Please click on an FAQ link below to view information regarding that question.   Question: A. What kinds of recipe kits does Midwest sell?   Answer: Midwest Homebrewing Supplies offers a large selection of recipe kits. Our kits cover ale, lager, wheat and specialty hybrid styles. All ales come with a "top fermenting" yeast, while the lagers come with a "bottom fermenting" yeast. The ales ferment best at a temperature of between 60°F and 70°F, while lagers should be fermented between 45°F and 55°F. Lagers require a longer period of bottle conditioning, typically 6 weeks. This is ideally accomplished in a refrigerator, but a cool basement floor during the winter months also works well . To determine if your basement is cool enough simply place a glass of water on your basement floor with a thermometer in it. If the thermometer reads between 45°F and 55°F, you’re ready to lager. Most of Midwest's Homebrew Recipe Kits come with multiple options in yeast. The standard kit comes with dry yeast, but you also have the option of yeast from WYeast and White Labs. ?Kit Descriptions?(#000) - Kits come with dry yeast packs?(#000W) - Kits come with 1.75 oz. liquid WYeast packet?(#000ACT) - Kits come with ready-to-use Wyeast Activator?(#000WL) -Kits come with White Lab yeast Wyeast are pure strains of liquid beer yeast in self contained foil packs. They require activation 6-24 hours before brewing. This is easily done by holding the yeast pack in your hand and hitting it with your other hand. This ruptures the yeast culture inside the pack. Midwest recommends 2-3 days for smack Paks to have a good starter. When you’re ready to add the yeast, simply cut the yeast pack open and add to your wort/beer. 1.75 oz. packs (000W) are available for an additional $3.00. New Activators (000ACT) are available for an additional for $4.00. Recommended 24 hrs. for Activators. Each vial of White Labs Pitchable Yeast contains enough high quality liquid brewers yeast to pitch directly into 5 gallons of wort with no starter necessary. Each vial represents a concentrated pint size starter of yeast (30-50 billion cells). We include this many cells for one simple reason, more cells equals shorter lag times and cleaner (tastier) brews. All White Labs Yeast vials (000WL) are available for an additional $5.00. All homebrewing recipe kits from Midwest include: Briess malt extract (unless otherwise noted), specialty grains, imported and domestic hops, fresh yeast, sugar, priming sugar, grain bag and complete easy to follow instructions. They are designed to brew 5 gallon batches. Call our new toll free number to order your kit today. 1 (888) 449-BREW or 1 (952) 925-9854. Midwest accepts all major credit cards.   Question: Why do you have so many kits?   Answer: So that you can brew and drink the beer that you love best!!! Each beer drinker has their own favorite flavors, so we carry 80+ beer kits covering light, amber, and dark ales and lagers. We have wheat beers, meads and melomels, Belgian ales, and clone kits for when you want to brew your favorite commercial beer. Also, for those who have increased the complexity of their brewing system, we carry a selection of partial-mash and all-grain kits. Each 5-gallon kit comes with all the ingredients and extra brewing supplies you’ll need to get that batch going on brew day. This includes the malt, specialty grains, hops, priming sugar, grain bag, any extra sugars or additives required, and instructions to guide you through. Maybe we don’t have a kit to satisfy your taste buds, or you have come up with a kit that wows all of your friends. Browse our ingredients section to order the supplies you need!   Question: Where do your recipes come from?   Answer: Our recipes were developed over a period of trial and error. Each of our recipes fits loosely within the accepted style guidelines. Some of our kits are what we call "clones" and are designed to approximate commercially popular beer styles. We also have a line of kits we call the "20 minute boil" kits. They are designed without specialty grains and use hopped malt extract so they can be whipped up in half the time of our other kits. These kits are great for brewers that enjoy drinking homebrewed beer but do not have a lot of spare time to devote to its labors. All of our kits come complete with all the ingredients necessary down to the priming sugar. This includes; malt extract (liquid in most cases), specialty grains (if appropriate), hops, yeast (usually dried but all kits can be upgraded to liquid for a few dollars more), a muslin bag, priming sugar, and detailed instructions.   Question: How does making beer from canned kits compare with our kits?   Answer: While it is true that canned kits are capable of producing decent homebrewed beer, generally speaking, they cannot compete with our kits or kits that a brewer would design for his/herself. There are several reasons for this. Canned kits often come hopped which limits the control the brewer has on the end result of their beer. They generally do not include specialty grains, which serve to improve the complexity and depth of a beer's character. As mentioned below, many call for the addition of table or corn sugar to attain the proper alcohol balance, but adding these sugars will “thin” the beer and contribute some off-flavors. Our kits supply you with all wheat and barley malt except where other sugars are appropriate for the beer style. The ingredients in canned kits can sometimes lack the consistent freshness that you can get from our kits. We can make this statement based on the fact that all of our beer ingredients turn over weekly so you are assured the highest quality ingredients available.   Question: Why do some kits call for corn or table sugar?   Answer: Corn sugar and table sugar (sucrose) are cheap fermentable sugars that produce alcohol without rendering the cloying residual sweetness of malt extract. There use in quantities of 30-40% will produce a beer with a considerably lighter body than one brewed strictly with malt sugars. Any canned kits, and the body of the beer they produce, can be improved upon greatly by substituting the corn sugar with malt extract, either dried or liquid.   