to all dissolve, especially in cold water. Most of the malt is probably sitting at the bottom of the fermenter.​

My limited experience with unhopped LME suggests that it dissolves easiest in hot (180F, 200F) water while off the heat. Some assertive stirring seems to be necessary to get it fully dissolved in a reasonable amount of time.

OTOH, DME seems to dissolve best in the absence of steam (avoids clumps).

aside: With my limited number of 3 gal LME batches, I measured SG after stirring and at the end of the boil. The actual measurements matched the estimated measurements.​

---

I doubt that the "pour the ingredients in the keg, add cold water, and shake it" works consistently when unhopped LME or crushed grains are used.

---

It may be helpful in this topic for people to post complete recipes and processes.

Posting recipes/processes may help avoid a short and shoddy "too short, too shoddy, race to the bottom" that ends in contaminated batches.

 

[Rish]

After a few beers and cocktails last night, I ordered 6 more kits: couple each brown and stout, one each red and amber. Should be fun playing around with them to see what I can get.

 

[Spivey24]

I ordered 5 kits for the hell of it - 2 ambers and 3 pilsners. See if I can apply what I know now to make a decent beer. Planning to use 1.25 pouches for each 5 gallon batch and make up any OG with dextrose. Funny they sent all Notty yeast even for the lagers (; that’s fine I will use my own yeast anyway. Worst case I have a ton of LME for starters.

 

[smata67]

The brown ale is on Day 3 of fermentation and the stock yeast which came in the pouch (presumably empire ale which may be the same as windsor) had a krausen at 5 hours and appears to be done! I'll see where it ends up in a couple of weeks. The dry hops went in when things started slowing down and if I were to guess what hops they are, possibly chinook. Some pine and citrus smell. And they use chinook in their pale ale per their site.

 

[fluketamer]

The Pilsner fermented with diamond lager yeast is kegged. It tastes very good. Malty hoppy boozy. it’s just darker than I expected. Golden rather than straw like the picture on pouch. Partly from shorting to 4.5 gallons and partly from adding golden light instead of Pilsen Dme. I think the only way to get the beer to match the pic is to not use any dime and brew to 6 gallons. I wouldn’t use dextrose for this but if you have to have the beer light like the pic I would use brewers crystals at least. To maintain. Mouthfeel. i thinking the draught kit may come out very dark if I brew it to 4.5 gal. I think I’m brewing that one next. Prolly next week.
I was a little worried about these kits when I tasted the hydrometer sample last week and it was really plain. Now it tastes like my beer always tastes and I know this will be good.
rish that’s a lot of kits you are up to. I ended up getting 11. And one cider

hi Spivey. I have used partial kits before it’s messy and not ideal but can be done. I used to use 2/3 of a coopers stout can in 2 gallons of water and no added fermentables comes out fine every time but you are left with a third can. has To be mason jarred in fridge and used soon. It’s a pita. I would suggest using brewers friend and other fermentables to get there.
most prehopped lager kits have ale yeast so anyone can brew them.
Some coopeers lager kits have lager yeast
did u guys get the sale still cause the kits are now 20$

 

[BrewnWKopperKat]

American Lager "extract" recipe with color appropriate to style: HomeBrewTalk: AHA homebrewer of the year (2021)

 

[Rish]

Got my 6 kits today. Had a note saying there was an issue with yeast expiration date in the kits so they included 6 packs of ale yeast (I think I read that someone else had the same thing happen). Nice of them to fess up and make it good! $8.46 per 6 gallon kit, free shipping.

 

[smata67]

I wonder where they got the idea the beer yeasts in the kits did not have good dates? No date code on the ones I got and the first kit brewed, the brown ale kit, had a krausen at 5 hours and finished in 3 days as expected for empire ale/windsor ale yeast.

 

[mashdar]

Man, you have to make your own hand crafted beer kit, and then make your own hand crafted beer? At least you don't have to make your own make your own hand crafted beer kit kit. : )

 

[Bobby_M]

Got my 6 kits today. Had a note saying there was an issue with yeast expiration date in the kits so they included 6 packs of ale yeast (I think I read that someone else had the same thing happen). Nice of them to fess up and make it good! $8.46 per 6 gallon kit, free shipping.

If the dry yeast included with the kit is expired, it is HIGHLY likely that the LME in the pouch has been sitting on a warm shelf for 2 or more years. Dry yeast has a best by date of 2 years from packaging. LME that sits around warm for even 6 months is distinctively different than fresh and I don't mean in a good way. I'm glad ya'll are having a good time chasing beer costs to the bottom. Do what makes you happy.

 

[Rish]

Tasted the hydro sample of the wheat ale kit. The Bavarian yeast that came with the kit produced nice, subtle banana and clove aroma and taste. No off flavors. I like it which must be a testament to how unsophisticated my senses of taste and smell must be since surely the yeast was over 2 years old and surely the lme had been stored in a sweltering warehouse for at least 6 months! Fortunately I have been given permission for me to be me so I'll bottle it and enjoy it.