Extract #1 Cascade IPA - First Post - First Brew

[Strongarm]

Hello, decided to give home brewing a go so the wife got me a Coopers Lager kit (the one with all the gear) for Christmas. With two kids below 3 spare time is in short supply though so didn't want to waste 4 weeks on a beer I'm not really interested in so the lager tin got stuck in a cupboard and I went for an extract + steeped IPA recipe, which I made up myself based on a 15 minute Cascade IPA I saw on another forum.

2kg light DME
300gr Crystal (150 EBC)

30gr Cascade (30 mins)
20gr Cascade (15 mins)
10gr Cascade (5 mins)
10gr Cascade (0 mins)
30gr Cascade (dry hop)

Yeast - Safale S-04

Crystal was put in from cold and removed at 70C, yeast was rehydrated based on John Palmer How to Brew extract pages.

Wort (12 litres of it) tasted good, fairly bitter (by my calcs about 50 IBUs) but certainly not unpleasant, pretty dark from the crystal. OG was 1.062 (think this should end up about 6% ABV) and there's a big krausen on it this morning (pitched it at 4pm yesterday). My only concern is after a thorough sanitising of everything prior and during the brew in a momentary lack of concentration I went and squeezed out the hop bag into the cooled wort with a hand whose cleanliness I'm not 100% certain of (hopefully I'd just sanitized my thermometer with said hand, but cant be certain).

I aim to leave in primary for next two weeks then will dry hop for another 7 days before bottling with the coppers carbonation drops that came in the kit.

Fingers crossed I've not knackered it with a dirty hand.

Next brew will the same again but with S-05 so I can start to understand what 'fruity esters' and 'ferments to a clean crisp finish' actually taste like.

 

[Strongarm]

Regarding the chance of contaminating, how can one tell if the beer isn't right? Is it obvious?

Thanks

 

[Asalpaws]

Don't worry about the hand the alcohol and hops stop the bacteria taking hold. It's sanatized not sterile. Sounds like a tasty brew. If you really want to try fruity esters, get some Belgian yeast! T

 

[Strongarm]

Cheers.

I was unsure what hops I've drank and enjoyed but opening the vac pack of cascade I knew straight away it was one of them.

Not sure if I like fruity esters yet. I chose the S-04 as I read somewhere Punk IPA uses an English Ale yeast and it is one of my favourite beers.

What Belgian yeasts are there with lots of them? eg brand and name/number?

Thanks

 

[Asalpaws]

Cascade is what Sierra Nevada tastes of, so any beer tasting like that = good. There are loads of yeasts to choose from, many come from commercial breweries, so you can try before you buy Mrmalty.com has lists. T

 

[Strongarm]

Didnt realise Sierra Nevada was cascade based but I'm a fan of it so maybe why the hops smelled so familiar.

Came home to a cold house to find central heating had turned itself off. The brew only made it as far down as 16 though, and not for very long, so hoping it's not done too much damage.

Have Coopers FV so no airlock to monitor either.

 

[Duxuk]

When you get it warmed up a little (18-20C) you could always insulate it with a sleeping bag/ blanket/ duvet to keep the temp. as even as poss.
Another way to get fruitier is to use some of the other American hops. I've liked cascade but also Amarillo and Chinook. Fruitiest of all I've tried is Citra. You can get some gorgeous marmalade flavour by combining with the right level of bitterness.
Your brew will mellow in terms of bitterness by the time you come to drink it :drink:

 

[Strongarm]

I've moved it into the hall as back bedroom being stubbornly cold. Will get a duvet on it once it's warmer.

I aim to do a few single hop brews to start off with and those were the names I had in mind as a suck for the American IPAs. So saying have pack of Nelson Sauvin to use first, but think they're fruity numbers too.

 

[Strongarm]

Checked this morning and the brew is more like 18C-20C now it's in the hallway with a towel on.

Looking at it the krausen has died down a bit. Is this normal after 3 days since pitching? Loath to take SG readings just yet as it's only a diddy batch so want to leave as much for drinking as possible, plus I promised myself I wouldn't touch it for a week as an exercise in homebrew patience.

Cheers

 

[Strongarm]

Reading around this short-lived krausen seems pretty normal behaviour for S-04 yeast (and the yeast cake is already pretty big) so I'll hold off on an SG reading for a day or two more.

I know I read everywhere that you should leave for ages in the primary, but as my first brew not sure I've got a month of waiting, then another 3 weeks of bottle conditioning, in me. It's good for me to know what a couple of weeks in the primary tastes like anyway, right, so when I start leaving it in there for longer I can detect the affect it has. That's what I'm telling myself anyway. So if I get a couple of days of stable SG readings this weekend I'll chuck my dry hops in and give it another week before bottling.

