newbie seeking advice over what the tastes are

[munkey]

i have been brewing homebrew for a few months now done 1 ale and a mild that turned out like stout.also in the prosess of doing a wine with red grape and rasberry, the ale was ok but a bit viscous??? the mild/stout tastes like burnt wood, i have just started a larger off but with ale yeast iv no doubt and using 1kg of brown shuger just to see!!, insted of buying another kit which lacks the taste i asssosiate with beer iv got 2kg`s of light malt exstract and 2kg`s of dark malt exstract, and some irish style liquid yeast to make my next 2 brews with,

iv got a plan but im not entiraly shure what to do with it and if i only knew what the flavoures ware caused by i could craft a splendid beer,

firstly i like heavy ales and stouts like caffreys and ginnuis also like the unexplanably grolshy taste of grolsh,
im looking at hops but dont like the bitter taste i got after adding a hop enhansment thing to my ale but have read that you can add it whilst fermenting to add aroma????? is that aroma the beer smell or is that from the malt.
im trying to find a nice base that i can add some other flavours i like to like elderflower and honey,

my main consern at the moment is do you boil the malt exstract i got for an hour for cold brake or is it like the tins but un-hydrated?

thanks in advance for any advise .

[Dogger Dan]

Munkey

I think there may be some issue with your cuurent brewing methods which is OK. We all started somewhere.

One thing I like about this site is there are also some really cool recipies and some solid brewing advice outside the forum but on site. Pick an easy recipie to have a start with.

All in all here is my recommendations for a start.

1. Buy a starter kit. This amounts to a plastic primary, a glass secondary, air lock and bung, syphon hose, sanitizer. (If I've missed anything folks please speak up). Some will say hydrometer, I say take or leave.

2. Buy a beer kit like a Coopers Nut Brown seeing your tastes lie that way You have the malts already. Get a pot that can handle about 12 L water, you will need the room in the pot.

3. Mix your malts in about 6-8 L hot water from the tap (beer kit + 1 kg malt). Bring to a boil, (this is just me) for about 15 min. Dump in your sanitized plastic primary, then fill to the 23 L mark with cold water. Pitch your yeast (barm your yeast man, barm it) and keep warm say 60-70 deg F

4. Ferment for about 3 days. You will see a yeast cap build on your mixture. When it disappears transfer using sanitized syphon to sanitized glass secondary.

5. Let it ferment out, beer will clear, bubbling in airlock will stop, beer will clear, say two weeks give or take.

6. Sanitize your bottles, transfer beer to sanitized primary, add 200 gm (got it right today) dextrose or malt to some hot water to dissolve then dump carefully into primary with beer (this is bulk priming). Syphon your beer to the bottle leaving some headspace say 3/4 in or so. 23 litres will do 43 or so 500 ml bottles

7. wait two weeks and enjoy.

Now that is pretty elementary and there is a much more to it than that. Some here will tell you I don't have it right either which is fine, Everyone has their own opinion, mine is normally right though

Take for example Oliver (got to pick on someone), he never bulk primes but he loves his homebrew as much as anyone else and he does a good job with it to by the sounds of things.

There are all sorts of Books out there to that will help you out to but truthfully you have to dig the info out, Brew and experiment.

Hope this helps

Now. I have procrastinated enough. I am having a Beer

Dogger

[thehipone]

I think the "unexplainably grolsch taste" that you describe is likely attributable to European hops, something like saaz, tettnanger, hersbrucker, etc. I think you'll find there are lots of european lagers that taste somewhat similar, simply because of the hops. Off the top of my head, try Warsteiner, Budejovice Budvar and Pilsener Urquell (a little hoppier than the others) for similar hop flavors.
These hops are added later on in the 1 hour boil, probably a bit at 15 minutes left and some with only 1 or 2 minutes left.

