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Ok, so I went a little nuts at the home brew store and bought a whole stack of things. I was eager to try Dogger's Maple Honey beer, but instead of picking up 1kg of liquid pale malt extract, I ended up with 1kg of powdered malt extract (Light Malt Brew Improver). So yes, my bad.

My question is - can I still use this powder stuff or should I go back and get the liquid one instead? And if I can use it... erm... how do I incorporate it into Dogger's recipe? I'm also having issues finding Clover honey, and was wondering what other substitutes I could use for that particular type of honey.

Cheers

The dry malt can be used in place of the liquid. You will get a slightly higher Start Gravity. Just disolve it in water and use instead of the liquid.

If you want to be really picky use only about 800 or so grams. Liquid malt is only about 80% solids, hence the reduction when switching to dry.

I've not tried clover honey so I'm not able to help you there.

Cheers,
Greg

Thanks for that Greg. Will there be need for any extra hops using the dry malt? I read somewhere that dry malt is unhopped while liquid malt tends to be.

Liquid malt can be hopped or unhopped. The package will tell you. I've never seen hopped dry extract. Had a squiz at the recipie, the extract is unhopped, the kit is the hopped extract.

Cheers,
Greg

*hugs*

Cheers Greg!

Now, to find that honey!

Hi Cat,

Check in your local Coles Stupidmarket for strawberry clover honey. They usually have some special types on the lowest shelf in 325gram sizes.

You can use any honey but someone once posted that a bit of a "Gumtree taste" appears with some honeys.

I haven't tried honey yet. Too many dark styles to do first.

Thanks Velo - my local Coles and Safeway haven't yielded anything special, but everytime I drive to another suburb I give the local supermarket the once over just incase. I'll keep checking though

try your local weekend markets if you have them locally, i made an awesome (imho) lager with a blend of Ironbark/Sunflower Honey.

I read something about eucalyptus honey imparting eucalyptus flavours, I also read somewhere else that they eucalyptus oil in the honey will kill your yeast. Either way, sounds like it's best avoided!
and Clover honey shouldn't be that hard to findat markets as was said earlier.

Managed to find a white clover honey at the Queen Victoria markets at a honey specialty store. A bit of a trek for me (although not too far from uni), so I'm going to keep checking out Coles and Safeway for the stuff by Leabrook farms.

I'm just a bit worried that the recipe is going to be a bit sweet, but I will trust in Dogger and hope for the best!

That recipe won't be sweet. The malt will leave some sweetness, but the honey will ferment out, leaving only the honey flavour. If you are only going to use 800g of LDM, use the other 200g to bulk-prime. Malt is fantastic for that.

Alas, the lack of a second fermenter means I can't bulk prime. I'll definitely be looking into it in the future though!

I also tasted my wheat beer from a few weeks back - keeps a decent head for around a minute but then dies down quite a bit. Also, the beer itself seems rather flat (although still goes down pretty smooth). I tried recarbonating some of the brews by opening up some of my swing top bottles, adding some more sugar (half a teaspoon), and then recapping. All that's resulted in is more head on the initial pour, but still a pretty flat beer. Any ideas on how I can improve/avoid this on my current brew?

In my experience, what you described Cat, is pretty normal for beers that have been correctly carbonated, but if I have tried to drink them and they haven't had enough time in the fridge. The coldness seems to help the liquid absorb the CO2 properly.
-Krusty

ah brilliant!

It's just so hard not drinking them when they're in the fridge!

You'll get better head if you use malt. It'll be bigger, finer, and last longer.

Sounds like it's time for a second fermenter...

Cat,
if you can afford the indulgence, add some cracked grain to your recipe. Apart from correct corbonation, etc, this will improve head retention. From experience, wheat malt would be the go, complimenting the honey styles nicely.

Bally

Can't you prime each bottle with a scoop of malt?

You can, but as with all 'scoop' method priming, it is a bit inaccurate.

Just base your priming rates on 300g per 19L.

Chris wrote: Just base your priming rates on 300g per 19L.

Thats a fairly high priming rate Chris.

Whoa!

This chris. and Chris are confusing me!

Thought you were contradicting yourself there for a moment!