I'm brewing extract beer kits right now (time, space, money). Specifically Brewers Best. So in some of the kits they include steeping grains and in some they don't. My question is if I were going to do their American cream ale could I add steeping grains, what kind, how much and how much will it change alchol content. I do realize that the reason for them not adding them in their kit is that this is a petty clear beer. I appreciate all feed back.
Can you add steeping grains? Sure you can. The real question is "Why?" What are you trying to achieve that is different from your base kit recipe?
Steeping w/extract is usually done w/the specialty malts that would be part of the alL grain recipe. So for a CA you could steep a 1/2 lb or so of light crystal malt and perhaps 1/2 to 1 lb of flaked corn for 5 gallon batch. Minimal impact on abv. Cheers and good luck!
Dextrine malt would also be acceptable in my opinion, boost body and sweetness by a bit. Throw the kit ingredients into the brewers friend calculator. Once you learn to use it and play around a little you'll learn how different ingredients change things. Also, personally, save the directions/ingridients lists as you go and then start buying those things fresh from a homebrew shop, flavor is better imo.
Flaked corn shouldn't be steeped. It should be mashed along with a base malt that has diastatic power (enzymes) to convert the corn's starches to sugars/dextrins. (Crystal malt is not a base malt.) Steeping corn would add starches to the beer, which is usually not a good thing.
Sorry to be long winded, and please take no offense to this comment, but I thought I would elaborate on my post a bit more. There are a lot of homebrewers who get into the hobby for many different reasons, but a lot of of share very similar personality traits. This leads to a lot of homebrewers tweaking recipes in multitudes of ways, and many new homebrewers start tweaking before they have the knowledge to understand what they are trying to achieve and how their tweaks will accomplish their goals. My guess would be that this phenomenon is caused by a desire to make their beer "unique." After all, if we just wanted what everyone else was having we could go to the store and buy it. Unfortunately a lot of tweaking by people who don't know how their tweaks will impact their brew most of the time results in bad beer. Don't take this wrong, I'm not casting stones at you in particular and I am not advocating that we all brew the same recipe, etc. I'm just advocating patience as I feel it is likely to make one the best brewer in the long run. So to directly answer your question, no one here is going to be able to give you advise on tweaking this kit as we have no idea what this kit includes. Plus even if we did we do not know what you are wanting to achieve. If you want to articulate answers to those two points myself and many others would be glad to respond. Otherwise, your best bet is likely to brew the kit as is and keep reading, asking questions, brewing, etc., until you are ready to do so.
Yeah I think I'll just leave it alone for now and get my technique down before I start tweaking. Thanks for the advice.