The best way to learn about beer flavors is to go out and taste as many different kinds as you can. Then maybe check out some clone recipes or recipes for a similar type of beer and see what makes the flavors that you are tasting. Pretty soon, you'll be able to tell that it is the roasted barley that gives stouts that coffee-toasted flavor, crystal malt that develops some of that caramel-toffee flavor in english ales, and Cascade hops that give that pine/grapefruit flavor to Little Creatures Pale ale.

A good reference if you're interested in learning more about how to get certain flavors in your beer or make beer true to style is Designing Great Beers by Ray Daniels. I've never seen it in Australia, but you can order it from amazon.com.

[Guest]

thanks dodger for taking the time to help.
iv done the whole beer kit thing and i know wat i like about them and wat i dislike wot i didnt know was what actualy made thease flavours, my dad was quite an acoumplished brewer but of wine more than beer (only kits for beer) i am doing fine on the mead side for now, iv got books and all the kit diging out the glass now for the wine wen its done, i am lead to belive that all is in those tins are malt exstract and the hops and that added? im probably wrong, however i will be buying another kit like you suggested but hypotheticaly if i wanted to just add the malt exstract as a base then hop it to my taste what would be involved, has malt exstract had the protines and minarals setteled out allready.
ps il be following the second reply as a guide for a while hops are defonatly the way forward i think. thanks for that (thehipone)

[munkey]

thanks dodger for taking the time to help.
iv done the whole beer kit thing and i know wat i like about them and wat i dislike wot i didnt know was what actualy made thease flavours, my dad was quite an acoumplished brewer but of wine more than beer (only kits for beer) i am doing fine on the mead side for now, iv got books and all the kit diging out the glass now for the wine wen its done, i am lead to belive that all is in those tins are malt exstract and the hops and that added? im probably wrong, however i will be buying another kit like you suggested but hypotheticaly if i wanted to just add the malt exstract as a base then hop it to my taste what would be involved, has malt exstract had the protines and minarals setteled out allready.
ps il be following the second reply as a guide for a while hops are defonatly the way forward i think. thanks for that (thehipone)

ps hear is some pickkys of the beer iv made so far just cos i know people like that sort of thing.
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/t.bragg1/rob/DSC00024.JPG
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/t.bragg1/rob/DSC00046.JPG

[Damo]

Munkey, the boys are spot on talking about the hopps adding flavour and aroma, also there are the diferent grains as was mentioned that also add flavour. These diferent grains and malts are found at most brew shops for the type of beer that you like.
Also have a look at diferent types of yeast specifically liquid yeasts as these have an enormous effect on the flavour as well. Perhaps try Wyeast London 1028 for the type of beer your after.
Another thing if you want to brew great beer , stay away from sugar and use malt or at least dextrose instead. Using all malt will obviously make your beer maltier but if you use all malt consider using a liquid yeast that can handle it.
There is a lot to know and the guys here myself included have just given you the basics. Don't rush, allways sanatise thourouly and experiment with different hopps, yeasts and malts and you will find what is right for you.
Have a look at some of the recipes on this site and that will give you an idea of what to use.
Cheers

[munkey]

i do use glucose but was going to start trying using suger thats been inverted (as mentioned in a thred in this forum) would this be suffisiant as i understand the biology of if (i studdyed it at collage) and dont see why not. i want to brew my beer completely in the end so no kits thats y im trying to get away from them. as for liquid yeast iv got the irish variation of the one you mentioned for the next brew im goning to do, (stout) gonna stick to kits for my base for now but will be exsperimenting very soon, gonna try larger soon cos its 8 to 12 degrees all the time outside as its winter. thanks again for your time and help.

[Jay]

I just brewed a batch of beer with home-made invert sugar and it leaves a pretty strong estery presence, which I personally love, but could be a bit overpowering for some. Be careful if using any more than 2 cups of original white sugar without hops to balance. If you could imagine adding toffee to beer before it has time to set then that's what you're doing.

Cheers,
Jay.

