Jim's Beer Kit

Missed that previous post, but if you're still reading, yes your got everything right there.

Personally I add all the malt while the water is heating (because I use dry extract).

Personally I buy dry malt with the longest date possible, and I don't get too wound up about price as quality is more important to me. Plus if I wanted super cheap beer I'd be making one can kits with sugar or going all grain. From memory, old malt can cause all kinds of flavours in your beer that a...

Don't know myself, but would be interested to know.

Where are you getting spray malt for £4.50 a kilo?

Get a 2 gallon budget keg, and bottle the other 3 gallons?

Don't panic, odd smells are entirely normal during fermentation of some brews. Nothing sounds too unusual from what you've described.

Wait until the head has gone, then dry hop it and bottle as per normal.

There's little difference between tweaking a kit with grains and hops, and doing an extract brew from a recipe. Ultimately, a kit is hopped extract, and we're working from unhopped extract. Heat water, add extract and hops, boil for a bit, cool, top up with water, ferment. Easy. All you need is a pa...

US-05 is a very clean tasting yeast, great for those hoppy American ales where you don't want it to taste of yeast. Haven't had any issues with poor flocculation myself either - most of mine stays in the bottom of the bottle when pouring and I get crystal clear beer, even just a week after bottling....

It's worth the jump to extract from kits - the reality is that when you go to extract are properly making something of your own, as even if you follow a recipe you inevitably you have to adjust the hops to take into account the differences in alpha acids.

download beer engine, adjust the hop alpha % as required then alter the recipe accordingly This is what I do too - also when substituting one hop for another to try and get the right bitterness. I cut back more on the early buttering hops than anything else when in your situation, trying to keep th...

Please do - really interested to see how this turns out.

I think I'm just addicted to the extract forum... The precise answer to every question depends on what you're making. The less precise answer is that room temperature suffices for most things, and it's best to focus on the whole process than worry about all of this. If I'm making an ale though, thes...

My observation is that Cascade can work as a bittering hop, it's just not a particularly 'aggressive' bitterness.

I'd be tempted to go part Challenger part Cascade all the way through, although maybe I'm saying that because I want to know what the result is like!

Even in the sweltering heat of 20 degrees your beer will condition fine and won't spoil. Initial conditioning is gentle fermentation, so warm is fine, but after a week or so you generally want to cool the beer to help it clear and (I think) assist in the CO2 dissolving. But 20 degrees is not all tha...

You don't get much hot break in extract brews. I get very very little.