Have a go at simple AG

[Dave 666]

Newcastle Brown Ale? Somewhere on my to-brew list too.

Now that is an ale that takes me back to my youth. Another to add to my list to, a list that's starting to look rather long now. Dunno about getting a second FV this week, might have to look at a third at this rate. Though as to how I can hide a third FV from the other half would be a challenge to far unless the tool shed in the back garden would conceal it seeing as that's where the excess bottles are going!.

 

[JebKerman]

I made a note of that, thanks GerritT. I'll need to get some Torrified Wheat but it is worth a try.

Geterbrewed has some in stock, no flaked wheat though


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Slid]

One kilo of ice can reduce the temperature of 10 litres of water by 8°C. The best method I used (before making an immersion chiller) was to make as much ice as possible, when boiling has finished, put pan into sink of cold water, keep water moving around sink to maximise heat transfer. When water feels warn, drain and refill. On the third fill, add your ice, this will keep the difference in temperature between the wort and the coolant constantly high, keeping the cooling rate high and gets the wort down to pitching temp.

The other thing to note is that you need to move the wort around in the pan, with a sterile spoon (different one to the spoon used in the cold water in the sink). This is also good for transferring heat out of the wort.

 

[Dave 666]

So, after 9 1\2 days in the FV, I wanted to take a hydrometer reading to see where I'm at. Only as I never had a trial jar I simply put the (sanitised) hydrometer in the FV. But its not deep enough!!!, so off to get the trial jar in a bit.

Nether the less, drew a sample all the same. A nice amber colour, no aroma much at all
(that's what I get for using just a bittering hop without adding a second for aroma) but fairly clear already. Even tastes pretty good, a very much bitter\IPA like flavour. Can't wait to bottle and try it now.

So, the second 10 litre FV and a few other basic bits bought, amazingly the other half didn't say much at all (happy days :) ) . just gotta order my grain, hops, & yeast for the next several brews and that aught to keep me going for a few months.

 

[Mungri]

So, after 9 1\2 days in the FV, I wanted to take a hydrometer reading to see where I'm at. Only as I never had a trial jar I simply put the (sanitised) hydrometer in the FV. But its not deep enough!!!, so off to get the trial jar in a bit.

Nether the less, drew a sample all the same. A nice amber colour, no aroma much at all
(that's what I get for using just a bittering hop without adding a second for aroma) but fairly clear already. Even tastes pretty good, a very much bitter\IPA like flavour. Can't wait to bottle and try it now.

So, the second 10 litre FV and a few other basic bits bought, amazingly the other half didn't say much at all (happy days :) ) . just gotta order my grain, hops, & yeast for the next several brews and that aught to keep me going for a few months.

You could still add a hop tea before bottling if you want more of a hoppy flavour. Just put hop tea into the search bar or google for plenty of instructions.

 

[Dave 666]

You could still add a hop tea before bottling if you want more of a hoppy flavour. Just put hop tea into the search bar or google for plenty of instructions.

Well as I'm not bottling until the weekend, if my order goes in today and gets delivered by weekend I might just do a hop tea.

Right, found something to take a hydrometer reading with. So, the original reading was about 1052 with a target of 1013 which would give about a 5.1 abv if I hit the target.

Yet my current reading, temperature corrected comes in at 1010, which gives a 5.6% ABV. A very good result if fermentation has finished which it does look like. First AG effort I'd have expected it to have come in a little short of the target FG not to have beat it!.

 

[Dave 666]

Well I'm doing my second AG brew today, trying to stick to 10 litres this time as that's a good size and the capacity of my second FV anyway.

Just working out some ideas, but doing a Cascade hop based brew with likely 80% Golden Promise & 20% Vienna grain. I love Cascade, one of my favourite hop based beers when I go to beer festivals. So looking forwards to working with this hop.


I should maybe have get a better selection of yeast with my grain order as I've either MJ M20, M42 or M44. Though I'll likely use the M44 even if the M20 is higher temperature tolerance.

 

[Dave 666]

Things went pretty much to plan & the results from the last AG brew got this brew volume to within just over 1 litre within the target volume after the boil. So much improvement over the last brew. And the temperature adjusted OG was 1052 against the recipe target of 1053. So again pretty much spot on. And if I hit the FG target another decent ABV of 5.16. Which is what I'm familiar with when drinking Cascade based ales. But I really want to make a more level 4.2 ABV Cascade based ale next time I think.

 

[Dunkocaster]

Yes you can divide recipes. If you divide any recipe ingredients by the number of litres the recipe makes, and multiply by the number of litres you want to make, it works.

For example, a recipe for 19 litres may call for 4200g of pale malt and 200g of Crystal. You may want to make 7 litres, so...

Divide 4200 by 19 = 221g
Multiply 221 by 7 = 1547g pale malt

Divide 200g by 19 = 10.5g
Multiply 10.5 by 7 = 73.5g Crystal

Same with the hops.

Once you start dividing the recipe or reducing the size down wont the ABV also reduce ? and if so how to off set that ? would you increase the your Grain amount slightly or add sugar to bump up ?

 

[Dave 666]

Just a quick update, bottled up after just over 3 weeks (based on info I posted on main brew makeup) Better temp control during fermentation and wow, what a difference it makes. As for just after several days bottled, by far the best of my 3 brews to date, if anything shows up the imperfections in my last 2 brews massively and I thought they were OK efforts until now. A bloody good hoppy light ale. Certainly doing this again this week to see if I can recreate and improve using a different yeast and a little tweaking with the hops. Will 100% post a detailed brew day diary of sorts. Only down side is that many bottles look to have been over primed as think a shaken up can of coke before opening and that's what opening these bottles are like. Ah well, live and learn eh.

 

[Dave 666]

Once you start dividing the recipe or reducing the size down wont the ABV also reduce ? and if so how to off set that ? would you increase the your Grain amount slightly or add sugar to bump up ?

But your ingredients to water ratio remains the same so there should be no difference in the the ABV regardless of volume weather it be a 5, 10, 20 or 50 litre brew.

 

[Delta3]

Hi all,

I saw the discussions on scaling recipes so thought I'd knock this together to help with scaling recipes that are on brewers friend.

It's password protected to stop accidental wiping of formulas. Should you need to add more rows the password is; TheHomeBrewForum

I hope it's ok that I've tried to make it look like the forums colour scheme and used the logo.

Erm there's one catch in the works though, I can't upload an excel file to here. I'm hopefully going to set up one that I can publicly share online tomorrow and will share the link.

I'm building one for WOW recipes too but that ones taking a bit more time because it's not as straight forward as I first thought lol.

 

[Delta3]

This is how it looks anyway lol

 

[Delta3]

https://1drv.ms/x/s!AuaFMfWfS4A7glenPM0P1xV5CEp3

Let me know if this works. I've set it to view at the moment so hopefully you can save it to your own PC's or phones :-)

 

[Dunkocaster]

Many Thanks Delta3, this will be really useful for me at this moment as I am just trying understand the whole concept of scaling and how it effects the brew.

 

[Delta3]

It's a pleasure :-). Does the link allow you to save a copy of the sheet?

 

[Dunkocaster]

Yes thanks

 

[Delta3]

Fantastic :-).

 

[Dunkocaster]

This AG recipe is a really great way to experiment and get to know the individual hop flavors !

 

[GerritT]

This is how it looks anyway lol

It looks good, haven't tested it yet.
But... use of the logo: you sure it's okay? aunsure.... Could be copyrighted and all.