I'm a big fan of the HBC's Extra Stout Extract kit - made it a few times now and find it to be a good dry stout! Add a couple cans of their LME to the kit price and the total cost is €17.40 - cracking value!!
Link to their Extract kits - http://www.thehomebrewcompany.ie/extract-beer-kits-c-164.html
Going to branch out and try their Discover America Pale Ale next weekend. Anybody tried this one before? What do you of it?
i brewed it about 5-6 weeks ago.. nice but could do with a dry hop. lovely malt - hop balance
I brewed this aswell about 2 months ago nice beer nice balance to it also try the irish red ale i have to say this is a class beer.
One of you should do a full review of it to be eligible to win a similar extract kit in the raffle :)
Cheers lads - as I said, I'm very happy with the HBC extra stout kit so I'm looking forward to this one (and the yet another extra stout kit I bought with it 8) )
Might try to do up a report on my previous experiences with the HBC extract kits LordEoin - wouldn't mind a chance to compare with a HBW one alright
I am going to get this on tonight - I have some cascade pellets I could use - any recommendations from those who have brewed this? I got dry malt rather than liquid.
Planning on using the Conan Yeast
the DME will make it lighter and fresher in my opinion, and I'd proably dryhop 30grams or so of that cascade
So this went well enough - besides smashing the glass lid of my boil pot and spilling sanitizing solution all over the floor of the shed it was fine. Sitting in the fermentation fridge at about 19 degrees now - will stick in 30gms of cascade pellets when i move to secondary.
Just got this ready to go and realised HBC gave me US 04 instead of US 05. I assume I should wait and pick up 05.
US-04 will work grand as well.
You mean S04?
S04 = English Ale Yeast , US05 = American Ale Yeast
The US05 has better attenuation so it finishes a bit cleaner and drier
The S04 has better flocculation and makes a great compact sediment layer in the bottle, it doesn't ferment out as cleanly and leaves a slightly more 'bready' yeast character.
Either will be fine and the difference will be fairly minimal in the finished beer.
Dunno why I thought it was US. :-[
I think I'm still going to pick up some US 05 to do it with. I've got Citra and/or Simcoe to add late in the boil and at dry hop and don't know how that would work with an English Ale yeast.
Did this kit a while back and added 33g of Citra at 5 minutes and 33g Citra dry hop. Turned out very nice with lovely citrus flavours.
Now to figure out how to reproduce the beer without the kit.