First shipment arrives this week

[Badblood]

I ended up ordering 2 Mr. Beer premium kit's to get started. Each come with 2 flavors, not sure which ones. I was going to order the LBK and bottles combo, but for the same price I got the kits. Going to my local homebrew store to get DME or LME also.

I also ordered Brew Demon nut brown ale and hard cider flavors.

[RickBeer]

I ended up ordering 2 Mr. Beer premium kit's to get started. Each come with 2 flavors, not sure which ones. I was going to order the LBK and bottles combo, but for the same price I got the kits. Going to my local homebrew store to get DME or LME also.

I also ordered Brew Demon nut brown ale and hard cider flavors.

Mr. Beer's LBK (Little Brown Keg) is great to brew with. I have quite a few, have had up to 6 batches going at once. Even when I make a 5 gallon batch, I split it between two LBKs. Much easier to carry.

Since you're buying LME/DME, make sure you think carefully about WHICH ones to buy. In general, a Pale LME/DME will have the least impact on taste and color of the HMEs you ordered. Of course, by adding LME/DME, you'll end up with a different taste/color then what was intended. I'd recommend either not adding any, or adding no more than 1/2 pound of LME (0.4 pounds of DME) to any standard Mr. Beer / Brew Demon can.

[John Sand]

I ended up ordering 2 Mr. Beer premium kit's to get started. Each come with 2 flavors, not sure which ones. I was going to order the LBK and bottles combo, but for the same price I got the kits. Going to my local homebrew store to get DME or LME also.

I also ordered Brew Demon nut brown ale and hard cider flavors.

Sounds good! Let us know when you brew them and how it goes.

[Badblood]

I ended up ordering 2 Mr. Beer premium kit's to get started. Each come with 2 flavors, not sure which ones. I was going to order the LBK and bottles combo, but for the same price I got the kits. Going to my local homebrew store to get DME or LME also.

I also ordered Brew Demon nut brown ale and hard cider flavors.

Mr. Beer's LBK (Little Brown Keg) is great to brew with. I have quite a few, have had up to 6 batches going at once. Even when I make a 5 gallon batch, I split it between two LBKs. Much easier to carry.

Since you're buying LME/DME, make sure you think carefully about WHICH ones to buy. In general, a Pale LME/DME will have the least impact on taste and color of the HMEs you ordered. Of course, by adding LME/DME, you'll end up with a different taste/color then what was intended. I'd recommend either not adding any, or adding no more than 1/2 pound of LME (0.4 pounds of DME) to any standard Mr. Beer / Brew Demon can.

I wanted to use LME or DME to raise the ABV. Should I use something else instead? I know people use plain sugar and that gives the beer a different taste too. With DME or LME it will add more malt taste and mouth feel? Thank You for your help.

[bpgreen]

I ended up ordering 2 Mr. Beer premium kit's to get started. Each come with 2 flavors, not sure which ones. I was going to order the LBK and bottles combo, but for the same price I got the kits. Going to my local homebrew store to get DME or LME also.

I also ordered Brew Demon nut brown ale and hard cider flavors.

Mr. Beer's LBK (Little Brown Keg) is great to brew with. I have quite a few, have had up to 6 batches going at once. Even when I make a 5 gallon batch, I split it between two LBKs. Much easier to carry.

Since you're buying LME/DME, make sure you think carefully about WHICH ones to buy. In general, a Pale LME/DME will have the least impact on taste and color of the HMEs you ordered. Of course, by adding LME/DME, you'll end up with a different taste/color then what was intended. I'd recommend either not adding any, or adding no more than 1/2 pound of LME (0.4 pounds of DME) to any standard Mr. Beer / Brew Demon can.

I wanted to use LME or DME to raise the ABV. Should I use something else instead? I know people use plain sugar and that gives the beer a different taste too. With DME or LME it will add more malt taste and mouth feel? Thank You for your help.

LME and DME will add flavor and body/mouthfeel as well as increasing the abv. But you'll also change the flavor and the perceived bitterness (the malt has unfermentable sugars that will make it seem sweeter). Table sugar is 100% fermentable, so it'll increase the abv, but also make the beer thinner. It can also produce more acetaldehyde, which can taste cidery or like green apples.

Some people advise making a few batches as is so you know what it tastes like and can then identify what what different additions bring to the table.

