Creamy Kit & Bits

[Longwood-65]

HI Guys,
Just made a Kit and Bits but used Light liquid malt for the first time.

On the stove top I did the usual, boil the water add 500 grams sugar and disolved as normal, I then add a Kilo tin of Malt extact and it went real creamy light caramel colour and thickened right up.
I added the hops for a bittering boil which I wanted to do for 40 mins or so to balance out the sweetness of the Malt, but just couldn't, even at the lowest possible temp I could get on the electric stove it would sit for a minute looking nice then it would try have a massive boil over and was really frothy bit like boiling milk. ( lucky I was keeping an eye on it and was a large pot or the missus would have gone ape sh!t).

Any way is this normal for a liquid malt ?? ( was never anything like this using a dry malt)

Well after about 5 minutes of wrestling the boil overs i flamed out and poured the Coopers Draught Can in,added 10g tettnang Hops and transfered to the fermenter to make 21 litres.
Took a SG with a figure of 1066@ 24c, This is a whole lot higher than I expected ( was expecting Mid to high 40's)

Cheers
Ron

[Longwood-65]

Just an Update.
Still in the fermenter, to a hydro test 6 days ago was 22, reading today is 14,
Sample taken for test is a creamy coloured beer, Taste is initially sweet and by the time you say " Hmm!! thats a bit sweet" you get this suberb bitterness, had to have another sip.

I'm going to leave it another week and take another reading hopfully the reading drops more and the yeast chews up a bit helps dispels more of that sweetness

Hope the colour doesn't put me off, I don't mind a cloudy beer, but this one by looking at the sample is going to appear creamy.

Cheers
Ron

[bullfrog]

Hi Ron,

Never had LME go creamy on me, but you may find that it tends to produce brews with a slightly higher FG than DME or a kit with a kilo of sugar. I'm guessing that your OG reading was perhaps artificially elevated by having some undissolved malt in the test tube (can happen if it's sitting towards the bottom of the fermenter and you open the tap. I like to discard my first 100mL, or so, before taking any test) and I'd guess that you may be close to done.

Let us know how it goes.

[SuperBroo]

Hi Longwood,

I wonder if its just the normal potential boilover that you get when boiling say a mash or partial brew.

If you just drop the flame slightly, and use a large spoon or whatever to keep as much of the surface area of the liquid free from froth, (continually dragging it over to one side of the pot) it should subside after a few minutes and then become stable and you can continue boiling.

But when you add hops etc, it can erupt again quite voliently.



Chris

[Longwood-65]

Hi Ron,

I'm guessing that your OG reading was perhaps artificially elevated by having some undissolved malt in the test tube (can happen if it's sitting towards the bottom of the fermenter and you open the tap. I like to discard my first 100mL, or so, before taking any test) and I'd guess that you may be close to done.

Let us know how it goes.

Hi Froggy,
Because the 1st reading was so high, I did take a 2nd reading and it was the same so I'm pretty sure the OG reading is correct.. I use a the insert of a rain gauge as the test tube because it's a good size for the Hydrometer, However the tube is graded in mm's I'm unsure how that would convert to mL's.

Hi Longwood,

I wonder if its just the normal potential boilover that you get when boiling say a mash or partial brew.

If you just drop the flame slightly.



Chris

Never have done a partial or a mash so couldn't tell you , I had the electric stove turned down as low as it would go and i did perservere by lifting the pot on and off the stove till I cracked 'em and said close enough.

Todays reading was 12 so it's still dropping, I think I will put this one into 2ndary next weekend for a week then crash chill it for another week then keg it.
In the mean time I will stick to dry malts till I can sample this beer properly then see if I'll switch to liquids.
Cheers
and thanks for the feed back
Ron