Understanding the beer that came with my Brewdemon

Because 2 cans of pre-hopped malt extract would just be too much of an explosion of hop flavor and probably blow your mind.

 

From what it looks like is the unhopped extract is a univeral pale base malt extract (the brewdemon website gives a little more information), it says it's for pale ales, pilsners, and lagers (will ignore that a pilsner is a lager). This is probably part of their kits that is meant to be the most universal. In this case I think it is just there to give the beer a little more oomph. This one wouldn't taste very good on its own.

The Hopped extract is basically everything you need to make beer, they did all of the preblending for you. This paired with the unhopped extract will tone down the hop flavor that the hopeed extract and replace it with some ABV.

I've never brewed with kits like this, but it takes the process almost as simple (or possibly the simplest) as it goes to make homebrewed beer. I believe the goal is to give a consistent product while giving up control of tweaking the recipes while you figure out if you enjoy it or not.

Note that I also have no experience with Brewdemon, so there are inferences above.

 

Sending pre-hopped cans of extract keeps the company from having to send hops in packages which should be kept refrigerated or frozen for freshness. Unfortunately it also keeps you from choosing the hop variety that you'd really like to use in your beer. So it's likely that the recipe is designed to be very traditional for the style and uses the hops that fit that tradition.

I hope your Brewdemon doesn't limit your ability to choose/create other recipes and have the ability to choose and add the hops during the boil that you want in your beers.

Using pre-hopped malt extract sucks because you really don't know what you're getting.

 

The hopped malt extract will provide bitterness to the beer. If you would like to have hop flavor/aroma to your homebrewed beer you can purchase some hops (of your choice) and add them to the boil (e.g., last 10-15 minutes of boil, end of boil).

Cheers!

 

I forgot that your Brewdemon is just the fermentor, thinking it was a brewing 'system' that might restrict your flexibility while brewing. I'm back on track now.

Yes, you can find recipes just about everywhere, and if the ingredients are for 5 gallons, just scale everything down proportionally. The yeast isn't so critical to scale down, and adding an entire sachet or vial may help offset whatever past-prime date is on the package. An adequate amount of healthy yeast is critical when brewing. Don't take a chance on cutting corners with old ingredients.

 

The below video is for Mr. Beer but the concepts are applicable to Brewdemon as well: