Black Rock

Black Rock home brew kits

Black Rock is made in New Zealand from New Zealand malt, and it has been a fixture in Australian home brewing long enough that most brewers over forty made their first drinkable beer with one. The range covers three different jobs: hopped extract kits for the classic tin-and-yeast brew, Crafted fresh wort kits for brewers who want grain character without a mash, and plain liquid malt extract for anyone building a recipe from scratch.

Extract kits

Ten 1.7kg tins, each hopped and ready to ferment to 23 litres. The range covers most of what Australians actually drink:

• Pale Ale and XPA for the hop-forward end
• Golden Ale and Pilsner Blonde for lighter, warm-weather beers
• Lager and NZ Draught for the traditional session beers
• Miners Stout and Oatmeal Stout for the dark end, the oatmeal version carrying more body
• Nut Brown Ale for malt-driven British character
• Black Rock Cider at 1.65kg if you are fermenting apples rather than grain (see cider basics for how that ferment differs)

One thing worth knowing: the yeast sachet taped under the lid is a generic strain chosen for shelf life, not for flavour. Swapping it for a matched strain is the single biggest improvement you can make to a kit beer, and it costs very little. Keep the sachet though. It makes very good pizza dough. There is more in our guide to upgrading a regular beer kit, and in all about brewing yeasts if you want to pick the replacement strain properly.

Crafted fresh wort kits

The Crafted range is a different product entirely. These are 23 litre fresh wort kits, made from real grain and never concentrated, so what arrives is finished wort rather than syrup. You pitch yeast and ferment. Four styles: Crafted Pale Ale, Crafted IPA, Crafted Hazy and Crafted Lager.

The result sits much closer to all grain than to a tin, because the sugars were never cooked down and rebuilt. If you have been brewing kits and wondering what the gap is between your beer and the taproom, this is where you find out. You are producing properly now.

Liquid malt extract

Unhopped extract in Light and Dark, 1.7kg each. This is base material rather than a recipe. Use it to lift the gravity of a kit, to build a partial mash, to boost body in a stout, or to make a yeast starter. Light is the neutral workhorse. Dark brings colour and a deeper malt note to porters, stouts and brown ales.

Ships Australia-wide from our Melbourne store. We have been stocking Black Rock for a very long time and we have brewed most of the range ourselves, so ask if you want a straight answer on which tin is worth your weekend.