First couple of brews from grains

[duncans]

Hi,

Only done a kit before which hasn't finished yet and i was getting impatient, so decided to try brewing from scratch.

Fancied an IPA, and as far as I can see this is a fairly generic one. Doing small batches so i can try a few things without being literally swamped with buckets full of beer and spending a fortune on ingredients, bottles/barrels.

Without really knowing which hops, I picked 2 that I liked the description of - First gold, admiral.

Maris otter 630g and crystal(60) 70g in 1.8 l water at 65C ( give or take) for 60 mins.
Sparge with 2 x 900 ml water at 65C
Boil with hops for 50 min for 40-50 IBU
Add 4 g hops for further 10 min
Add 4 g hops at end.
Top up with water to 2.5 l and cool.
pitch 3 g Nottingham yeast at 25-30c

With the first gold OG was 1065
With the admiral OG was 1070
Fermenting at room temp over the tumble drier.

The admiral smells fantastic so looking forward to that one. Both are bubbling nicely so fingers crossed.

 

[Fil]

Sounds good, sparging with a slightly warmer liquor 75c+ should rinse off more converted sugar from the grain, but you have hit good high gravitys anyway

 

[duncans]

Cheers I'll do that. I would like to max out og for this recipe without upping the grain quantity too much, as some of the ipas out there have 7-8% abv. I have some pilgrim hops to try this weekend.

 

[mook1979]

Cheers I'll do that. I would like to max out og for this recipe without upping the grain quantity too much, as some of the ipas out there have 7-8% abv. I have some pilgrim hops to try this weekend.

I recently got loads of left over ingredients together and decided to make a small batch with a bit more of a kick. I used 1.2kg of maris otter, tiny amounts of specialty grains that I cannot recall at the moment. I added about 4 different kinds of hops at various stages, loads at the end. The colour, ABV and IBU ratings make it an Imperial IPA. I added about 300g of honey 10 minutes before the end of the boil to boost the ABV and hopefully add some character to he brew. While standing around during the boil, I noticed my wife bought oranges. I washed one, peeled a quarter of it while trying to leave the while part behind. I chucked that in as well a few minutes before the end of the boil. I recently transferred that batch to a secondary FV and it tasted really good.

After getting very good results from large batches, this small batch got me really excited about the possibilities of making something a bit different. My aim is to keep practising and end up with a strong ale, maybe a Belgian triple, maybe a barley wine for next Christmas. I would not want 40 bottles of a "knock you out" beer, so a small batch like the one you made seems perfect.