I just ordered a NB Extra Pale Ale kit and was wondering if anyone has brewed this one before.
If so, did you add to or alter the kit in any way? Still being a newby, I like to experiment and try different things. Thanks for any feedback!!
I have not brewed it but always recommend as with any kit to brew it exactly as the instructions say for the first time. That way you will know if you really like it. Changing something might make it better but might also make it worse. After the first batch then you can tweak it to your own liking.
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If I recall, this kit is inspired by Summit EPA. Definitely a good choice!
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That’s usually my approach too, Mark! Thanks for the feedback!
That’s good to hear, Voltron!
Stick to the recipy. For the few first time. After you become familiar with your brew system and recipy. Start to experiment and fine tune your brew method
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Let’s be honest @devilssoninlaw you WANT to F with the kit. Dropping a few left over jellybeans in the boil aren’t going to do anything. If you go with the kit you will get a balanced pale ale. Best case scenario you will make something better than 90% of beers in your beer isle.
If you want to F with anything get geeky about controlling the temperature of your fermentation. Spend your “tweaking” time on that. If you can master that… everything else will come easy.
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Blah blah blah I agree with what was said above. But I looked at the recipe and I could see bumping that one
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Hahahaha Being fairly new to brewing, I’d like to try out different things but I’m not up for going way over the top to mess up a good thing. I was just looking to see if anyone had good results with any variations.
But, Jellybeans you say?? I saw some great post- Easter deal on those and Hot Tamales, just not sure which one to go with!
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For starters I’d not waste the Cascade hops for bittering. I’d get some nugget or even citra for bittering and use the Cascade for a little whirlpool and dry hops. More bang for your buck
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I agree. You could use half or less Nugget for bittering. Magnum would be my choice. Again, I still would go right by the letter first time out with the kit. I took a look at the ingredients and it looks like a nice, simple recipe and very drinkable beer. For yeast the US-05 would be the most simple and trustworthy choice. Now we can argue about bothering to rehydrate the dry yeast 
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Im not familiar with kits but are the ingredients separate or are they mixed together?
The ingredients are all packaged individually but shipped together in a box. With this particular kit you get a Grain mix in a sealed bag, a large container of Liquid Malt Extract, and 3 - 1 oz bags of Cascade Hops. Of course I needed Yeast, so it comes by itself in a small packet.
You simply follow the easy directions and enjoy the results.
I would split the lme. At 60 min half of it. At 10 min the other half. To avoid that your brew gets to dark. Mailard effect. Later once you become fam with your brew method and you know how much boil off you have start doing full boils. Means not adding cold water to your fermentor. To get the batch volume. But during the boil get the full 5.5 gall. Wort when i did extract. I did steep the grains in a separte. Kettle. Once done steeping did add the wort to the main boil kettle. So got the right boil volume
