Extract brewing advice

[chunkypar]

Hi all

I'm very new to the homebrew experience having just completed and started drinking a Coopers Canadian lager kit, which after bottle conditioning for 4 weeks is starting to taste not too bad.

However I'm looking to try an extract beer kit and want some advice on whether I'll need to buy more equipment or if what I have will be enough?

I've got a 7.5 litre pot for the initial boil and a 25 litre bucket for the fermentation. Should I be looking to get a larger pot or is it OK to boil an initial lot (or 2 of water) to get the volume needed and then boil the wort in a smaller amount of water? Do I need to account for anything else?

If this goes well for a few kits then I would consider moving into AG brewing, so is it worth buying some of the equipment needed at this stage?

So many newbie questions but hopefully nothing too ridiculous!!

Cheers!!!

 

[abeyptfc]

hi Mate how you doing?

most extract brews for a 23-25 litre brew length are done with 2-3kg of dme,along with steeping some hops in a grain bag or muslin. a 7.5 litre stockpot is going to be a bit small to fit all that in, your better off with a 15-20L pot so you've got plenty of space to boil about 10 litres of wort and have some space above incase of a boil over, then once boiled add to the fermenter and top up with cold water to get to 17-23 degrees then add yeast.

 

[alanywiseman.]

With a 7.5L pot you will only be able to boil about 5-6L. I would say this is a little small. You can pick up 13-15L pots fairly cheap (and they make great stock pots).

Personally I would add half the DME at the start and the other half at 10 mins left in the boil. And rather than boil all your water i would just use bottle to top up in the FV, much easier :thumb:

You should definitely try extract, it is much better than kits taste wise and I think much more fun

 

[fizz head1982]

Alright mate,
I am about 2 weeks in front of you in our brewing careers so I might have the least experience but might be able to tell you the most from our perspective. :

Equipment, equipment I am afraid. To do one batch of lager AG (all grain) I use;

A burco water boiler (can substitute with a very large pan)
A 25 litre fermenting vessel with airlock
A home "beverage cooler" mash tun (will save you about £40 on a ready made one)
Thermometer
Hydrometer
A measuring jug or large jug
A large decoction bag for hops
Scales for the 10 gram to 4 or 5 Kg range
Paddle or large long handled spoon
Some other stuff i probably forgot :hmm:

I looked it to this quite hard and believe i am one tight git however I believe in spending money where it is worth it. So spend! - get whats appropriate first time, rather than buy kack and have to buy twice!

Brewing beer is done at warmer temperatures than lager... Search google for "lagering". Lagering requires a few weeks at 12c with what is called a diacytel rest - time out of the fermenting fridge... So now with lager you are talking about a fermenting fridge on top of the list above...

I guess it depends on what type of man you are... if your gonna potter for a few years then get by as best you can and get a pressure barrel... If you the whole hog man with about 300 quid to spare maybe buy all the kit and go deep, dont be scared :)

Additional equipment being a corney keg and a CO2 bottle... or bottles a bottling wand / little bottler and bottles and caps... Equally as expensive I think but all reusable!

Also one more thing! - If you buy good gear and give up you willl loose little in resale value.... Corny kegs for example are almost same price new or second hand...

Hope this helps mate :drunk:

EDIT1:
Bugger I just saw this is extract... I did one extract and went straight to All Grain... Up to you but AG is half the price but twice the equipment, in my limited experience... Something to consider...

 

[chunkypar]

Brilliant, thanks for the replies!

Was thinking that a 15-20 litre pot may have been the minimum option so guess that's the next step.

Now just to decide what I fancy making and drinking :hmm:

 

[abeyptfc]

Brilliant, thanks for the replies!

Was thinking that a 15-20 litre pot may have been the minimum option so guess that's the next step.

Now just to decide what I fancy making and drinking :hmm:

have you got the graham wheeler book? there's loads of recipes in it for All Grain and also conversions for extract brews aswell.

 

[chunkypar]

Brilliant, thanks for the replies!

Was thinking that a 15-20 litre pot may have been the minimum option so guess that's the next step.

Now just to decide what I fancy making and drinking :hmm:

have you got the graham wheeler book? there's loads of recipes in it for All Grain and also conversions for extract brews aswell.

Not got any books yet. Birthday is at the end of October which is of the reasons for doing some research just now!

