help with first brew

[robsan77]

Hi all.

This week I will be doing my first brew! :party:

I am not sure what is best so would like some advice and help with recipe quantities (I'm afraid I dont realy get the calculations needed yet)

I have delivered:
4 kg maris otter
1kg tor wheat
1kg caramalt

EKG hops
Fuggles hops
First Gold hops.

s-04 yeast
nottingham yeast

here is the plan:
I want to do 1 mash of 23ltrs then split the wort into 4 saucepans. Each of these saucepans I can then hop differently so that come tasting I can get a good idea of what hops do what for future brews. Sound like a good idea?

My personal taste is for golden pale beers with nice hoppiness and I like em sweet but with a dryish finish making you want to come back for more each mouthful.

My question is; if you had these ingredients and were going to do 4 different hop batches, what would you do? It seems I have a lot of possible combinations but I dont want to waste what I have.

 

[robsan77]

the mash i want to do is for a 20 ltr brew (4 lots of 5 ltrs):

3500 maris otter
175 caramalt
50 wheat

want to keep it light golden and a bit sweet. Does this look ok?

 

[tubby_shaw]

That looks OK to me :thumb:
If you are looking for residual sweetness maybe up the caramalt to 250g and mash at 68C
Be aware though that you will loose a lot of volume in the boil if you are boiling 5 litre batches, so be prepared to keep topping up from a kettle of boiling water
As to hop choice, do 3 batches with single hops to give you an idea of what each hop contributes, use the recipe calculator tool in the top left to calculate an addition to give 30 IBU, for the last one do a classic Fuggle bittered and Golding late hopped combo

 

[robsan77]

thanks, that is actually close to what I was thinking. Lets see what happens tomorrow! I will of course add some brew porn to keep everyone happy