an idea I have had...

[king martin]

I have had an idea and I'm just after some advice, and if it will work out ok!

Ive been making basic canned beer kits for some time now, and experimented a bit with spray malt and dry hopping. I don't have the time to spend hours on all grain or extract brewing due to young family etc so I'm looking to go somewhere in the middle. Make a partial mash, a 20 min boil and use a can of pre bittered malt.

Plan is to steep 250g of crushed crystal malt, and 250g of crushed pale malt for an hour at about 70c. Drain the liquor into a clean pan and wash off the grains. Bring to the boil for 20m and add some hops. Prob 25g of challenger or something similar.

Then in a sterilised bucket mix up the canned bitter kit in water with a bag of sugar or spray malt.

Add the hop / malt solution and fill up with cold water.

Test temp and pitch yeast, then proceed as per any canned kit. Maybe dry hop before I keg it, depending on how I'm feeling..


Does that sound like it will work? Basically a partial mash, using a single can beer kit instead of a long boil for bittering.

If it works out ok, I'll prib experiment with diff grains and hops for future brews.

Any advice much appreciated!

Thanks

[Redimpz]

Should work, what you are doing is a mini-mash or partial mash, you could either add it to a cheap kit or liquid malt or even dried malt. the use of pre-prepared malt extract takes the mashing and boiling out of the equation which is the longest part of the brew day.

[timbo41]

That is essentially a partial mash. But pale malt needs mashing, crystal ok though. You would need to think about how much, if any, bitterness you would extract from hops during the boil. May overpower the end result
Is your main purpose here to add fermentables? Because for the effort, you may as well use spraymalt and boil hop up in that

[king martin]

Cool, thanks for the replies.

I was under the impression if I use pale crushed malt and crystal malt the enzymes will make the starches into fermentable sugars. Is this not right? Its a bit tricky to find all the info on the web to do part of it this way and cut out the long boil, which is what I'm trying to achieve.

[timbo41]

Crushed pale malt is diastic,needs mashing,and your proposed temp is a little high 65-67is ok.

[king martin]

Ok thanks. So if I lose the pale malt and use spray malt instead will this be a better idea?

Sorry if this is not what u mean, is mashing not the steeping of the grains?

[timbo41]

Must admit its a little confusing. From my reading and enquiries,I've never yet worked out why a long 1 hour boil is needed, other then to get rid of proteins and other undesirable in your extracted wort.Also,a longer boil is needed for hop oil extraction

However,as I understand it,both spraymalts( dry) and canned extract have already undergone this boil,so no no need to do again .....a tinned kit eg wherry is just the end result of a boil with most of water removed. Coopers make cans of malt extract unhopped,as do others,which means you can then add own preferred hop flavours

[timbo41]

mashing is holding grain at a certain temperature for a lenghth of time to.allow natural occurring enzymes to convert starches to sugars. Unfortunately,you also get proteins and other compounds when you do this.The long boil helps get rid of these,also sanitized

Essentially,yes mashing is a long steep. But you do need a boil.

So its easier to use products that avoid this process....Dr malts and liquid malts. Its extract brewing!! You would do best to use hopped dry malt, or hopped liquid malt,which have already been boiled with hops for a balanced bitterness.

Then do exactly as you have planned with taste / aroma hops and speciality grains like crystal, which can be steeped.Tbh, you may save time, but pre prepared malts aren't cheap....for a 1040 brew you will need about 3 or 4 kg dry malt....anywhere between 15 - 20 quid...plus crystal plus hops

[king martin]

Yes I get that.. My intention was also to make something better using a base beer kit to eliminate the long boil. Late hops are more for flavour.

I'm now thinking I could get rid of the kit, use the grains as above and just use a couple of bags of dried spray malt and make my beer from scratch?

Will a 20m boil be enough in your experiences?

I plan To be doing other things at home for the hour steep, so it shouldn't take up much of my time.

[king martin]

Posted while I was typing.... Thanks!

[king martin]

So I would be best going back to using a single can kit as a basr with any sugar etc.

Do a separate steep of crystal and maybe any speciality grains as I thought, then a quick boil of flavour hops.

[timbo41]

Mmm....don't think theres a " better"


You might find some good ideas here


viewtopic.php?f=4&t=20386

[Clibit]

To my mind if you are going to spend an hour mashing pale malt it makes no sense to mash as little as 250g. And I think you need to boil the resultant wort for longer than 20 mins for various reasons.

So I think it's a case of either replacing the grain with spray malt, and a short boil with hops could work well, or doing a bigger partial mash - and then you are basically taking as long as all grain, pretty much.

It's a good way to go though, the more grain you use in place of extract the better, and the more hops you use as a % of the overall hoppiness the better too. I would consider mashing 1.5 - 2kg of Pale malt, to replace the sugar/extract additions made to one can kits, and a 45 min vigorous boil might suffice. I do all grain, it takes a few hours but there is free time to do other stuff. I fit my housework around it. Stick some bread in the breadmaker. Give the kitchen a good clean. It's a productive day, a wholesome day that leads to beer....

[king martin]

Mmm....don't think theres a " better"


You might find some good ideas here


viewtopic.php?f=4&t=20386

That's just the sort of thing I'm after! Thanks!

[king martin]

To my mind if you are going to spend an hour mashing pale malt it makes no sense to mash as little as 250g. And I think you need to boil the resultant wort for longer than 20 mins for various reasons.

So I think it's a case of either replacing the grain with spray malt, and a short boil with hops could work well, or doing a bigger partial mash - and then you are basically taking as long as all grain, pretty much.

It's a good way to go though, the more grain you use in place of extract the better, and the more hops you use as a % of the overall hoppiness the better too. I would consider mashing 1.5 - 2kg of Pale malt, to replace the sugar/extract additions made to one can kits, and a 45 min vigorous boil might suffice. I do all grain, it takes a few hours but there is free time to do other stuff. I fit my housework around it. Stick some bread in the breadmaker. Give the kitchen a good clean. It's a productive day, a wholesome day that leads to beer....

This sounds like what I might aim towards!

So swap the sugar with around 2 kilo of crushed pale malt on a 45 main boil... How much water would be needed for this sort of boil? I bet this would make seriously nice beer!