Hello Brewers!
I am still a noob to this, but I want to brew my wife something that she’d like.
I don’t yet have the equipment to do an all grain, and I am reliant on extracts.
I was wondering if anyone has experimented with adding flavour ingredients, like cherry for example, to an extract? If so, when and what have you added? And is this going to be an expensive process of trial and error?
Brewing is cool no matter how you do it. Don’t take anyone dissing on you because you don’t use all grain seriously. A two row can of extract can give the same base as mashing and lautering out the extract yourself from all grain.
Using extracts is not a hindrance, because you can use extract to create the base of the beer. If you want to do a multi-stage rest, you can do that with a tea bag of grain. Grab yourself a large mesh bag (they are not expensive) and you can do a whole lot with various grain without having to do the lautering process.
Get whatever specialty grain and place it in the mesh bag and then as you are mashing, you can hold the temperature at certain points. Conversion temperatures in the 140s 150s and 160s all have radically different taste profiles depending on the length of time and the grain. It’s all about time and temperature.
You can get all sorts of interesting notes just from the grain- cloves, a honey sweetness, chocolate, etc. Especially if you’re mixing in any grains like chocolate malt, black prince, or something with more floral notes. In my opinion, this is some of the most fun part of brewing.
But you can still do a lot without using any grain and just extract. I personally have used unsweetened cherry juice and quite a few of my brews. Knudsens is a brand that I use. I generally add it around when I add the finishing hops - at the end of boil around knockout.
I experimented with unsweetened cranberry juice in a ginger ale, using champagne yeast. It was a bit astringent, but was still very palatable and gosh very strong.
If you are into sour beers, look into kettle souring. It’s also a really cool process. But it’s kind of a time commitment.
And a whole lot can depend on hop. Citra, Galaxy, Palisade, Clementine, etc will result in radically different taste profiles, when used as a finishing hop.
And you can split your cans of extract up, you don’t have to make a 5 gallon carboy of beer every time. A little gallon fermenter with a vapor lock is cheap, and you can do neat stuff that is not a big monetary commitment.
Thanks for posting. Have fun.