If you were me ...

[jondi11]

Hi, I have recently acquired a load of beer making ingredients and equipment. I only just started home brew beer making, well I started a beer kit 2 days ago, so i don't no a lot.
What I was wondering was what should I do to use ingredients I have to make a trial batch of 10 litres. Never used dry grain before.
here are my ingredients :
100g Challenger hops
100g Goldings hops
100g hops unsure of type.
2 x 6g muntons premium gold yeast
Nutrient
600g Biscuit malt
300g Crystal malt
410g Whole pale malt
100g Gypsum
100g Juniper berries (vac packed)

Any instructions and ratios very welcome . What kind of ale would theses ingredients make?

 

[clibit]

You have the ingredients to make a typical English ale. Except there's not enough pale malt. And with no experience or equipment, you really need to avoid all grain brewing for now. Get some malt extract, either dried or a tin of liquid, and make an extract beer. You can use the stuff you have got, plus the extract. You need a stockpot or a very large pan, and a thermometer, and something to ferment the beer in.

 

[jondi11]

I have a bit of equipment, just made a kit beer. How much pale malt would I need for 10ltr batch? Would like to at least give it a try,that's why it would be a trial 10ltr.

 

[clibit]

About 2kg. Are you going to mash the grains in a bag?

 

[jondi11]

I have bag, not sure what's the best way to go,also I have a large cooking pot, If I was to use malt extract how would I do this?

 

[clibit]

If you use only grain you soak about 2kg of grain in 5-6 litres of water at about 65C for an hour and then rinse the grains in hotter water (75-80C) and combine the two amounts of brown liquid in the pot and boil for one hour, adding hops at various stages, cool, and pitch yeast.

If you do a malt extract brew, you fill your pot with water and put a bag of specialty grains in it (you could use some biscuit and crystal), heat the water and remove the bag at 70C and then continue to boiling point, and boil for one hour from that point, adding hops at various stages.

Sounds the same, but the extract method is much more foolproof and involves only a small amount of grain. The all grain method requires effective extraction of sugars from the grain. It's not hard, but not a bad idea to do an extract brew first.

Use about 100 grams of biscuit and 100 grams of crystal in a 10 litre batch. Challenger and Goldings work well together. Add half a teaspoon gypsum at the start of the boil.

 

[Duxuk]

I'd check the date on the yeast sachets to make sure it's not too old. Yeast deteriorates over time so it may not give a healthy start to your fermentation. I too would recommend an extract brew. The quality can be right up there with the best but you do have less control. Another way to do the grains in small quantities is to turn your oven on very low, find the stting which gives you 65 degrees (ish) and put the pan with water at that temperature in the oven for an hour. You can then sieve or strain the juices out into your bigger pan, add more water and your extract then boil and add the hops. Look at recipes posted on the forum to get the feel for hopping. Beware, you are only brewing 10l, not the 23l that many recipes are.:thumb:

 

[jondi11]

what would be a good malt extract to use? also would grain need to be crushed?
Also noticed the colour of the hops are starting to turn brown should these be thrown and get new?

 

[clibit]

Any light/pale extract, liquid or dried. Dried is more concentrated than liquid so you need less. Get a 1.5kg can of liquid malt, maybe Coopers Light, or 1.2kg of light dried malt extract would give the same strength. About 4.4% in 10 litres.

If the hops are loose in a bag and going brown I would get new ones. Why spoil the brew? You want nice green resiny hops. Agree about the yeast too, check the date, and store it in the fridge. Hops in the freezer.

 

[jondi11]

after close inspection most grain and hops are out of date, also yeast is a month out of date too, so may not bother going down this route for the time being. cheers for the reply's all.

 

[Duxuk]

We throw a third of the food we buy away! I'm sure one of the main reasons is due to best before dates. The grain can probably stand to be a bit long in the tooth, but as above, the hops need to be fresh and even more so, the yeast needs to be in the flush of youth, or you're likely to get a lethargic fermentation which is more likey to allow other problems to get in.