How to change the flavour of your homebrew beer

Where beer flavour actually comes from

Once you've got a few kit beers behind you the next question is always the same, which is how you make one that tastes like yours rather than like the tin. The answer isn't a bottle of flavouring, and I'd rather tell you that up front than sell you something that doesn't do what you're hoping. Beer flavour comes out of four things, which are the hops, the malt, the yeast and the water, and every interesting beer you've ever had was somebody moving one of those four.

We don't hold bottled beer flavourings in the shop, and that's deliberate rather than an oversight, because the real ingredients do the job better and they're what we stock instead.

Hops, which is the lever most people reach for first

Hops carry both the bitterness and the aroma, and when they go in decides which of those two you get. Early in the boil gives you bitterness and almost no smell. Late in the boil or right at the end gives you aroma and very little extra bitterness. Dry hopping, which means adding them to the fermenter after the yeast has done most of its work, gives you the biggest aroma of the lot and no bitterness at all.

If you're adding hops to a kit beer, start small, because a kit is already bittered and it's easy to bury it. A finishing hop added at the end of the boil, or a small dry hop for a few days, will change the beer noticeably without wrecking the balance.

Malt, which decides the body and the colour

Swapping some of the sugar in a kit for malt extract is the single biggest improvement most people make to their brewing, because sugar ferments away to nothing and malt leaves something behind. Light malt extract gives you body and a better head without changing the colour much. Dark malt extract brings roast and colour with it, which is what you want under a stout. Amber sits between the two.

Specialty grains go a step further again. Steeping a small amount of crystal malt in warm water before you start adds a caramel note and a deeper colour, and it's a lot less work than it sounds.

Yeast, which is the one people forget

The sachet taped to the lid of a kit will make beer and it will make it reliably, but it's the same yeast every time, so every batch lands in the same place. A proper ale yeast, a lager yeast run cool, or a wheat yeast will each take the same wort somewhere different, and the difference is bigger than most people expect. Fermentation temperature matters as much as the strain does, and the packet tells you the range it wants.

Real ingredients beat bottled flavours

If you want a coffee note, cold brew some coffee and add it at bottling. If you want fruit, add real fruit to the fermenter once the vigorous part is over. If you want oak, oak chips in the fermenter for a week or two will do it. Every one of those gives you a better result than a drop of something out of a bottle, and you can taste as you go instead of committing the whole batch.

Whatever you're adding at the end, mix a measured amount into a single glass of the finished beer first and taste it, because scaling up from a glass you liked is a much safer way to work than dosing 23 litres and finding out later.

Change one thing at a time

This is the part that separates brewing that improves from brewing that just varies. If you change the hops, the malt and the yeast all in one batch and it comes out brilliant, you've learned nothing about why, and you won't be able to do it again. One change per batch, written down, and within about 6 batches you'll have a beer that's genuinely yours.

Shop related products

• Coopers Light Malt Extract 1.5kg. Use this to add body without shifting the colour.
• Coopers Amber Malt Extract 1.5kg. This sits between the light and the dark for a richer ale.
• Coopers Dark Malt Extract 1.5kg. Go here for roast and colour under a stout or a dark ale.
• Thomas Coopers Bootmaker Pale Ale 1.7kg. This is a good hoppy base to start experimenting on.

Did you know we also hold hop pellets in the shop that never make it onto the website, including Nelson Sauvin, Citra, Chinook, Fuggles, Kent Golding, Centennial and Galaxy, along with finishing hops, crystal malted grain, ale and lager yeasts and finings. Give us a ring on (08) 8536 4333 to check what's on the shelf.

Where to go next

The beer supplies and the full homebrew range have the rest, and Brewhilder will help you pick what to change first if you're not sure.

Worth reading next: How to brew your first beer at home and Common homebrew problems and how to fix them.

I'm the one who says she'll only change one thing and then changes four, so take that advice from someone who struggles to follow it.