Trying some HME after a brewing hiatus

[nikkuchan]

There's not much of a point to this post beyond wanting get back into the homebrewing; I just felt like writing something down to keep my motivation and excitement up.

I haven't brewed in about a year. I wanted to, but circumstances leave me in a position where I can be called away from what I'm doing at a moments notice anytime while I'm at home, so doing something like brewing without being able to concentrate just causes me anxiety (plus the fear of messy boil-overs compounding my already busy situation is just too much).

I recently got a few Muntons and Coopers cans figuring it's something I could do quickly and easily without having to worry about hop addition schedules or boil-overs. I felt a little bad at first because it doesn't feel like I'm actually brewing anything (and I heard HME kits don't taste so good), but I decided to try to make it fun. I recently got on a stout kick so I started a straight kit-and-kilo of both Coopers and Munton's Irish stouts to do a comparison (I will probably post my taste test here later). I also found some really great recipes that use HME with dry-hopping and fruit additions (The Mr. Beer website, to my surprise, has a good list of HME recipes), so I'm a lot more excited about experimenting with this often mocked form of brewing and look forward to documenting my attempts and results on the forums.

 

[eltorrente]

Cool, good to get back into it. I'm sure you can make some good beer with that stuff.

I also took a hiatus - about 4 years for me. I've been brewing all-grain for over 20 years, but when I brewed my first batch since being back a couple weeks ago - I just went with dried malt extract for simplicity. I made a pale ale and it made my kegerator smell like hops while it was fermenting, so I think it may be a good one.

I wanted to just get re-calibrated and used to brewing again and reduce variables and stress. I'll do this for a couple brews, then dive back into all-grain.

 

[rniles]

Same here. Now on my second batch after a 5 year break. Had all the equipment ... except I added the Faster ferment Conical ... oh, I love that thing - removed racking beer from the chore list.

I've never used DME to brew a batch of beer .. that sounds interesting - now on my list of things to try!

Ordered everything I need for an all grain, so I will be trying that out here soon. Do new a new Gatoraide mash tun but that won't take much.