Brewday Saturday.

Hi all,

My name's Robbie, I'm 23 and I'm about to start my brewing adventure!

Brewing my own beer is something I've always wanted to do but never found the time to get round to it. However

Reading various posts on a number of different forums it seems fairly universal that I should probably have experimented with a few kit/extract brews before diving head-first into the world of all-grain as my first brew.

However, I don't like to make things easy for myself and I love the idea of brewing completely from scratch with the raw ingredients.

Over the last couple of weeks I have been putting together some recipes and sorting out my equipment. I've gone down the cooler mash tun route and treated myself to a lovely brew pot from The Malt Miller.

I am a huuuge fan of American-style IPAs, I love anything with a tonne of hops. As such, my first recipe is going to be my personal Double IPA recipe. I've put it together based on a fair-bit of research and my preferred hops but I will appreciate and take on board all comments/pointers on where it can be improved/tweaked.

If it all goes ****-up then I won't mind, I enjoy the process of learning new skills and techniques and eventually mastering them! If I end up with something vaguely drinkable from my first brew then I will consider it a success.

Here's a few piccies of where I'm at now - first brew day is Saturday!



Any pointers on my recipe/equipment will be much appreciated.
Cheers, I look forward to being around here more often.

Robbie

Forgot to post my recipe...

Grain/Mash
6.50 kg Pale Malt, Maris Otter (5.9 EBC) 86.7 %
0.50 kg Cara-Pils/Dextrine (3.9 EBC) 6.7 %

Boil/Hops
0.50 kg Dememera Sugar (3.9 EBC) 6.7 %
40.00g Chinook [12.70 %] - Boil 60.0 min
40.00g Simcoe [12.30 %] - Boil 60.0 min
20.00g Amarillo [8.50 %] - Boil 20.0 min
20.00g Cascade [7.00 %] - Boil 20.0 min
20.00g Amarillo [8.50 %] - Boil 10.0 min
20.00g Cascade [7.00 %] - Boil 10.0 min
20.00g Amarillo [8.50 %] - Boil 5.0 min
20.00g Cascade [7.00 %] - Boil 5.0 min
20.00g Amarillo [8.50 %] - Steep/Whirlpool 10.0 min
20.00g Cascade [7.00 %] - Steep/Whirlpool 10.0 min

Yeast
1.0 pkg Safale American (DCL/Fermentis #US-05)

Dry Hops
30.00g Amarillo [8.50 %] - Dry Hop 5.0 Days
30.00g Cascade [7.00 %] - Dry Hop 5.0 Days
20.00g Simcoe [12.30 %] - Dry Hop 5.0 Days

Gravity, Alcohol Content and Color
Est Original Gravity: 1.085 SG
Est Final Gravity: 1.014 SG
Estimated Alcohol by Vol: 9.4 %
Bitterness: 105.7 IBUs
Est Color: 11.2 EBC

Great first post, let us know how you get on.

Looks like a good set up, Rob. I see you got your stuff from the Home Brew Shop which is where I tend to get most of mine from. Where do you hail from and how did the brew turn out?

You're well set up.

Dry hops?

Great Post welcome

That is a monster first brew to begin with!!

Joeyriles said:

Looks like a good set up, Rob. I see you got your stuff from the Home Brew Shop which is where I tend to get most of mine from. Where do you hail from and how did the brew turn out?

Click to expand...

I'm from Kidderminster, Worcs.
I was very impressed with THBS, very speedy service. The Malt Miller were also fantastic! Very happy with my brew pot from them. The brew hasn't happened yet, it's this Saturday, can't wait!

Hi Robbie great post keep us up to date how you get a long
Steve

clibit said:

You're well set up.

Dry hops?

Click to expand...

30.00g Amarillo [8.50 %] - Dry Hop 5.0 Days
30.00g Cascade [7.00 %] - Dry Hop 5.0 Days
20.00g Simcoe [12.30 %] - Dry Hop 5.0 Days

Hi RZH

I am not the most knowlegable present, but, as your recipe clearly indicates, you are going to get over 100 IBU's from your 80g of bittering hops.

Is this in keeping with the style you want?

Slid said:

Hi RZH

I am not the most knowlegable present, but, as your recipe clearly indicates, you are going to get over 100 IBU's from your 80g of bittering hops.

Is this in keeping with the style you want?

Click to expand...

You may say you're not the most knowledgeable but I can guarantee you'll know at least 100x add much as I do! :)

Though it's funny you should say that, I'd been looking at ditching the Chinook anyway; it's a bit of a random loner when you look at the hop schedule!