 

[fizz head1982]

Apparently this brewing melarky is about alchemy and chemistry and a bit of physics.. So you could brew something that would kill you yeast and end up drinking wort! - not that i am talking from experience: :whistle:

I would recommend following good advice / recipe! :thumb:

 

[matth]

I am only just moving into all grain after around 2 years of extract brewing. but i started off with this 15 litre setup (i say started off with, but i am still using it) - not very big but i think i got 5 15 litre buckets off ebay for about a tenner.

one of them i shoved a tesco kettle element (£5) in to use it as a boiler

I think it was vossy who did a how to i'll try and link to it, but if you search "tesco kettle element how to" i'm sure it'll pop up - i used electrical clasps (if that is what they are called) then soldered mine so no hot condition connector required,
i used one bucket as a mash tun, although i only used this last week for the first time, and the other 3 i use as FVs

so £15 in total

Obviously you can use bigger buckets - i think i would have preffered that but when i built it i had a severe lack of space.

for extract all you need is a kettle and (imo) 2 fvs to allow you to rack off into secondary. i have never bothered with a chiller and always had pretty clear beer - i just put it in an FV with lid on and let it cool over night (somewhere like a garage) then pitch yeast the next day.

I always use DME as opposed to liquid malt extract as it keeps better (in air tight container) and if you need to fine tune a recipe you are not left with half a tin of opened LME.

also a grain bag for things like crystal/chocolate/whatever malt you wish to steep prior to boil. i use both a grain bag (about 60p from LHBS, or sometimes bits of SWMBO old tights.

I dont know how much this is good practice but i usually add dme in after i have steeped the malt (so when its upto around 70 degrees) and i use bowls so i can rinse out any stuck dme.

whichever way you go, have fun, its a great way in to brewing and not as time consuming as all grain.

 

[marksa222]

Hi, have you considered a basic AG set up?

I have a 50L pot I bought online for £80 which had a ball valve tap with hop filter and a thermometre probe built in. This was new though, and i'm sure you could get something cheaper if you wanted (ad's come up on here every so often). I have only just started so used brew in a bag. I also don't have a wort chiller, so used a no chill cube (a 25L water container you can get from a camping shop). I brought 34L of water to a boil on my crappy electric stove and it maintain a rolling boil for an hour no problems. If you eventually plan to move on to AG anyway, mightn't be a bad idea get a big stockpot right away, you can do extract anyway if you wanted to, but I skipped this and went to brew in a bag.

I only did this the other week, and i'm just about to bottle my first lot, so I can't guarantee quality, but it looks and smells good and has hit the suggest FG so fingers crossed. If you're worried about brew in a bag or no chill, have a listen to basic brewing radio podcasts. They have done several blind taste tests and the results are really good.

I think (but could be wrong) it might be a bit cheaper to buy grain than malt extract anyway, and the only bit of kit you would need extra is a grain bag and water container.

Good luck which ever way you go.

 

[matth]

All grain is much cheaper and you can get away with biab, but i think playing with extract to begin with means you can get in more recipes under your belt and understand steeping grains and hop boils etc.

one thing i meant to say above is that i have a ball valve attached but no filter so it gets clogged with hops - i wouldn't bother if you are doing small batches like that - i now just pout the contents of the bucket through a sieve in to the FV.

i think the above suggestion is good though to get stuff that you can convert later on to all grain, etc.

but one thing i think that needs to be taken into consideration is that an extract brew day will take about 2 hours inc cleaning and faffing about etc, wheres an all grain brew day will take a minimum 6 hours inc cleaning and faffing about, so if it is just to see whether you get on with brewing and can be bothered i would start off extract.

I know a lot of people on here will always try to push you into all grain, but it is labor and time intensive - just get comfortable with boiling and fermenting first - you will obviously want to go AG at some point, but only you know if you can afford the time.

 

[fizz head1982]

I can concur all grain is more time consuming. You have 1.5 hours of mashing but you can use this time to prep ahead or do something else. Then you have to watch a pan boil for 90 mins. Washing up at the end about 40 mins... So maybe 4 hours... I did one extract / decoction brew and it was about half the time. In the UK at least the malt seems to be cheaper than the extract but I find more AG recipes have lots more hops or so it seems.

 

[chunkypar]

Thanks for all the replies guys, really looking forward to trying the extract method. AG may be an ideal end point, but space is an issue as well so is something to build up to I reckon.

 

[Pearlfisher]

You'd be able to get good results in your 7.5L pot doing one of these -

http://www.thehomebrewcompany.co.uk/bee ... 1_211.html

I've done the Golden pale ale and the APA in a pot that size with excellent results .