Beer recipes

[gjohnk]

Ive been trying to use the Beer Engine programme to try to make some of my own extract beer recipes.
Are there any secrets to creating a good beer or is it more abpout trial and error?

Ive come up with the following and wonder if I'm doing anything obviously wrong.

10L brew
Amber Malt Extract -1500g
Crystal Malt - 300g
Dried Pale Malt Extract - 250g
Golding hops - 30g (60min)
Golding hops - 15g (20min)

Any comments would be useful, even just to tell me to try it and see what it's like.

Thanks

 

[graysalchemy]

Just put your recipe into beer engine looks like you will end up with a beer at 1060 with a bitterness of 47 IBU which for its gravity would be OK.

Perhaps the amount of crystal at 15% is a bit high. I usually aim for about 7-8% as it may end up to sweet. I also add about 5% wheat malt for head retention.

I would perhaps increase the boil to 90 min (and thus the first hops will be 90 min also) to increase the hop utilization. Others more knowledgeable may disagree. Also make the aroma hop adition 10minutes so that you don't boil off all the aroma.

Goldings is a good choice of hop my favorite aroma hop ( though I use a combination of target and challenger for bittering)

Hope that helps

Alistair

 

[gjohnk]

Cheers Alistair.

I guess I just need to keep brewing, the more batches I do the more I know.

Will have a go with your suggested amount of crystal malt.

 

[Aleman]

Are there any secrets to creating a good beer or is it more abpout trial and error?

Having an idea about what the individual ingredients will add to the beer is a big help. Which means a lot of brewing using a base malt and just one adjunct at a time . . . perhaps increasing the amount of the adjunct over successive brews, until you know when it just gets nasty.

One thing I found that helped me when I was looking at my own recipes was Designing Great beers By Ray Daniels, which analysed the NHC results for a couple of years and indicated what ingredients went into them . . .they are a bit outdated nowbut, it is a useful resource at times.

Today I would look at brewing Classic Styles by Jamil Zainasheff and John Palmer, as well as The Jamil Show podcasts on The Brewing Network which covered the classic styles, and explains what each ingredient brings to the mix. I remember one show (North German Pilsners IIRC) where they were discussing JZ recipes and Bob Doles which used different ingredients and different yeasts but produced a similar beer . . .showing that not only do you need to pick your ingredients with care, you have to pick a sympathetic yeast as well.

 

[abeyptfc]

Ive been trying to use the Beer Engine programme to try to make some of my own extract beer recipes.
Are there any secrets to creating a good beer or is it more abpout trial and error?

Ive come up with the following and wonder if I'm doing anything obviously wrong.

10L brew
Amber Malt Extract -1500g
Crystal Malt - 300g
Dried Pale Malt Extract - 250g
Golding hops - 30g (60min)
Golding hops - 15g (20min)

Any comments would be useful, even just to tell me to try it and see what it's like.

Thanks

is there a general rule of thumb of how much grain per litre? I ask this as I was doing an extract recipe for 20 litres where i used 500g of crystal malt and 500g of carapils plus 2KG of spraymalt. obviously you have used more grains but not as much spraymalt or DME for half the amount of liquid. gd luck with it, my latest extract was made using freshly picked heather tht I picked myself! heres hoping there will be a fraoch flavour to it!

 

[luckyeddie]

Well, if you're name's Luckyeddie, the general rule of thumb is 250g of grain per litre. That's 5 kilos for a 20 litre batch.

That'll give you a nice solid 5.5-7% dependent upon attenuation because I'm a lush. If I'm kicking up the strength to a tripel or a quad, then I'm looking to use adjuncts (candi syrup) to avoid making the beer too chewy.

 

[abeyptfc]

see when people mention 'efficiency' when AG brewing, how do you measure or calculate your efficiency?

 

[Aleman]

is there a general rule of thumb of how much grain per litre?

:wha: Not really, obviously with extract the 'base malt' fermentability is fixed, and where as an AG brewer we can say that 'pale malt' will convert itself and the same weight of less/non fermentable malts/adjuncts, as an extract brewer you can't (unless you mini/partial mash). This means that most grain adjuncts you use will increase the non fermentability of the wort, and therefore the recommended limits as to max percentage of the grain bill should probably be halved for extract brewers. The issue becomes further clouded if you then decide to use fully fermentable sugars in the recipe as that increases the fermentability of the wort. All one delicate balancing act, but with dark glasses on and not quite all the information you need.

I must admit that most extract brewing I have done I have always used the palest malt extract I can obtain as my 'base' and then used steeped grain and partial mashing to add the flavours/colours that I wanted from the additional grains.

 

[luckyeddie]

Most of the beer calculation engines assume 75% efficiency and give you a predicted OG - this is dependent upon the amount of maltose that you have been able to convert from the starches in the grain (mashing) and then the amount that you can successfully rinse out (sparging).

So if your predicted OG is 1050 and your actual OG is 1052, then your efficiency will be 0.75 * (52/50) = 78%.

Of course it's only approximate - we have to take a lot of stuff on trust (especially the amount of available sugar in the grain). I don't break sweat about it at all. If it tastes good and makes me think that the gutter I end up sleeping in is comfortable, that's good enough for me.

My brewing now is an expression of my artistic creativity, whereas at one time I was obsessed with the scientific approach. My last beer involved weighing absolutely nothing and doing everything by guesswork. I didn't get the beer I intended (it was supposed to be a stout but I don't think I used anything like enough roasted malt) but I got a beer which tastes pretty splendid at the moment (although the only stuff I've tasted so far is a trial jar full).

Edit: I stress that I'm talking AG brewing here.

 

[Aleman]

My brewing now is an expression of my artistic creativity, whereas at one time I was obsessed with the scientific approach.

Yeah . . . Me too . . .

 

[luckyeddie]

My brewing now is an expression of my artistic creativity, whereas at one time I was obsessed with the scientific approach.

Yeah . . . Me too . . .

Where's ORLY Owl when I need him?

:lol:

 

[Aleman]

My brewing now is an expression of my artistic creativity, whereas at one time I was obsessed with the scientific approach.

Yeah . . . Me too . . .

Where's ORLY Owl when I need him?

:lol:

 

[Aleman]

My brewing now is an expression of my artistic creativity, whereas at one time I was obsessed with the scientific approach.

Yeah . . . Me too . . .

Just Kidding :rofl:

Actually I do take more of a craft approach to it, although I weigh things out, and record a few things I don't actually do a lot, as those that have brewed with me will know, . . . . "It'll be reet"

 

[gjohnk]

Ive been trying to use the Beer Engine programme to try to make some of my own extract beer recipes.
Are there any secrets to creating a good beer or is it more abpout trial and error?

Ive come up with the following and wonder if I'm doing anything obviously wrong.

10L brew
Amber Malt Extract -1500g
Crystal Malt - 300g
Dried Pale Malt Extract - 250g
Golding hops - 30g (60min)
Golding hops - 15g (20min)

Any comments would be useful, even just to tell me to try it and see what it's like.

Thanks

Well I made this and it seems to have turned out quite nice actually. My only problem was that when I made it up the start gravity was around 1.050 instead of 1.057.
Not sure what I will have done wrong, it was my first time using dried malt or steeping. Dont think I had too much water so maybe i didnt something wrong with the dry malts. Hard to say what though.