 

[Strongarm]

The waiting game got to me so I've taken a ]n SG reading and it's down at 1.012, so I assume no worry that the yeast didnt work.

That does leave it at a rather punchy 6.6%, a little higher than I was hoping but no biggie.

Will try again Sunday and assuming it is stable I'll get the dry hops in.

Even without the dry hops and fizz it tastes pretty nice as well, nice and bitter, and the colour looks a look nicer in the tube than it does in the FV

 

[Strongarm]

The dry hops (30gr Cascade) have been in a couple of days now and couldn't resist having a sniff last night. It smells amazing. Cant wait to try it, although have come to realisation that homebrewing is a waiting game.

I dry hopped in a sanitised nylon mesh bag which has meant everything is floating on top, hopefully not too much of a hindrance to getting that amazing aroma into the beer.

 

[Strongarm]

Looks like it's finishing on 1.010 SG (and it's damn tasty too, even straight from the FV, dry hopping really sorted it out). Online calculators were suggesting it would finish on 1.017.

What happens to make it overshoot this estimate, especially when estimated OG was 1.061 but measured was 1.062?

 

[Asalpaws]

Quite a lot affects the FG but the most important factors IMO are yeast strain and mash temp. The lower you mash with AG brewing the more fermentable the wort, not sure how it goes with extract, adjuncts like sugar also lower the FG. Try a Saison yeast some time FG of 1.002 not unusual! T

 

[RobWalker]

a difference of 0.001 at the top end is quite a respectable reading imo :p you don't get things bang on with home brewing, and I would say your amount of fermentable sugar depends on what temp the company who make the extract mash at - assuming they use a normal mashing procedure. That's also why you're not likely to get a high FG with extract - it's probably designed to be economical for the company making it, so I assume they would push for as much sugar as possible in production, not mash higher which creates non fermentable sugars, which will in turn higher your FG. one of the benefits of all grain or partial mash is being able to control that!

i'm glad to hear you've had some success with your brewing, it sounds like a really tasty beer! I think you're right to only boil for 30 mins at that volume too - another 30 would boil off loads of wort.

 

[Strongarm]

Cheers. So much still to learn.

The recipe I based mine on had a mere 15 minute boil. I had in my head (from researching some beers I like) that I wanted more IBUs though and to get them with a 15 min boil was going to be very expensive on the hop bill. The short boil helpful when you've got 2 kids under 2 as well. Free time definitely very limited. Kids also mean I can see myself refraining from AG for a while, as tempting as it is.

I'm going to repeat with US-05 so will see how that affects the FG, and taste.

Does the FG affect the maltiness of the beer or are only the fermentable sugars affected?

 

[Sly Fox]

I just float the sterilised hydrometer in the bucket. No more risk of contamination than if you use a baster to remove a sample.

 

[Strongarm]

I just float the sterilised hydrometer in the bucket. No more risk of contamination than if you use a baster to remove a sample.

My FV has a tap so very easy to take a sample to check the SG.

I bottled this up yesterday, managed to get 21 500ml bottles out of it. Not the cheapest brew per bottle as must be over £20 of ingredients in it but it is tasty (nice and bitter and lots of flavour from the dry hopping) but assuming nothing goes awry during bottle conditioning I'll be very happy with it.

There were some Coopers carbonation drops in the kit so stuck 1.5 of them in each bottle and it's now sat at about 18-20 degrees. The combination of some Star San, the bottling wand on the Coopers FV and the PET bottles made for a very easy going bottling session.

I need a load more bottles though (hoping to get next brew on the go tonight, some kind of Citra light ale using the Coopers lager kit as the base) and they will be Wilkos glass ones, so probably a little more effort come bottling.

 

[Strongarm]

Couldn't resist cracking one of these open a mere 6 days after bottling. Assumed it would be 'young' and flat but thought I should learn what 'young' tasted like. There was no head but there was some fizz on the tongue. Still not sure I know what 'young' is though as it was really tasty. Nice thick mouthfeel, good bit of citrus from the hops and a nice bit of malt. Was really surprised as if I ordered a beer in the local and it tasted like that I'd be more than happy.

Hopefully the carbonation will be sorted by next Saturday as I have some friends coming around and want to try it out on them.

 

[Duxuk]

It will improve. More fizz and a cleaner flavour with much less dirty taste to mask the freshness of the hops. Extract does cost more than AG but used to take me less than half the time. Quality was good. I managed to make beers which were, in my opinion (which is what counts), better than the best bottled beers in the supermarket...............even Oakhams Citra and Williams Joker IPA.