Holland & Barrett Malt Extract Beer

[Bevvied]

Below in bold is a review comment from the holland and barrett site, for their jars of malt extract.

"Malt Extract
8 of these makes the best 6 gals of beer you can make with Fuggel and goldings hop s try it nice strong beer your mates will love it"

Well, I've stockpiled too many jars of this (can't resist when they're on sale), I have a Wilkos/Nottingham yeast sitting around doing nowt and in the freezer there's 50g of Citra and 50g of Centennial.
I've seven of these jars. So I'm guessing I'll go for 20 or 21L, something like that.
I intend boiling up the Centennial and adding the tea at beginning of fermentation for bittering and dry hopping with the Citra.
What on earth could possibly go wrong. LOL.
If it's horrible, it's horrible, but there's a FV looking ever so empty :)
I'll be doing this tonight unless anyone has a screaming red flag/alarm for me.

 

[Sadfield]

From my experience of using the stuff in starters, I suspect it'll be 5 Gallons of beer and one of trub.

Almost sold my mash tun when I first read that review. [emoji23]

Sent from my E5823 using Tapatalk

 

[Drunkula]

This is how legends are made.

23 litres would get you 4.1%, 20 litres 4.7% if it works the same as other extract. It might be a little one dimensional but maybe you can find something in your kitchen to jazz it up some.

You'll get somebody coming along saying "Well I've always added a tin of condensed milk to my milk stouts, run me IPA through a bale of hay, and futtt lagers instead uttt using acid malt ah just mash in wit me own ureeeeeen. Mah brown ale... well that's a trade secret but I can tell theee I'm lighter on mee feet after."

So yeah... maybe some treacle?

 

[Bevvied]

Told my lad that I'm going gung ho tonight with this.
He suggested I go the whole hog and ferment in the greenhouse at 28c, throw in some cloves, coriander, orange peel and frozen grapefruit.
"It wouldn't be any worse" he said.

I'm gonna go ahead with original plan and see what happens. I ain't going to the lengths of bottling it, it will go in a basic PB when ready. Luckily, if it's awful, I have a mate who will drink absolutely anything.

 

[JonBrew]

I'd seen that review on the H&B website before and it made me chuckle.

I've heard of some brewers topping up kits with jars of this extract with good results. However, 100% H&B extract is a whole other kettle of fish. Mind you, with all those hops you might end up with something surprisingly drinkable.

Very interested to hear how this turns out. Please do report back with the results.

 

[Bevvied]

I'd seen that review on the H&B website before and it made me chuckle.

I've heard of some brewers topping up kits with jars of this extract with good results. However, 100% H&B extract is a whole other kettle of fish. Mind you, with all those hops you might end up with something surprisingly drinkable.

Very interested to hear how this turns out. Please do report back with the results.

Well it's in the Fv now.
25g centennial boiled for 30 minutes, 25g bunged in at lights out and left to cool for a good bit.
Sieved into the fv with 7 jars of hb malt extract.
I use a hand blender and whisked the bejesus out of it with couple litres warm water.
Topped up to 20L.
Pitched yeast at 20c (that's a common temp in my cellar)
Will dry hop in 11 or so days if everything looks ok.
OG 1.048
I have zero hopes for this, but will post pics as we go along if anyone interested LOL
Smells Ok mind.

 

[Bevvied]

Got this into a wilkos PB this morning.
Gravity down to a steady 1.010
It looks like beer.
It smells like beer.
Small sample tastes like beer.

I'll have a proper sample pint in three or four weeks and post a pic or two.
Not that it's in any way economical, but I'm looking forward to tasting the end result.

 

[Slid]

I think this will be a very interesting experiment. I can't be alone in being interested in how it turns out and what might be gleaned from it.

 

[MyQul]

I seem to remember another forumite doing this (maybe chug?) a while back and I think the beer turned out ok

 

[Waywood]

I used to buy Meridan malt extract when I lived in Saudi Arabia. If the H&B stuff is similar, it will contain caramel which gives a darker colour ale. Ensure you use pots with a long BBE date. I found that some of the resultant brews had a distinctive 'twang'. I ended up always using a kilo light spraymalt during the boil and then adding the Meridan stuff at the end to make up the balance.

The best results I had were stouts and porters which have other dominating grain flavours.

 

[Dutto]

Also with H&B LME

LME WITH ROWAN BERRIES (An experiment using juice from Rowan Berries instead of hops.)

The OG was 1.028, the krausen has almost disappeared but there is no sign that it is clearing and it's still fermenting on the worktop after 16 days!

The joys of experimentation!

 

[Bevvied]

I haven't forgotten bout this. Will post an opinion and a couple of pics tomorrow after I've sampled it before/during the UFC.

 

[Dutto]

I bottled the brews with Rowan Berries on 27th September.

There was a significant difference between the two brews (more Rowan Extract was better) but there was absolutely no sign of the brew clearing!

Taste test sometime before Christmas!

 

[chthon]

Wednesday evening, I was doing some preparation work for brewing Friday evening. Part of this was calibrating my pH meter, and making starter wort. I also use a barley syrup for this.

I also decided to add lactic acid to my water, part as an experiment to see how fast it dropped pH. I finally ended on 5,1. When I used this water with the liquid malt extract, I got real good protein flakes, and the rest of the liquid was very clear.

Apparently it makes sense to acidify the water to use with liquid malt extract. I suppose this would make for clear beer!

 

[JonBrew]

I haven't forgotten bout this. Will post an opinion and a couple of pics tomorrow after I've sampled it before/during the UFC.

How did the tasting go? Is it a winner?