Beer Kits - Can you boil them - should you?

[AlanHarper]

I have made a few beer kits up over the years and followed the recipe printed on the label. In all of them they have suggested just to 1) add hot water to the sticky malt gunge just out of the tin - get it to the right temperature - 2) pitch the yeast and stand well back then 3) ferment. They have all had the same taste of a home brew - I'm sure you all know what I mean.

Would diverting from the published recipe and boiling up the "wort" at stage 1 above and maybe adding more hops to taste make any difference to the resultant flavour? Would it kill it all and destroy the taste? Would it make no difference at all other than waste time.

I have never tried it so would welcome some advice, chastisement or "yes that has been done but..." response.

I just want to make better beer...:

 

[MyQul]

It's not necessary to boil a kit. However you could boil a portion of it if you wanted to add some more bitterness or hop flavour. There's not really any way around adding more bitterness other than boiling (afaik) but you could add a hop tea/dry hop instead of boiling a portion of the kit to add flavour and aroma

 

[AlanHarper]

It's not necessary to boil a kit. However you could boil a portion of it if you wanted to add some more bitterness or hop flavour. There's not really any way around adding more bitterness other than boiling (afaik) but you could add a hop tea/dry hop instead of boiling a portion of the kit to add flavour and aroma

Is that what these small bottles of Hop Aroma Oils are for? I have never considered them so far.

 

[Ken L]

I don't even bother dissolving the kit or added sugar, much less boiling.
Enough sugar will dissolve as you're adding the water to give the yeasties a feed and once they get going, they have no difficulties dealing with the sugar and syrup.

 

[Fil]

kits of old certainly did include a 40 minute boil of the LME concentrate from the tim with as much water as you could manage, i regularly used my mams old jam kettle for the job even tho she kept trying to hide it from me..

When i returned to brewing kits more recently i too noticed this change in the instructions of the kits i was buying and i simply assumed that there had been some advances made in Malt extract production..

However as my interest in the hobby increased and i started looking at banking yeast i folowed online instructions in slant preparation which had me mix a 1.040 dme liquor and boil it for 30-40 minutes.. after which this was the result..

afaik dme is a result of freeze drying lme??? so If DME can produce a hot break as evident by the protein 'clouds' depicted above, i would suggest that LME would aso benefit from it. So I would conclude that boiling a 'modern' kit would probably have no ill effects and could in fact aid clarity by producing a hot break, and then if quenched in a larger volume of cold liquor in the FV could aslo achieve a reasonable cold break too??

I could be shooting wide tho??

 

[terrym]

If DME can produce a hot break as evident by the protein 'clouds' depicted above, i would suggest that LME would aso benefit from it. So I would conclude that boiling a 'modern' kit would probably have no ill effects and could in fact aid clarity by producing a hot break, and then if quenched in a larger volume of cold liquor in the FV could aslo achieve a reasonable cold break too??

I do extract brewing as well as kits, but so far have only used LME. There is a certainly a hot break; not sure about a cold break.
However, I get clear enough beer from LME based kits so really don't see the point of boiling an LME kit. Perhaps someone who is interested enough might do comparison based on splitting a two can kit to see if there a difference. But it won't be me. :-(

 

[MyQul]

kits of old certainly did include a 40 minute boil of the LME concentrate from the tim with as much water as you could manage, i regularly used my mams old jam kettle for the job even tho she kept trying to hide it from me..

When i returned to brewing kits more recently i too noticed this change in the instructions of the kits i was buying and i simply assumed that there had been some advances made in Malt extract production..

However as my interest in the hobby increased and i started looking at banking yeast i folowed online instructions in slant preparation which had me mix a 1.040 dme liquor and boil it for 30-40 minutes.. after which this was the result..

afaik dme is a result of freeze drying lme??? so If DME can produce a hot break as evident by the protein 'clouds' depicted above, i would suggest that LME would aso benefit from it. So I would conclude that boiling a 'modern' kit would probably have no ill effects and could in fact aid clarity by producing a hot break, and then if quenched in a larger volume of cold liquor in the FV could aslo achieve a reasonable cold break too??

