Update: Flash Brewing Excitement

MoreBeer! recently released their Flash Brew Kits for easy and quick homebrewing with no mashing or boiling. What????

From MoreBeer:

Introducing MoreBeer!'s Flash Brewing™ Kits! Designed for both novice and seasoned homebrewers, these innovative recipe kits allow you to simply mix the ingredients with water and add yeast for fermentation. This streamlined process not only saves you valuable time but also simplifies brewing without sacrificing flavor. Say hello to a faster, easier way to craft exceptional beer at home.

Typically, brewing requires you to boil your malt and hops for one hour, followed by another hour for cooling. Flash Brewing eliminates the need to boil. Our Flash Brewing Malt recipes have been boiled and whirlpooled before they are dried. We then use a HopBite™ shot for bitterness combined with a mix of traditional hop pellets and extracts for flavor. Flash Yeast™ starts quickly and consistently produces clean beer that lets the malt and hops shine. The result is a high-quality beer that will absolutely surprise you.

OK, so for those of us that already have temp control and a fermenter, this does seem quite a bit easier than whole grain brewing or the new Pinter brewing system. See my previous posts. The Pinter system uses liquid malt extract and their proprietary fermenter and serving keg. Cool system.

So what's the deal here? Basically, this is a dry malt extract system.

It is generally accepted that Dry Malt Extract is a better option than liquid malt extract. However, most brewers believe that whole grain brewing is better than either option. So realistically, neither of these newer options are new at all. They are simply a re-hash of dry or liquid malt extract brewing. Certainly they can produce good beer, but as good as whole grain??

I do think it would be nice to have this or the Pinter as a lazy-man option to have something fermenting without expending a lot of brewing time. Basically you sanitize your fermenter then add water, the extract (dry or liquid), hops then yeast. Would truly be about a 15 minute brew day. This is kinda cool. No boil, no chilling. Just add room temp R.O. water and you are done....

I have brewed with the Pinter system with mixed results. When I used their Fresh Pack for a lager, it tasted like apple juice. However, when I created my own wort and fermented with my own yeast, the result was excellent. But the Pinter is only a 1 gallon batch. The Flash Brewing system creates 5g of beer, like a traditional homebrew batch. Certainly I intend to give this a try, who knows.... Maybe it can produce a decent end result with minimal effort.

8/18/24 Update: Final Results and Thoughts:

Well, after a couple weeks or so, the flash ferment IPA has reached it's peak and is ready to drink. Overall. I would say it's very good, but with some caveats (see below). Well carbonated and very clear, with a golden color similar to a Midwest IPA like Bell's Two Hearted. It was served off the fermenting keg so there wasn't any external O2 introduced. I would say, in the end, this was a super easy method to make beer quickly. I did miss the creativity of designing your own recipe, but that's not the goal here.

But what about the flavor and aroma??

Tasting Notes: The aroma was slightly sweet (not bready) and tangerine or orange. It had a slightly medicinal quality, similar to other extract beers I've had. Still, pleasant enough. The taste pretty much matched the aroma, slightly sweet malt character with a somewhat "fake" tasting citrus bitterness. No perceivable off flavors and finished dry and clean at 1.008. The carbonation was excellent and overall this was a decent beer.

However, there is something about extract beers that seem to have a medicinal or artificial sweetener character. I am not sure if this is caused by the proprietary hop-bite liquid they provide or the dry malt extract.

Final Rating: 3 out of 5 Stars