After our first batch, we tried many different extract brewing recipes. We bought all of these different recipes as kits from various suppliers. The process was pretty easy and the instructions were all pretty simple. You just add the ingredients at the right times, pitch the yeast, ferment, then bottle.

These various different recipes produced a wide range of results, but there did seem to be a common thread throughout all of them. The final product had a strange sweetness to it. Almost like a butterscotch flavor. It was in pretty much every different style of beer we brewed. We strongly suspected that it was somehow linked to extract brewing.

This suspicion is what has led us to where we are now. We have decided that to get the best flavors out of our finished products we need to ditch the extract brewing for all-grain brewing. We were able to supplement our extract brewing supplies by borrowing a mash tun and a hot liquor tank from a family friend. We also began to research all-grain brewing more carefully to learn about the new techniques we would have to use. Using this new knowledge and our borrowed equipment, we set off to brew two all-grain recipes.

Side note: 

Of the many different extract brewing kits we used, there were some that seemed to be more successful than others:

The Brewers Best American Light kit was perhaps one of the most successful. This kit used about half as much liquid malt extract as some of the other kits that we used. The rest of the fermentables were in the form of dry malt extract and other adjuncts (including that one that you see all the commercials about these days, corn syrup). This beer came out tasting pretty much like an adjunct lager from one of the bigger breweries. It had a final ABV of about 4.4%. Although it was bottled over two years ago, we cracked open a bottle during our last bottling day and the beer was still pretty good. This would be a pretty good place to start for any beginner.

https://www.homebrewing.org/Brewers-Best-American-Light_p_205.html

Another notable kit that we used was the Palmer’s Premium Beer Kit – Programmers Elbow. This particular kit yielded us a pretty drinkable ESB. This recipe used different dry malt extracts as well as some steeping grains. The sweeter flavor was still there, but in this style of beer lends itself a bit more to having a bit of sweetness. It shouldn’t be overly sweet, but a good ESB will have a balance that does include some sweetness.

https://www.morebeer.com/products/palmer-premium-beer-kits-programmers-elbow-extra-special-bitter-esb-2.html