I could be shooting wide tho??

I dont think it would have any ill effect on the LME itself but you'd boil of any flavour/aroma from any late additions in the kit. But you could always add your own durin g that boil

 

[MyQul]

Is that what these small bottles of Hop Aroma Oils are for? I have never considered them so far.

I'm not sure tbh. I've never used them or looked into their use

 

[Ciaran12s]

I've boiled some lme from a kit diluted with water. It didn't work out great but I think it's because I used a fair whack of Chinook as an aroma hop basically. I was later informed that boiling the kit lme isn't a good idea as the hop flavours within it will likely get diminished in doing so.

I later used the remaining Chinook as a dry hop to a kit and it's very overpowering with strong pine flavours. It put me right off Chinook. However I have used it since with all grain and in those recipes it works wonderfully balanced with the citrusy American IPA type hops.

I currently have a Canadian blond in the FV. I didn't bother with brew enhancer or anything. I just got 500g of light DME and boiled that in a pot of water for 15 minutes with some leftover progress. I only used 500 instead of the recommended 1kg as I was wanting a session guzzler coming up to Christmas

 

[druid]

The one question I would ask you ( so far I am only brewing kits and just starting to tinker ) is are you following the kit instructions and using a can of malt and a kilo of sugar? If so...ditch the kilo of sugar and use LME or DME instead. That is the one piece of advice that I received here that has made a dramatic improvement in my beer. Now Im starting to learn about adding hops for flavour...but thats another thread...

 

[Cwrw666]

I started brewing kits way back in the 70s and the instructions always said to bring the contents to the boil before topping up with tap water. So ever since then no matter what the instructions said I always put the can contents plus the sugar into a big pan with some rinse water from the can and heated it just to boiling point. Never did a full boil though as it always frothed up like crazy and would have been a guaranteed boil-over.
Now I stick to AG and never going back. For obvious reasons.

 

[Sadfield]

The one question I would ask you ( so far I am only brewing kits and just starting to tinker ) is are you following the kit instructions and using a can of malt and a kilo of sugar? If so...ditch the kilo of sugar and use LME or DME instead. That is the one piece of advice that I received here that has made a dramatic improvement in my beer. Now Im starting to learn about adding hops for flavour...but thats another thread...

This raises an important point.

If you look at how Kits, LME and DME are made, grain is mashed in the normal way to produce wort, this wort is then filtered and evaporated into a syrup, to produce LME. The process is the same for DME with an added dehydration process. For kits however, the wort is take from the mash, filtered and then boiled with hop products before evaporation into a syrup.

Kits save the homebrewer doing the mash and boil, where as LME and DME, only bypass the mashing process. So, if you add DME/LME to a kit, you ideally need to boil.

To the original question. No you don't need to boil kits, no reason why you can't though. However, any late hopping done in the manufacture of the kit may further bitter and loose aroma, and the malt may caramelise and darken.

Sent from my E5823 using Tapatalk

 

[Druncan]

I'm a no boiler, but I do get the re-hydrated brew (HLME+Dex/LME +hop tea + Dex) to 75*c before mixing with cold tap water via sanitised hoses and bottom filling to avoid aerating the wort until it get's to <27*c as advised by Muntons and LLallemand. I also temperature match the re-hydrated dried yeast before pitching.

The other main thing I have found is the fresher the HMLE/LME/Hops the better the final brew!

(Edit. FYI 30 x HLME/LME/Turbo Gyles completed and sold this season. However two last brews failed for contamination,,,, I think I was just getting so tired, lack of attention. I am now using more aggressive cleaning and sanitisation as suggested by Brewlab after analysis.
Rough clean, caustic wash, rinse, Beerstone remover, rinse and paracetic acid wash prior to use.
More important if you are not boiling!):thumb:

 

[Davemc]

Although not specificcally about boiling there was a discussion on this thread. http://www.thehomebrewforum.co.uk/showthread.php?t=23336&highlight=golden+stag&page=23 about the affect of adding boiling water to a kit. One brewer thought it may adversley affect flavour and give the home brew twang so he experimented. See page 23 onwards