So far for me it is the Kama Citra. Dead Ringer and Plinian Legacy are on deck. we’ll see!
Dead Ringer is also excellent! It was my son’s first brew and we’re drinking it now after three weeks of bottle conditioning. I tried it side by side with Bell’s Two Hearted Ale and other than the color it was truly a dead ringer…
Love Dead Ringer. I brew it every third round to always have some on hand.
Next would be the Sierra clone with the addition of a dry hop of Cascade. Not too pretentious, but damn good.
After the first tasting today, gonna have to add the Breakwater Pale to this list.
This will become part of the rotation. Love the lingering bitterness and the smell is fantastic.
:cheers:
As mentioned, you can’t really go wrong with Dead Ringer, assuming you like IPAs.
La Petite Orange is the most recent kit I’ve made and it’s really good too.
Since my last post in this thread, I did the Smoke Bomb kit. I think I did about 4-5 days with 2 peppers and it turned out great. My only regret is that a bad regulator sent 1/2 a keg down the drain. :oops:
My favorite kits have been the “Dry Irish Stout” (Guinness - it’s better than the real thing), the Innkeeper, and Ace of Spades. All three turned out fantastic without any of the extract twang. I am actually thinking the twang has more to do with caramel malts than extract, but I’ll be able to confirm that once I get more all-grain batches under my belt.
I stopped brewing from extracts more than 30 years ago but back in the 70s and early 80s, a favorite of mine was Munton & Fison’s “OLD ALE”. Their formulation of the extract actually somehow managed to emulate the character of a long-aged ale quite convincingly (not sure how they did it, but I suspect that there might have been the slightest hint of lactic acid in the syrup to add a very subtle tang to the finished beer). The stuff was actually pretty good right after conditioning, and it was even better if allowed to actually age a bit, like a true Old Ale .
I used to use two of their standard 3.3 lb cans of the extract plus some sugar to make a 5 gal batch of fairly strong brew. It really was tasty (especially the last few times I made it, using liquid yeast rather than the dry yeast provided with the kit).
I’m pretty sure that Munton’s still makes this particular product.
One of these days I may buy a couple cans of the extract and make some up with my house yeast for nostalgia’s sake.
:cheers:
The Smoke Bomb is GREAT!!! It was absolutely one of my favorites. I didn’t de-seed the peppers either, was Hot at first after a couple of weeks conditioning, just superb!!
