1st Go at Extract Brewing with Fool-Proof Recipe!

[Matt24]

Well, got the ingredients yesterday according to the recipe and they were bloody expensive!

2x cans EDME Light LME = £21.98
100g Young's Hops (forgot the exact type) = £5.99

Total = £27.97 (Approx 70p per pint)

Will be using youngs Lager yeast for this one.

[pauljmuk]

Good luck - your LME price seems a bit high. I have a brewgenie shop near me, and buy their LME cans for about £6.50 each (they are 1.5kg cans)

That is pretty fool proof though, and will make a nice beer I'm sure. As you move on - get into adding black, chocolate and crystal malt grains to the early boil for colour and sweetness, and different hops. Also think about moving away from the LME and move onto DME (or spraymalt) - better flavour and body in my opinion.

That said, i still use LME, and put one on last night that used 50:50 (one 1.5kg of coopers amber LME, and 1.5kg of spraymalt)

[WishboneBrewery]

have you got a beer in mind?

[OldSpeckledBadger]

Brewgenie's prices are excellent. I use them too. I suppose it depends what's available locally though. You can bring the price down by buying in bulk. Brupaks 15KG containers are about £52 which equates to about £10.40 for 3 KG. If you use their bulk DME it's effectively cheaper as it's still £52 for 15KG but there's no water in it so you'd only need about 2.4KGs or so - cost about £8.30. DME is going to be easier to store as well. With the the hops remember that you don't use the whole 100g in a 5 gallon brew.

[Matt24]

The recipe called for the following:

4lb LME
4oz Hops
Bottom fermenting yeast

I have 3kg LME, 100g Hops and Lager yeast.

I will be checking this recipe again as soon as I finish work. It was taken from an old book I have (but has been like a bible to me!) called "Ameteur Winemaking and Brewing"

The beer is to be made using the "Hop-tea" method, and seemed like an ideal recipe and technique to take that next step along the brewing ladder

[OldSpeckledBadger]

You might find a better recipe on-line somewhere. 4 oz is a lot of hops (about 112 grammes). Either it's going to be extremely bitter or the hop utilisation is going to be appallingly low.

[Matt24]

Thinking about it,

is 3kg LME for a 5gal brew length rather a lot?

[robharper]

Thinking about it, is 3kg LME for a 5gal brew length rather a lot?

Not really -- if you think of it, the 2 can kits you can buy (e.g. the Woodfordes kits) are 3kg of concentrate.

[OldSpeckledBadger]

3KG of LME in 5 gallons will give you a beer of about 4% ABV.

[pauljmuk]

Badger - how does your DME in bulk keep - ie moisture - I've heard it can be hard to keep dry and stop it clumping?

[OldSpeckledBadger]

Badger - how does your DME in bulk keep - ie moisture - I've heard it can be hard to keep dry and stop it clumping?

I've not actually bought any in bulk yet. Sorry if my post gave that impression. I'd imagine that the best thing to do would be to re-bag into smaller, sealed bags and just break those open as needed.

[jonewer]

Browsing the Muntons website, would seem they sell 25kg of DME. Question is, how long will it last? thats 8 to 10 brews?

[pauljmuk]

I think bagging it up as badger suggests would be the answer to keep it longer

[OldSpeckledBadger]

Browsing the Muntons website, would seem they sell 25kg of DME. Question is, how long will it last? thats 8 to 10 brews?

No idea. They state a maximum of 6 months for LME under ideal conditions and DME should store at least as well.