Question: Quick directions for brewing 5 gallons with malt extract, specialty grains, hops, yeast, and priming sugar.   Answer: If you upgraded your recipe kit with Wyeast Liquid Yeast or White Labs Liquid Yeast, refrigerate the yeast ASAP until you are ready to brew.  With the 1.75 oz Wyeast Slap-pack, place the pack on a hard surface and break the inner pouch with the palm of your hand.  Wait 1-3 days (room temperature) for the pouch to expand to over 2 inches thick. At this point are starter should be prepared and the contents of the expanded pack pitched into it.  With White Labs and Wyeast Activators, simply warm the yeast to room temperature, 4-5 hours prior to brewing. Start heating 1.5-2 gallons of water in your brewing kettle.  Place the specialty grains in the muslin bag, tie the open end in a knot and steep in the cold water while heating to between 150-158 degrees F.  Once you have reached this temperature range remove the kettle from the heat and steep the grains for 10-20 minutes. Remove grain and gently squeeze liquid from the bag.  Discard grains and bag, return the kettle to the stove and bring to a boil. Once a boil is achieved remove the kettle from the burner and add the malt extract while stirring.  When the extract is added and dissolved, return the kettle to the burner and bring to a boil. Boil for one hour adding the hops as specified by the kit instructions.  Chill and pour the wort (unfermented beer) into the sanitized primary fermenter.  Top off with cold tap water to the 5.5-gallon mark on the side of the fermenter. Add the yeast. Seal up the fermenter and wait for the fermentation process to finish. ( usually 10-14 DAYS) Transfer the beer into the bottling bucket.  Add ¾ cup of priming sugar and bottle. Patience is a virtue!  Wait 3-4 weeks and sample.  Aging almost always will make your homebrew taste better.   Question: How do I convert a recipe for an all-grain brew to extract?   Answer: This is sort of a difficult question, as many all-grain recipes are simply too complex to replicate in an extract brew. This doesn’t mean that it can’t be done, it just means that your extract version may not taste the same as the all-grain version. You can usually get pretty close, conversion-wise, anyhow. The ratio between liquid malt extracts and base malts is usually about 4/5. In other words, if an all-grain recipe calls for 10 lbs. of base malt, you would use 8 lbs. of liquid malt extract. If you are using dry malt extract (DME), the ratio falls to about 3.2/5, so if the recipe calls for 10 lbs. of base malt, you would substitute 6.4 lbs. of DME. Remember, when converting an all-grain recipe to extract, only consider the base malts called for in the original recipe. These would usually include grains like Two-Row, Six-Row, Pilner Malt, or any of the other grains listed in our catalog or on the website under “Brewer’s Malts”. Any of the other grains in the recipe will be specialty grains, such as Carapils, Chocolate, Caramel 40, etc. With these grains, you use the same amounts called for in the all-grain recipe, crush them and steep them just as you would with the grains you receive in a Midwest Recipe Kit.   Question: I've been making your recipe kits for a while now, and I was wondering how hard it is to make the next step and begin creating my own recipes.   Answer: Creating recipes of your own is not too difficult. Many brewers start with making kits, then move on to brewing recipes from any of the many brewing books that we stock. From here, making the jump to formulating recipes of your own is not far. Really, it's just grains and/or malt extract, hops and yeast. As long as you combine those things, you'll get beer. Whether or not it adheres to a particular style guideline is up to you. Many books even have a section that tells you which ingredients are preferred for each individual style. Get creative!   Question: I'd like my beer to have more clarity, but I don't want to spend the money on a filtration system. What else can I do?   Answer: Fining agents are a very effective method of producing a brilliantly clear beer. Many brewers use Irish Moss with every batch. Inexpensive (only $1.40 for an ounce, enough for at least 12 batches) and easy to use, just throw a teaspoonful into the boil for the last 15 minutes. Polyclar is another very effective fining agent that is stirred into your secondary two to five days before bottling or kegging. Gelatin finings and isinglass are two other widely used methods of achieving clarity.   Question: What is the Late Extract Addition brewing method?   Answer: The Late Extract Addition process is very simple – the bulk of the fermentable sugars, generally malt extract, are added near the end of the boil, rather than at the beginning. Add 15-25% of your malt and/or fermentable sugars at the beginning of the boil. This will create a wort that has malt sugars and enzymes necessary for the boiling process, but creates an thinner wort for the majority of the boiling time. Add the remaining 75-85% of the malt extract during the last 15 minutes of the boil – enough time for the malt to be fully dissolved and sterilized by the boil. There are several reasons to use the late extract brewing method. Several benefits come from reducing over-caramelization. One of these benefits is that the beer will turn out lighter, which can be difficult to do otherwise with extract beers. It can also reduce scorched malt flavors that can result from brewing high-gravity beers, or boiling the wort in a small brewpot, where the wort is more concentrated and susceptible to scorching. Another result out of the late extract method is increased hop utilization. Using the late extract method, you will get a more bitter beer than you would if you were added 100% of the malt at the beginning of the boil. This may be a good or bad thing. The upside is that you get better efficiency in terms of bitterness extraction from your hops. The possible drawback is that you may create a beer that is more bitter than you’d like. Many brewers choose to use about 20% less bittering hops to compensate for the increased hop utilization. This saves you hops! Give it a try on your next light beer and see if you like the results!