[Dogger Dan]

Munkey,

Judging from the pics I would say you could not be a newbie LOL. It appears you have been round the block once or twice

Dogger

[munkey]

thanks dan the ale was my first ever beer and the stout 2nd, did lots of research before i started, its very encoraging to hear and im happy that everything looks ok, exstatic infact!! .

hay jay. what do you mean by more that 2 cups, im assuming you meen that its very sweet (and any more would make the beer too sweet) but isnt all shuger. and i thought fructose and dexstrose were highly fermentable, so that would mean the remaining unfermented shuger is sweeter than normal brewing shuger would be. also what does esterly taste mean,

ps dan, looks can be deceving lol... first one was farty tasting and the stout is the infamous burnt wood beer, we have named it black beard, which was funnyer wen we were drinking it, but both are incredibly drincable regardless of there flaws,

oh and pps, whats the deal with home made alcohol is it difforent in some way??? i mean i calculated that the first one has around 3% to 4% but it feels like your drinking 10% does it get in your system faster cos theres no preservatives to inhibit its barkedown or absorbtion, and you get fall over drunk not happy merry drunk, (which is good i guess)

[Oliver]

Hey Munkey,

Has the woman in the background of the first pic got any clothes on?

Cheers,

Oliver

[Clintsc9]

Now there's dedication. Apparently nude woman approaching and he still takes photo of the beer.

Of course we don't see the next few shots.

[gregb]

You'd think she could at least wait till the poor blokes finished his beer.

[munkey]

ha ha ha ha, yeh i do get some stick for spending more time with the beer than my girlfriend, but na she isnt nude, she is moping up the kitchen (all the mess i made wen filling the barrel) although i noticed that she did look nude the day after i put the picky on there,

[munkey]

back to the question i asked about the inverted shuger, i did some research and without going into the chemistry of it too much,
i found that the glucose and fructrose molicules are bonded by an oxygen mollicule and this is broken down by the acid (citric acid) and heat leaving fructose and glucose,

now glucose has a relitive sweetness of about 74% and fructose is around 173% now assuning that the amounts of thease shugars are 50/50, i work this out to be around 25% sweeter than sucrose and 50% sweeter than glucose (correct me if im wrong)

now for my theory!!! if say you yeast had an 80% attenuation, and had say 1kg`s of shuger in your brew, say 25L, this would leave you a residual ammount of 200g and as a fraction of 25L,
would be 8g per leter 5g per pint,

obviously you would have to take the kit malt into considaration but i dont know the spesifics (think its just malt glucose) but this is going to be a constant anyway.

so the difforence between 5g of sucrose in 1 pint and 7.5g, (for the invert shuger if using glucose as your control) would be a bit sweeter but what effect this would have the overall taste i dont know?, as obviously malt starches lend there flovor to the srored glucose, and so do the cane for sucrose.

[thehipone]

You should get nearly 100% attenuation of any sugar (except lactose and maltodextrin) that you put in the brew, assuming adequate yeast nutrients and alcohol level.

The less than 100% attenuation figure has to do with the more complex sugars that you get from malt. Depending on the mash conditions (temperature mostly) you get differing amounts of dextrins, which are unferementable.

[Jay]

munkey,

By two cups I meant 2 cups of original white sugar.
Esters are a group of chemicals that are the source of smells and flavours from fruits and vegetables. I'm pretty sure they are also used in foods and convectionary to mimic certain flavours (eg fruit flavoured candy) but don't quote me on this. So when I say estery I mean fruity.
I was originally told by the bloke next door (who used to brew and make wine) not to add too much invert sugar as this could give off a sickly sweetness (so I thought I'd pass the warning on in my last post ). I was originally with you in thinking that invert sugar fermented out 100% without contributing to flavour - so let me know how you go when you use it.

Jay.

[munkey]

ahh iv got a much better idea of what im doing with my next few brews, just got some hops to play with (sazz and hersbucker) going to do some largers for a bit while its still cold outside, and as for teh invert shuger ill give it a whirl and let you know what i think (not that my input would be worth much) but you never know, also got some liquid hops that can be added at any time just incase the invert exsperiment is a disaster.