Two Lions

Somewhere along here I had a thought.  A very dangerous thing a thought.  You never know where it will take you.  My thought was why not just use two cans from a kit instead of buying a separate malt can.  The reason for the thought is that the local grocery store was unloading some kits for $5/each.  That would be about 1/4 the normal price.

2x Lion's Dark Kits
100g Crystal Malt
2 pieces of licorice

Method:
You probably know this by heart now.  Crack the grain, steep the grain, boil the malt (which is the wort) add the licorice, put in the primary, fill with water toss on the yeast ...

Starting Gravity 1042

Lions

Today we bottled the lion's brew.

Its final gravity was 1014

Starting:  1040
Final:      1014
             -------
                  26 x 131  =  3.4%

Lions

Continuing on our theme of dark beers.

Lion's Dark Kit
Coopers brew enhancer #2

150g crystal malt

2 pieces of licorice

Method:
Boil the water
Crack the grain
Steep the grain
Boil the malt
Toss in brew enhancer and licorice
Add water to 23Ltr and 26C
Yeast

Starting Gravity 1035

Cooper's Stout

After three lager types we wanted to branch out into something a bit darker.  For that we choose Coopers Stout from the local grocery store.

1 Tin Cooper's Stout
Powdered Cooper's Malt #2
10 Pieces of licorice (big pieces I may add)

Method:
Boil the malt, add the licorice
Dump into the primary
Add water to 23Ltr and 26C
Sprinkle yeast on top
Put in the laundry

Monique's Special Hopps

Monique, Gerry's wife, is really special.  Once a week we take over her kitchen and make a big mess (we clean it of course.)  The smell of boiling malt permeates her house.  And to get even with us she goes off and buys a bag of organic hops for us to use.  Nice!

As we ran low on Fuggel today and she purchased 5g of Organic hops we just tossed the whole bag in.  This ought to be interesting!

Tin of Muttons Pilsner
Powdered Malt from somewhere in Germany (well we bought it locally)

180g Crystal Malt
30g Light Lager
                                     30min              15min          0min
Fuggel Hops                 15g                                     15g
Stickenbract                  10g                                      5g
Organic Hops                                           5g

Method:
Boil water
Crack grains
Steep grains in water (turn it off)
Bring malt to a boil
When boiling add hops at 30 - 15 - 0

Dump in primary fermenter
(this required some filtering.  As the organic hops had expanded considerably and were floating on top the wort.)
Add water to 23ltr and 26C

Sprinkle on yeast (we used yeast from the Pilsner kit)

Thrifty lager

Being the cheap skates that we are we thought we would try the previous beer with some less expensive ingredients.  So we choose a bag of powdered malt instead of the liquid otherwise the same recipe.

Tin of Muttons Pilsner
Powdered Czech Malt

180g Crystal Malt
30g Light Lager
                                     30min              15min          0min
Fuggel Hops                 15g                   5g             15g
Stickenbract                 10g                                      5g

Method:
Boil water
Crack grains
Steep grains in water (turn it off)
Bring malt to a boil
When boiling add hops at 30 - 15 - 0

Dump in primary fermenter
Add water to 23ltr and 26C

Sprinkle on yeast (we used yeast from the Pilsner kit)

Copy cat Pilsner

Today we have started on our journey to great beer.  Time will tell if this is a good or bad place to start ... with a Tin of Muttons Pilsner; and then to just drive home the point we added a 1.8kg Tin of light malt extract ... once again from Muttons.


Tin of Muttons Pilsner
Tin of Muttons Light malt extract

180g Crystal Malt
30g Light Lager
                                     30min              15min          0min
Fuggel Hops                 15g                   5g             15g
Stickenbract                  10g                                      5g

Method:
Boil water
Crack grains
Steep grains in water (turn it off)
Bring malt to a boil
When boiling add hops at 30 - 15 - 0

Dump in primary fermenter
Add water to 23ltr and 26C

Sprinkle on yeast (we used yeast from the Pilsner kit)