Liquid Brewing Enhancer

[Hayzer]

I have enjoyed the three BD extracts that I have made so far (Pilsner, Irish Red and Twisted Monk Wheat) and now going to play around with a few others to find a "go to" beer. I love wheat beers and the Twisted Monk wasn't to my liking. My favorite beer is Franziskaner Hefe-weisse, most likely because of an IBU of 4 and I like the flavor. I'd like to get close to that kind of a beer. Other fav's would be Blue Moon & Shock Top. I'm not big on bitterness.

Oh, my main point.....Can I use BD's Liquid Brewing Enhancer in about any recipe? I am thinking of trying their Oatmeal Stout and adding the LBE to the recipe. I am wanting to add a little more alcohol to the beers. Sorry about getting sidetracked. I am also looking for a good wheat extract to match my tastes. So if you could help, I'd appreciate it.

[swenocha]

You should be able to add the brewing enhancer to any beer. It's simply liquid brewing sugar. That being said, the more you add, the more it will change the character of your beer. And the more you add, the more chance of off flavors. So I wouldn't dump multiple cans into a single HME batch, for instance.

As for a wheat beer, I can't really speak to current BD or MB extracts, as I haven't used them in years. I do know that they offer a different weizenbier other than the Twisted Monk, but again, I can't recommend or deter based on my experiences.

Just for reference, here's what one of the original brewmasters behind Blue Moon stated:

Blue Moon Belgian White was first sold commercially as Belly Slide Belgian White at the SandLot Brewery at Coors Field during the 1995 opening season.

We did do a little fine tuning of the recipe, which was developed by Dr. Keith Villa of Coors R&D. Mostly to do with the ratio of Orange Peel to Coriander.

The amounts of grains we used are roughly:
50% 2 row pale malt. (The first couple of batches were made with Great Western)
40% white wheat malt
10% flaked oats.

Hallertauer Mittelfrueh hops were added for a 90 minute boil. Bittering should be around 17.5 IBU. Only one addition.

Blue Moon has always used pre-ground coriander and Valencia orange peel. Keith did not want the bitterness of Curacao oranges. He preferred the sweetness of the ground Valencia.

Try 1.25 tsp of ground coriander added to the kettle 10 minutes before the end of boil. This is for a 5-6 gallon batch.

Add 0.33tsp of ground Valencia orange peel 5 minutes before the end of boil.

The Chico strain would work well in this recipe. You want a neutral taste from the yeast. Keith has said that the flavors that should come through are the orange peel and corriander, not the yeast.

I know you aren't doing AG, but there is some info to be gleaned out of this recipe. You could do the coriander and orange peel additions, for instance. Note that the numbers above are for 6 gal, so you'd cut the amounts by 1/3ish. You will also note no late addition hops, and also a clean yeast (not a typical wheat yeast). If it were me, and I was ready to do a hop boil, I might consider buying the unhopped wheat extract that BD sells, getting some Hallertau hops, dropping half of the extract into a boil with 3 gallons of water. Once water boiling, add the hops (based on ratios above). Boil 90 minutes, adding the rest of the extract, the orange peel and the coriander in, say, the last 5 minutes. Then fermenting with US-05. Might be something to consider down the road once you have a few under your belt.

[Kealia]

I've not used HME's in a quite a while but I just took a look at the site and you could try this:
Dante's Delight Weizenbock

From there, make two changes:
- Buy the Safbrew WB-06 yeast
- Steep some corriander and/or orange peels to get closer to that Blue Moon taste you're shooting for.

Steeping is nothing to be intimidated by. If you can make tea, you can steep this stuff. If you're interested in going down this road, let us know and we can provide some input as to amounts, exactly how to do it, etc.

[mashani]

From there, make two changes:- Buy the Safbrew WB-06 yeast- Steep some corriander and/or orange peels to get closer to that Blue Moon taste you're shooting for.

FWIW, you actually would be better off with S-05 for a true Blue Moon clone. Blue Moon does *not* use wheat beer yeast. All the flavor comes from the coriander and orange peel. You might even just want to go ahead and stick with the yeast that comes with the cans in this case since it's a cleanish yeast (S-33) especially if temperature control isn't great.

