Greg Hughes Rosemary and Vanilla IPA

[gavp1979]

Hi all. I fancy giving this a go and have ordered the malt and hops that I require but when looking more closely at the recipe (Greg Hughes Home Brew Beer pg 132) there are things that don't make sense so I thought I would post them here along with what I am planning to see if anyone has any other suggestions or it may help someone else in the future if they come accross the same issues:

• Makes 23 litres
• Estimated ABV: 4.9%
• Bitterness: 42.4 IBU

issues that I can see in the recipe:

• Calls for 8.2kg of Pilsner Malt!
  • After a bit of searching I came accross this post (https://www.thehomebrewforum.co.uk/threads/errata-greg-hughes-home-brew-beer-2019-edition.89222/) where the same issue has been spotted and 4.1kg is suggested so I will go with that
• Recipe calls for 3 lots of Chinook hop additions in the boil but they are listed as 2 different AA values, the first addition is 18.1% whereas the following 2 are 13.1%
  • The hops that I have ordered are 14.3% so I am going to assume that the 18.1 is a misprnt and was just going to add the suggested amounts at each addition
• Suggested yeast is Wyeast 3944 with a fermentation temperature as 35 degrees celcius, according to Wyeast the suggested range for this yeast is 17c - 24c (https://wyeastlab.com/product/belgian-witbier/)
  • I am actually going to use the suggested dry alternative (Fermentis WB-06) which has a suggested range of 18c - 26c so I was going to go with my usual 19c/20c fermentation
• There is a call for Citra, Rosemary and Vanilla beans 'after fermentation' but with no indication of how long to leave them
  • I have never used herbs or vanilla beans before so I was going to use my usual dry hopping schedule and leave them for 3 days

Does all of the above sound OK? or has anybody got suggestions of doing anything different, maybe someone has brewed this before and has experience?

P.s: I have not added the full recipe as it has obviously come out of a book which as far as I know is still in print so I don't want to break any copyright/forum rules

 

[Caramel Ox]

My copy must be a later imprint of the 2019 edition. Pilsner malt listed as 4.5kg.

I would say that regardless of the recipe the bittering hops are just added to get the target ibu, so the recipe listed hop % don’t matter.

I can’t get my head around how the result will be nice though…bitter, hoppy, herby.

 

[gavp1979]

My copy must be a later imprint of the 2019 edition. Pilsner malt listed as 4.5kg.

Cheers for the info, out of intrest what is the fermentation temp on your copy as that is clearly wrong on the one that I have

I can’t get my head around how the result will be nice though…bitter, hoppy, herby.

Only one way of finding out I supppose I just fancied doing something diferent so I will make it and post the results in here

 

[Caramel Ox]

My copy has 3944 at 22 degrees. I don’t think wb06 is a good substitute though, it is diastatic and will attenuate much more. Wb06 also robs a beer of other flavours. Given how much else is going on I would go neutral with the yeast.

Do you think he means dry or fresh rosemary?

 

[gavp1979]

i just went with the dried yeast option in the 'Yeasts - At a Glance' section on page 33. I am hoping to brew this week so not got much time to get anything else really will have a look if i have anything else in otherwise I might just have to go with what I have

Do you think he means dry or fresh rosemary?

I was assuming fresh sprigs, I was going to grab a few of the packets from the supermarket, they are 20g each

 

[Tanglefoot]

You could try putting the recipe into brewfather, you can adjust the grain bill
and hop additions/AA values to get the required ABV, IBU's and EBC etc.
Also lots of other interesting information and you can vary batch size.
8.2 kg seems way over, I usually make 19L using around 5kg for similar strength.

 

[gavp1979]

Cheers @Tanglefoot I have already added the recipe to Brewfather adjusted the malts to my system/batch size. I am still over on the ABV (mine is 5.6% instead of 4.9%) so I may adjust the malts down some more before brew day. My IBU is also lower but I do find that Brewfather gives hardly any IBU rating for a hop stand whereas the original recipe is much higher so accounts for some of this

 

[Caramel Ox]

Greg only has flameout hops in the book which Brewfather will interpret as having no boil contact time. This is one of the grey areas in interpretation as most people will leave all hops in and cool relatively slowly, but I have heard some people mention removing all hops immediately after the boil.

To get the software to estimate better you could enter it as a hop stand for eg 20 minutes at the average temperature using your cooling method.

 

[gavp1979]

That is what I have done, Brewfather has given 2.2 IBU, I don't have the book to hand at the minute but the IBUs for the flameout hops was more than I was getting in Brewfather

 

[samale]

Rosemary is a very strong favour, I used it in a Saison. I would definitely go easy on it, I used fresh rosemary

 

[gavp1979]

Thanks @samale, I might cut it back to 2 packets then (40g)

 

[samale]

Thanks @samale, I might cut it back to 2 packets then (40g)

I would not go anywhere near 40g.

 

[samale]

I checked through my brews. I added 5g of rosemary at flame out to a Saison. From my comments on here 5g was too much. I used fresh rosemary without the stalk

 

[gavp1979]

I checked through my brews. I added 5g of rosemary at flame out to a Saison. From my comments on here 5g was too much. I used fresh rosemary without the stalk

Well I thought I asked my wife to grab 2 packets of rosemary while she was out, she has come back with 2 basil plants and insists that's what I asked for so it might end up just being a vanilla IPA anyway

 

[starseeker]

Might be better that way

 

[gavp1979]

An update on this, I brewed it as the recipe but without the rosemary. I have got to admit that I had a couple of issues during the brew day and fermentation
- I was busy and not giving my full attention so forgot to reset the mash temperature after mashing in and ending up doing the first 20 minutes or so at my strike temperature. Surprisingly the fermentation finished lower than expected instead of higher
- During fermentation I checked Brewfather to see that my iSpindel was reading 26c, my thermowell goes all the way to the bottom of my FV and I think the trub that had settled on the bottom was insulating where my probe was say, the inkbird was reading 18c so never turned the heat belt off. Luckily this was after I think active fermentation had finished
- During kegging my floating dip tube would constantly start sucking in co2 meaning that I had to open the FV to sort it out and therefore losing my oxygen free transfer. This has never happened before in any of my transfers

After all of the above issues though I have got to say that I am pleased with the beer although I can't taste much vanilla. It has a definite wheat beer taste and will be a very refreshing beer when the sun is out (assuming it will come back to NW England at some point )

 

[Caramel Ox]

An update on this, I brewed it as the recipe but without the rosemary. I have got to admit that I had a couple of issues during the brew day and fermentation
- I was busy and not giving my full attention so forgot to reset the mash temperature after mashing in and ending up doing the first 20 minutes or so at my strike temperature. Surprisingly the fermentation finished lower than expected instead of higher
- During fermentation I checked Brewfather to see that my iSpindel was reading 26c, my thermowell goes all the way to the bottom of my FV and I think the trub that had settled on the bottom was insulating where my probe was say, the inkbird was reading 18c so never turned the heat belt off. Luckily this was after I think active fermentation had finished
- During kegging my floating dip tube would constantly start sucking in co2 meaning that I had to open the FV to sort it out and therefore losing my oxygen free transfer. This has never happened before in any of my transfers

After all of the above issues though I have got to say that I am pleased with the beer although I can't taste much vanilla. It has a definite wheat beer taste and will be a very refreshing beer when the sun is out (assuming it will come back to NW England at some point )

View attachment 99080

Could still stick a sprig of Rosemary in that

 

[gavp1979]

Could still stick a sprig of Rosemary in that

If I had any I would