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Irish red kit experiment

Northern Brewer General
#1

While snowbirding this winter I have been doing kits rather than my usual 20 gallon AG. Just for laughs I decided to do the Irish red kit without boiling the extract.

I steeped the grains then brought the water up to boiling and boiled the bittering hops for 45 min. At the end of that added a pound of table sugar (I put sugar in lots of beers) and the finishing hops. Turned off the heat and stirred in the extract. It almost did not dissolve all the LME.

Chilled in an old fashion ice bath in the sink, dumped into a bucket and topped up with filtered water. Pitched a third generation starter of Hothead yeast made with Fast Pitch canned wort.

It fermented normally and I kegged it and primed the keg with table sugar.

Just tapped it the other day and it is great. My wife that isn’t thrilled with many of my beers is attempting to drink all of it.

At no point has it been chilled. I am serving it using a jockey box I made years ago using a two circuit soda cold plate with the beer running through both. It is in a cooler with a Perlick faucet.

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LHBS Extract APA Fix
#2

Isn’t that like putting racing stripes on an '87 Civic.

:grinning:

1 Like
#3

Gotta love it when an “unusual” brewing process results in a great beer!

Thanks for sharing the outcome!

#4

Dont forget the vtec sticker!

#5

And that big, god awful 5 gallon tip on the tail pipe!! Sneezles61

#6

The cooler does have a sticker from Stone that says “Fizzy yellow beer is for wussies” Oh and it’s blue.

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#7

I feel IR is kind of one dimensional anyway. Would you try it with any other style?

#8

Probably won’t be doing any kits until next fall but sure, why not? They say with extract the boiling has been done for you so I’m not sure there would be any difference with other styles. After all it’s really concentrated wort someone else make for you.

This was for convenience as much as an experiment. It made it easier to make some decent beer with not much to brew with. Next winter we will be in our new (to us) condo instead of the RV so I might be able to go a little bigger on equipment.

#9

I theorize the flavor of the wort and hops would benefit from spending time together. Maybe not.

#10

I’ve done it with a couple of other styles. Got the same result as @hd4mark did here:

I don’t do it anymore as the process doesn’t save me any time.

I wonder if one could take a pre-hopped Pale Ale kit and convert it into a (almost) RIS as follows: steep a bunch of dark grains for 30 minutes, add some clean bittering hops get to ~ 40 IBUs; boil for 20 minutes; dump in the hopped DME at the end of the boil. warning: kit hacks (IKEA or otherwise) are often much, much better the 2nd time.

I’ pretty sure the yeast don’t care how the sugars get into the fermentor :slight_smile: .

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