What to brew on my 1st all grain brew attempt

[HomebrewDan]

Hi guys

i'm going to bite the bullet and go all grain in the near future, but am wondering where to start. I was thinking of dipping my toe in the water with a SMASH brew rather than anything to complex, but i'd be interested in hearing your opinions.

I'll drink most types of beer but I quite like the pale ales with the grapefruit bittering. what hops and malts do you recommend?

Cheers

 

[JapanBrew]

Great. You'll love it. Experiment.
SMASH is great. Shows what flavors are for those items.
Will you do BIAB or get a proper mash tun?
Basic, just use pale ale malt and I'm really bias on cascade hops. Just love them.
The yeast is s big deal as well. A s-04 ale yeast will produce more fruity flavors. S-05 is softer. But there are a ton of other great yeasts.
I would say brew small, so you can try different yeasts and hops. I've done large batch then split them and dry hopped different hops and also pitched different yeasts. It's amazing how different they are.
The biggest advice though is be careful with your mash temp. Stir the grain for a good long time and even during your mash.
After boil, make sure you get a lot of oxygen in the wort before pitching. Shake the heck out of it.
And last advice, enjoy!!!

 

[MyQul]

Id say brew a SMaSH or a Stout.

A Stout I here you say! Why would that be? Well there's a reason that the Coopers Stout is one of the most enduring and popular kits. It's because it's virtually idiot proofwith a fantastic flavour. You have to trying REALLY hard to cock that kit up and the same goes for AG stouts.
The dark grains and roastness of a stout hide a multitude of sins. Whereas with a SMaSH, they're great because they're so simple, but because of the simplicity you've got nowhere to hide if you do make a big mistake
Stouts also dont have to be complicated. You can make a dry stout from three grains (Roasted Barley, Flaked Barley and Pale malt) with only one hop type and that as just a bittering addition, no flavouring additon needed.
I don't think one is paricularly better than the other for a first AG. A stout if the complete opposite of a SMaSH as a SMaSh is hop driven, whilst a Stout is malt driven. So if I was you, I choose which one you pefer and go for it

 

[Covrich]

Hi guys

i'm going to bite the bullet and go all grain in the near future, but am wondering where to start. I was thinking of dipping my toe in the water with a SMASH brew rather than anything to complex, but i'd be interested in hearing your opinions.

I'll drink most types of beer but I quite like the pale ales with the grapefruit bittering. what hops and malts do you recommend?

Cheers

Good suggestion on smash or stout

Since you like pale ales with grapfruitiness, then maybe you should try pale malt/ maris otter and for a hop you could pick something like amarillo cascade or Centennial hop. Great stuff

 

[Godsdog]

Hanging in this thread for the coopers stout/smash/pimp recipe,Linky?

 

[CreweBrewer]

Nowt beginner-ish about brewing a SMaSH. One, if not the best brew I make is a Mosaic SMaSH. All you need for a 23L batch is 4Kg of pale malt and 100g of Mosaic hops. Beautiful grapefruity citrus flavour and aroma. Let me know if you'd like the recipe.

Dave

 

[IainM]

All you need for a 23L batch is 4Kg of pale malt and 100g of Mosaic hops. Beautiful grapefruity citrus flavour and aroma. Let me know if you'd like the recipe.

Dave

Please let me know. This sounds exactly like the sort of thing I'd like to do once I've done the AG kit that came with my boiler.

 

[Esquid]

Just drank a bottle of my first AG, which was a SMaSH MO with amarillo hop (think that's the correct spelling). Since it was the first AG I had done and because I'm doing stovetop BIAB, I'm only brewing in small quantities (about 2 gallons), and with the first effort I reckon mash temps were all over the place, I got the hopping wrong (though not drastically), and forgot the whilfloc thingy, but I thought, 2 demijohns, what the hell, ferment it out anyway. I did one gallon with US yeast, and another with UK yeast.

It's been conditioning in the bottle for 10 days or so, so it's still very "green" and rough around the edges, but the bottle I had last night although not clear (whirlfloc omission I guess), and virtually headless (though pleasantly fizzy on the tongue), was, if memory serves, at least as good as kit beer I've made in the past at full term (so 12-16 weeks in the bottle), so I'm glad I didn't ditch it. Hopefully it will mellow out a little over time if it makes it that far

I've since made two more SMaSH brews, that ostensibly are identical to the first though since I'm a little more dialled in now they will be different because I was nearer the original recipe and have got the mash temps a bit closer to ideal. They haven't made it to a bottle yet though, I'm giving them a good 2-3 weeks in primary I think.

If it's your first batch I would do smaller batches until you're more familiar with the process, thought that said malt is cheap so it's not biggie financially to ditch a big brew, but in my case it's the time spent that would annoy me.

 

[MyQul]

Hanging in this thread for the coopers stout/smash/pimp recipe,Linky?

Sorry GD linky to what? SMaSH receipe? Stout Receipe?

 

[HomebrewDan]

Nowt beginner-ish about brewing a SMaSH. One, if not the best brew I make is a Mosaic SMaSH. All you need for a 23L batch is 4Kg of pale malt and 100g of Mosaic hops. Beautiful grapefruity citrus flavour and aroma. Let me know if you'd like the recipe.

Dave

The recipe will be great thanks Dave

 

[wfr42]

I'm struggling to pace my self with my 2nd AG attempt (planning to redo it as a large batch soon).

I was aiming for 10litres but got closer to 8...

Using 2.25kg of vienna malt,
150g of caramalt
and hopped it with 40g of galaxy
(4g at 60min, 12g 10 mins to go, 12g 5mins to go and a 12g 10 min hopstand at flameout).

Good luck with whatever you go for.

 

[JapanBrew]

2.4 kg seems a tad low for 10 liters. Getting 8 is a good amount for that. I usually use 3 kg or more for 10 liters.
What was your OG?

 

[CreweBrewer]

That seems plenty enough grain to me. It does depend on your efficiencies though. For a 23L batch I'm only using 3.8kg of grain to achieve an OG of 1.046.

Dave

 

[GHW]

The recipe will be great thanks Dave

Hi Dan

This was my first ag brew and still one of my best. It's similar to what Dave's suggesting but has a bit of specialty malt in there too. It has the grapefruityness you're after, especially if you add a dry hopping, and you would have plenty of hops left over for that.


Recipe (10L):
2kg Maris otter
100g caramalt

10g centennial @60
5g centennial @15
5g cascade @ 15
Bit of Irish moss @ 15
5g centennial @ FO
5g Cascade @ FO

Yeast us-05 (you'll only need half a pack)

It'll be about 5% Abv, and not too bitter.

 

[CreweBrewer]

The recipe will be great thanks Dave

Sorry Dan. Completely missed this post! I'll PM it over in a bit.

Dave

 

[Covrich]

2.4 kg seems a tad low for 10 liters. Getting 8 is a good amount for that. I usually use 3 kg or more for 10 liters.
What was your OG?

As long as the efficiency is decent enough 2.4 should get about 5%. 3KG for 10 Liters will make a strong beer about 6.5% I would have thought

 

[wfr42]

It went from 1.052 to 1.010 and is very drinkable already.
Was based around the simple AG thread.