The Next Stage!

[Greyhound]

I shall apologise in advance for the following questions, no doubt they have been asked loads of times before.
Being a relative newbie, and returning to the ‘Home Brew’ fold so to speak, so much has changed since I last did some tinned kits. I have done a few more of these in the past months as well as progressing onto the semi ‘Mash’ kits, i.e, the loose hops and either dried or tinned malt extract plus a few packaged extras, all boiled up in a pan. (Much more fun and the taste difference is well worth it!)

So, my main question is this; if I follow the ingredient amounts from the 2-3 packs I have made so far..(Very successfully too!) I was wondering if it’s not now time to branch out and experiment a little?

Can I buy packs of hops, choose the malt I wish to add and thus basically come up with a ‘Homemade’ kit as such? Seems there are a lot of possibilities here to try.

Also, how is it best to store packs of hops and probably yeast if they are not going to be used that quickly?

At present going into the ‘full mash’ brewing is not really viable for me and I was wondering if this could be a good way to go?
Any tips or advise would be much appreciated. :

 

[Mark1964]

You can buy kits like that they have the hops etc in a tea bag which you brew up on your cooker. best way to store hops and dried yeast is freezer. You can buy hops in 100gram bags and grain by the kilo but that would mean full mashing unless you scale the ingredients down to suit yourself.

 

[robsan77]

from what i understand yes. You can still brew using the malt extract method but mix and match with hops and steeping speciality grains. Never done it tho but you already know the proceedure. get experimenting! :thumb:

 

[richc]

I make extract based own recipe brews all the time, it is much the same as making the advanced kits you mention only you have much more control over the final product. There are loads of extract recipes available as a starting point or you could create your own using one of the many brewing calculation tools available.

The best place to store hops is the freezer, dried yeast can go anywhere reasonable cool while liquid yeast goes in a fridge.

Good luck and feel free to ask for advice on beers you plan to make

Rich C