Changing it to 1x 60.00g addition of Simcoe at 60 mins brings it down to 86.1 IBUs.

Thanks everyone, I'll make sure to keep you updated!

Ooooooshhh! Love the set up rob, and the fact you've gone straight in at the deep end haha. Keep us posted, i can feel myself being inspried by this and nudging myself towards AG :)

So, two days on, here's a summary of my first ever brewday. (Pics to follow!)

All I all I think it went okay, had a few issues equipment-wise that I think I know how to avoid next time around.

I think I may have mashed a little too high. I was aiming for a mash temp of 66.7°C and had 2 different thermometers to try and get as close as possible. One appeared to be bang on, the other was pushing the other side of 70°C.

First runnings came out bang on, and the batch sparge seemed to go well - though I think I will leave it a little longer between sparges next time, I don't think 10 minutes was long enough. I used BeerSmith to work out the amount of sparge water, is there a simpler way of calculating this?

My pre-boil gravity was pretty close, though I'm still a bit unsure on what readings to take and when. However, I think it was the boil where I made my biggest mistake.

I ended up with approx. 30 litres of wort pre-boil which really pushed my hob to the limit in terms of heating it up. As soon as it got to the boil I went straight in with my first hop addition and carried on with my intended schedule thereafter - 60 minutes of boiling in total - this left me with around 22.5 litres after boiling and draining into my FV - about 2.5 more than I'd expected. As you can imagine, my post-boil gravity reading wasn't quite as high as I'd expected. I think I will go for a 90 minute boil next time - 30 minutes of initial boiling without hops just to reduce and the normal 60 minutes with additions after.

The 2nd main problem I had was cooling the bloody thing down. I don't have a wort chiller and will almost certainly invest in one, but aside from putting it in the bath with ice water and stirring like mad I wasn't sure what to do. It took absolutely AGES to get it down to pitching temp.

Anyway, I pitched the yeast when it reached 21-22°C and I currently have something resembling beer furiously bubbling away. I couldn't resist this morning so opened it up and took a quick smell - it smells absolutely FANTASTIC. I think I should end up with something that somewhat resembles what I'm aiming for!

Essay over!

Cheers, Robbie.

Looks great!

Update time!

My beer has been in the FV for 12 days now - home-brewing has improved my patience no end!

About a week ago I think it got a bit cold and slowed right down (I know the airlock is no indication of fermentation), I took 3 consecutive readings of 1.031 - seemed way too high to be finished but a quick yet gentle stir and a towel wrapped around it seem to have done the job of reviving it.

As of today I've just taken my second consecutive reading of 1.014 - spot on. Gonna do another one tomorrow and if all is good it will be ready for my dry hops!!
I also had a sneaky drink of what I used for my hydrometer reading - very happy! Good strong bitterness, not excessive. Not a massive amount of aroma but I know I'll pick up a load from dry-hopping - especially with the amount I've got lined up!

On the subject of dry hops, how long do you all dry hop for? As with most things home brew related a quick Google reveals anything from 3 days to 2 weeks. I was looking at 5-7 days for mine.

Robbie.

I tend to dry hop for 5 days, if you leave them too long you can end up with grassy flavours I believe but that takes more than 5 days.

5-7 days is a good amount, some extremely hop forward craft brewers even say 3 is enough, but they're using commercial levels of hops and can afford it.

If you're planning on cold crashing it before bottling, go for 5 days dry hopping, then 2 days cold crashing.

First of all, well done so far. Very impressive.

Try not to risk contamination by opening up your fermenting vessel. To take a sniff, just squeeze the lid or sides and sniff the airlock. Keeping things germ-free is your number one priority.

When you bung the dry hops in, they'll be clumped together, but don't worry: just chuck them in quickly with the lid lifted partially (to avoid losing the CO2 layer) and then swirl the fermenting vessel to soak them. They will then expand and spread out across the top. Don't swirl it later as you want the trub to settle before bottling so that you have a clear beer without too much sediment. For whole hops, five days sounds good. I'd maybe go for three if they were pellets.

I've not got anywhere near my first brew so jelous is an understatement. I'm in the same boat though wanting to dive right in to all grain brewing.
From my research (and far from being anything above novice ) do you think the demerara sugar is really needed? Is it to raise alcohol content? and it seems like there are a lot of bitter hops in there but as I say my thoughts are only from reading books and not experience.
I would love to hear how this goes and hopefully I will do my first brew post soon.

Another option rather than putting loose hops (pita when bottling) get a muslin bag (big enough for expansion), weigh it down (marbles are good for this) and put the bag in. Make sure you have sterilised it and the marbles beforehand.