[swenocha]

The Chico strain would work well in this recipe. You want a neutral taste from the yeast. Keith has said that the flavors that should come through are the orange peel and coriander, not the yeast.

...

Then fermenting with US-05

Agreed. As I stated earlier, the neutral yeast is what you want to a Blue Moon-ish style.

[Kealia]

My mistake, I didn't read through the recipe so I'll agree with the correction: neutral yeast + orange and corriander.

Sent from my Pixel XL using Tapatalk

[TonyKZ1]

Something else you might want to look at, Northern Brewer is now offering BrewDemon & Mr. Beer 2G sized recipes, link

Copied from NB's page-BrewDemon 2 Gallon Recipe Kits
Now you can effortlessly brew 2 gallons of our best selling, brewmaster approved recipe kits! That's right, our recipe kits are now available in a 2 gallon size! Our 2 gallon recipe kits are the perfect size for brewing with the BrewDemon+.

[berryman]

That is a good post Tony and a good way to go from MB or BD but Wow I forgot how much that cost to brew that way. I can make 5 gal for about the same price. I shouldn't say much because I spent a lot on MB a while ago.

[TonyKZ1]

Yeah, that's why I brew mostly 5G Extract w/steeping grains recipes as the price for a 5G is similar or even sometimes cheaper (depending on what sales are happening) than a 2/2.5G recipe.

[mashani]

Pro Tip. Buy 5 gallon kits on sale. If they come with a pre-combined bag of steeping grains, steep them, bring it to a boil, let it cool down, freeze half of it in a plastic container, use the other half in a 2.5 gallon batch along with half the extract. Stick the rest of the extract in the fridge/freezer until ready to make the other 2.5 gallons.

You can get 3 kits for $14.92 each on Columbus day from NB, or $17.76 on July 4th, and effectively be making really good 2.5 gallon batches for ~$12 including yeast.

[Hayzer]

Pro Tip. Buy 5 gallon kits on sale. If they come with a pre-combined bag of steeping grains, steep them, bring it to a boil, let it cool down, freeze half of it in a plastic container, use the other half in a 2.5 gallon batch along with half the extract. Stick the rest of the extract in the fridge/freezer until ready to make the other 2.5 gallons.

You can get 3 kits for $14.92 each on Columbus day from NB, or $17.76 on July 4th, and effectively be making really good 2.5 gallon batches for ~$12 including yeast.

That's a great idea mashani! I want to brew 2-3 more batches in my BD 3gal and then step up to the larger fermentor to brew the 5gal extracts. Then do several of the 5 gallon brews before stepping into all grains. I am making sure I do each brew with quality, not skipping any steps with a keen eye on sanitation, before moving up. With scaling up slowly, I am hoping to learn as much as I can as I go.

If using an LBE, in any extract, do I also need to add priming sugar to the bottles at the same rate as I had previously without the LBE? I am wanting to use LBE to get an extract brew above 5.0%. If LBE is not the answer, please let me know what is.

[John Sand]

You should prime at the same rate.
I don't remember using LBE, so I don't know if it's the best way to strengthen your brew. I do think that your method of progress and learning is sound.

[mashani]

You prime at the normal rate.

As far as the rest, the answer is "it depends".

LBE or one of the Coopers Brew Enhancer #1 or similar products are the best way to increase ABV if you want want to maintain a similar body to the kit brew, but not change the flavor much or at all.

Plain old table sugar will also do it, but will potentially make the beer seem more dry / less full bodied.

Dry malt extract will also do it, but it will change the flavor profile to be more malty, and the beer to be more full bodied.

Coopers makes a BE #2 and a BE #3 that are steps in between BE #1 and using dry malt extract if you want to fiddle around with a recipe you like with LBE/BE#1 but maybe wish was just slightly more malty. It just depends on how much you want to fiddle around.

You could mix your own plain table sugar, maltodextrin, and DME in various proportions and come up with similar results.