There are some products (booster and enhancer) that are supposed to increase the abv without affecting flavor or body/mouthfeel, but many people say they can thin the beer and/or add acetaldehyde.

I always prefer malt to simple sugars, but I also generally boil some hops with the additional malt to offset the sweetness.

There is brewing software available, and some of it is free. I've been using BeerSmith (not free) , but I think if I were starting now, I'd use the spreadsheet that @screwybrewer created. Using brewing software lets you see how different additions change the final product.

I used to have a a chart that showed bu:gu ratios (bitterness units to gravity units) and where they fit in terms of very malty to very bitter, but I've kind of internalized it, so I no longer have it readily available.

[mashani]

So sugar vs. malt depends on what you are making.

For lower gravity beers, malt extract is probably the better choice. But there are exceptions. (IE see ***)

If your beer is going to end up on the "big" side IE 1.07+ish, sugar can be a very good thing to add if you want to increase the alcohol presence for some reason but do not want to make a heavier bodied beer. Belgians call this "digestibility". There is 1# of sugar in pretty much any Belgian beer that high of an OG, even as much as 2# of sugar or more in Belgian beer that is higher gravity then that.

Sugars can also add flavor if they are cooked until they are golden, amber, or dark colored. Candi syrups used to make Belgian beers are this sort of thing. Cooking sugar in such a way also inverts it. (more on that below).

As another example: Pliney the Elder is a 1.070 IPA but ~1# of fermentables for that gravity when scaled to 5 gallons is from sugar, NOT malt. It is also one of the best beers on the planet.

Also as other examples:

*** caramelized sugars were used very often in traditional English beers in the early/mid 1900s as well, even ones that were not high gravity as a way to enhance the flavor and color profiles as well as provide a cheap fermentable. These types of sugars end up "inverted" by the heat / process used to produce the darkening. There is a blog "Shut up about Barkley Perkins" where you can find many such recipes, which came directly from breweries back then.

*** Also one other really good use of sugar when using extracts, even for low gravity beers, is if the extracts are not fresh and have started to have a maillard reaction (if they have darkened a bit or a lot). Those extracts will be less fermentable and/or more caramel/sweet flavored then they were when they were freshly packaged. Using some sugar to replace some of the of extra malt extract you might have added to that batch otherwise can help to keep the color lighter and tone down the extra sweet/caramel vibe in the finished product. When I made extract pilsners, I almost always added some sugar, regardless of how fresh the extract was, because it kept them light colored and less sweet/caramel like in flavor, IE more like they were supposed to taste.

Inverted sugar is structurally more like dextrose (corn sugar) then the cane sugar or beet sugar it started off as. The yeast can directly eat it. Where cane/beet sugar the yeast can't directly eat and have to produce an enzyme (literally called invertase) to invert the sugar so they can eat it. That seems to be what produces the little bit of extra acetaldehyde as it requires the yeast to do "more things" to ferment. I am an acetaldehyde super taster and I can drink beers with invert sugar / dextrose about a week or two sooner then ones with plain cane sugar. Beers with invert sugar are effectively *no different* to me then beers with all malt from an acetaldehyde standpoint.

The beer enhancers that Coopers sells at least are a mixture of dextrose, maltodextrin, and sometimes malt extract as well depending on the type. They do not produce extra acetaldehyde in my experience. They don't thin the body of the beer as much as plain dextrose or cane sugar because the maltodextrin adds body back as it is an unfermentable sugar for most normal yeast. But they also won't "enhance" the flavor, where malt will. So they are mostly just a way to add alcohol without spending as much $ as malt extract. I do not know if the sugar syrups in cans that are the enhancers that brew demon sells are the same or not.

Anyways, the short version is that there *are* good reasons to use sugar sometimes, you just need to figure out what those are. What I mentioned above are examples of when it can be a good thing.

[Badblood]

So sugar vs. malt depends on what you are making.
Anyways, the short version is that there *are* good reasons to use sugar sometimes, you just need to figure out what those are. What I mentioned above are examples of when it can be a good thing.

Thank you for the very informative answer. I am just going to do half a pound of the smoked mesquite with the 4.6 Brewdemon nut brown ale.

[Badblood]

Some people advise making a few batches as is so you know what it tastes like and can then identify what what different additions bring to the table.

Thanks. I decided for this first batch I will use a half pound of smoked mesquite with the Brewdemon 4.6% nut brown ale.