Thursday, October 13, 2005

Beer Kits

Wow, my first day and already a question from a friend.
What beer kits are good?

Well, I've only tried two real full "kits" and one "can kit".

Baron's kits is what I started using. I found them for ~$23-30 depending on the kit or if there was a sale. There’s no boiling involved, just mix the wort with water and add yeast and 'dry-hops' (instructions provided). I've made about 8 of these kits myself. They're 7.5 L concentrated wort, which means you have to add 15.5 L of water. I've never had a problem using Calgary city water. Since its 7.5 L, you can actually boil up more malt or specialty malts or adjuncts and add them to the wort in place of straight of water. So, you can change the beer flavour or raise the alcohol content. But if you're going to go to all that trouble you may as well not use the kit really. The quality I got from these was pretty good and well received by friends.

The BrewHouse Kits come in 15 L boxes. This means you don't have to add as much water, perhaps your beer could be a little more consistent (?), and you could still boil up some additives if you wanted. Similar process the the Baron's kits. I haven't tasted my beer from the Brewhouse kit yet, still in production ;).

"Can Kits" - I tried these once, I really didn't like it. You buy a can of pre-hopped, very concentrated malt extract. Then you boil it up with a lot of corn sugar or dry malt extract. I found the beer I made from it was very weak bodied and cidery. Maybe I just need to do things differently, but I don't think I'll try it again.

There are several other simple no-boil kit brands too.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Have you ever used Barons Canadian Ale. We used an old kit and it is super good and a rich dark color. Wondering if the new ones are similar???

www.jaywoodford.com said...

Brian
I assume by now you have tasted your brew house kit, what do you think? Whichs one did you brew?