Hoop’-la Department.
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Copyright www.petespintpot.co.uk 2008. First published 17 October 2008, last updated 1 September 2010.
Pete’s Pint Pot is dedicated to the home production & sensible drinking of beer, wine, cider & meads plus a little bit of china painting & a few bits of photograph tampering.
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you buy a beer kit, you make it &, after a few weeks or so you enjoy the results of the manufacturers expertise & your (not too hard) labours. Do you ever think that even a very good kit would suit your palate better if it were only a little bit hoppier or a touch stronger/weaker etc? Here are a few suggestions how you can modify a kit although most of the items are only suitable for those that require additional sugar. Quite a few manufactures give directions in modifying some of their kits & so it is occasionally beneficial to read the instructions & not just when things go wrong! EDME & Munton’s give a typical analysis of their beers on the labels, this can prove very useful to us little tinkerers who want to tailor kits to suit our tastes better, to make bespoke beers.
1. Replacing all or half of the added sugar with an equal weight of dry malt extract will produce a maltier & darker beer (depending on the malt extract colour), a hopped extract would also add more bitterness to your beer. Liquid malt extracts could also be used, 500g sugar is equivalent to about 610g liquid extract. Note that it may be cheaper to buy an all malt kit in the first place! Granulated sugar can also be wholly or partially replaced with an equal amount of brown sugar, brewing sugar or Golden Syrup (treacle) can also be used but you may then want to increase these quantities by 25% to keep a similar alcoholic strength to the original designed value.
2. Reduce the actual volume of a 23litre (5 UK gall) kit to 18.5 litres (4 UK gall) & halve the amount of added sugar. The resulting brew will have a similar strength to the original but will be almost 25% darker, maltier & hoppier.
3. Deduct the estimated amount of priming sugar from the quantity of added sugar specified by the manufacturer. Note that the % ABV quoted by most manufacturers ignores any priming sugars, Cooper’s is the only kit manufacturer I know who mention this effect.
4. Add extra sugar or malt extract to a kit to increase the alcoholic strength, this can be the downfall of many novice brewers who just want to get smashed & end up with a terrible headache the following morning.
5. Unless specifically instructed to the contrary, you can boil the wort with some water for 10 or 15 mins, this will supposedly make your brew keep longer (not normally a problem) & may also produce a slightly darken the beer. At the start of the boil you could add a handful of aroma hops to add aroma & hoppiness to your beer. Ensure you use the correct type of hops for the style of your beer, e.g., Fuggles for an ale & Hallertauer for a lager style. To significantly increase the bitterness, the hops must be boiled for longer periods (30 mins or more). Crystal, black & chocolate malts and roast barley may be added to the boil thus darkening the brew & adding flavours, there will be a slight increase in the original & final gravities.
6. Edme & Munton’s have data panels on their labels giving useful information such as typical colour & bitterness. If you shove these parameters into the “Beer Kit Modifier” at the top of the “Beer Calc.” page of my free downloadable YoBrew Beer & Wine Calculators you will be able to see the approximate physical effects of modifying a kit. The main calculator will give you more options.
7. Dave Line, in his excellent book “Brewing Beers Like Those You Buy”, give a recipe for making a San Miguel style lager from a 1.8Kg Edme lager kit. Dissolve the kit with hot water in your fermenter, add 908g (2 lbs) of Golden Syrup. Simmer 15g Hallertau hops in 2 litres of water for 10 mins & strain the liquid into the bin. (Because the hop water has a gravity of 0 or 1000, this will add a few degrees of bitterness as well as some aroma.) Make up to 20 litres & add yeast. Ferment & bottle as normal.
8. For hoppier beers you can throw a handful of (“aroma”) hops into your fermenter, you may wish to boil them for a minute or two in a small amount of water to sterilize them.
9. Simmering a few hops, as in item 7, will add a slight, possibly indiscernible bitterness to your beer but the aroma should be noticeable, especially if aroma hops are used. The bittering effect is dependant on the hop’s alpha acid content, the amount used & the boil time, it is reduced as the boil gravity increase, alternatively you can add a few drops of isomerised hop extract to your fermenter to add bitterness.
10. For a beer that is too hoppy you could compensate this the next time around by diluting the kit. A 10% increase in volume would give a disproportionate 9% (approx.) decrease in bitterness so if a 23 litre kit has a bitterness of 40EBU, adding an extra 2.3 litres to the fermenter will reduce the bitterness to about 36.4EBU. Unfortunately the beer will also be “thinner” in taste & have around 9% less alcohol, the latter can be rectified by adding extra sugar to the wort, 210g will add about 0.5% ABV to 25 litres, this is not really recommended for 1.5Kg & 1.8Kg etc. kits that need additional sugar.
Increasing the initial volume is best for beers that you find just a bit too strong in taste & alcohol.
NOTE:- Many home brewers would consider this to be tantamount to sacrilege!
11. Higher OG brews tend to have more “character” than the lower gravity beers & so some brewers deliberately reduce the brew volume from say 23 litres to 18 litres & add the “missing” water just prior to bottling or kegging. The proper Newcastle Brown used to be made by blending an “Amber Ale” (around 1030) with an “Old Ale” (1064-75, not sure). The resulting beer was 4.7% ABV & considered by many to be a “classic”. Unfortunately “Newkie Brown” is now manufactured in one single process, & it shows!
