Question About length

[chrisdaman77]

I am brewing up the "free" kit that was found for me in a garage sale. I am not really expecting it to turn out great since I really have no idea of age. My question is the total time they are saying for the boil with the hops and the extract is "20 minutes to 1/2 hour". Does this sound right or should I go the normal 60. It is a true brew amber ale kit.

 

[HeadyKilowatt]

I just looked up that kit and it looks like it uses pre-hopped LME. That being the case, you probably don't need a 60 minute boil since the bittering is "built into" the extract. But a 60 minute boil with the hops will up your IBUs if you want to make it more bitter. A 20-30 minute boil will give you some flavor, but not much bitterness. That being said, there might not be much flavor left in those hops if you don't know how old they are or how they've been kept. Might want to get some fresh ones. Or if you really want to use those, 60 minute boil might be the way to go so you can just squeeze some IBUs out of them since a lot of the flavor compounds may be broken down.

 

[duboman]

I am brewing up the "free" kit that was found for me in a garage sale. I am not really expecting it to turn out great since I really have no idea of age. My question is the total time they are saying for the boil with the hops and the extract is "20 minutes to 1/2 hour". Does this sound right or should I go the normal 60. It is a true brew amber ale kit.

http://www.monsterbrew.com/Prod_AmberKit.cfm?utm_source=GoogleBase&utm_medium=CPC&utm_campaign=MonsterBrew&utm_content=PRODUCTAD&utm_term=AmberKit#

This is the link to the product. assuming it's the same it shows hopped malt extract which means the extract has already gone through the boil process so hop utilization has already been taken care of as well so that short a boil time is possible. You might be able to pull a product code off the package you have and contact them to get a production date and see how old it may be.

If you don't mind spending the time to brew it I'd give it a shot, just verify the yeast by re-hydrating or getting a fresh pack if it's quite dated.

 

[chrisdaman77]

Thank folks. I bought fresh hops and yeast a week or so ago (left that out). So that part is good. So that would make sense for the 30 minute boil with it being pre hopped lme. Never took that into consideration. This is my first time using this style lme.

 

[chrisdaman77]

http://www.monsterbrew.com/Prod_AmberKit.cfm?utm_source=GoogleBase&utm_medium=CPC&utm_campaign=MonsterBrew&utm_content=PRODUCTAD&utm_term=AmberKit#

This is the link to the product. assuming it's the same it shows hopped malt extract which means the extract has already gone through the boil process so hop utilization has already been taken care of as well so that short a boil time is possible. You might be able to pull a product code off the package you have and contact them to get a production date and see how old it may be.

If you don't mind spending the time to brew it I'd give it a shot, just verify the yeast by re-hydrating or getting a fresh pack if it's quite dated.

Yes that is the kit.

 

[chrisdaman77]

Well everything is in. It turns out the dme wasn't just compacted. There must have been humidity issues with it at some point. It was almost like a hard caramel. Oh well it was free and since I hate to throw things out just going to continue on. If anything I am going to learn what not to use, free or otherwise.