Will these ingrediants produce a decent lager?

[olly77]

Hi guys,

My first post! and what a great forum this appears to be - i look forward to learning a lot from the experienced folks on here and sharing my experiences. So far i have only produced some kit beers and 3 out of 4 have been rather good. I'm looking to take to the next level and want to try an extract lager.

I have a garden centre close by that has a basic range of homebrew kit. I have purchased;

Light Malt extract (dry)
Lager Malt crushed grain
Crush Crystal Malt grain

Hops; Northern Brewer Alpha 8% 113g &? Saaz Alpha 2.1% 113g and Cascade alpha acid 7.6% 100g.


Can anyone be so good as to help me get started on this path with some guidance on what the above may produce and if so what would be a good 'recipe' to follow?

Cheers!

 

[Zwickel]

Hello olly,

wow, your hops addition would be good for more than 100l beer.

Please tell us how much beer you´re aiming for and how long you´re going to boil the wort/hops.
The hops addition depends on the amount of wort and the boiling time.

What form of hops do you have? Pellets?

Cheers :

 

[Aleman]

Ok so for a lagerish brew forget the crystal

Soak 3Kg of the lager malt grain in 7L of water at 66C in a large pot . . . Put it in a warm oven to maintain the temperature.

Drain the water from the grain . . . then add another 7L, stir allow it to rest and then drain it. repeat that again.

Now add a kilo or so of the Malt extract, and stir it to dissolve.

Bring it all up to the boil and add

35g of Northern Brewer . . .allow to boil for 75 minutes . . . topping up the boiler as you go

Add 25g of Saaz and boil for a further 15 minutes . . . Turn the boiler off, and add another 20g of Saaz.

Allow to cool, then syphon off of the debris into an FV . . . top up to 22L and pitch yeast.

This si all pretty much guesswork as I don't know how much of what you have, post qtys and I can put together a better recipe.

 

[olly77]

Hi thanks for the quick reply!

I suspected that the hops would be enough for a few brews!

I am aiming for a batch of 24ltrs. i will find it difficult to boil at this level do to equipment constraints (at the moment before building up to all grain) I have a pot i could boil circa 10ltrs of wort in. I am flexible with the boiling time, from looking at other threads, around 90mins appears to be average?

My 'thoughts' were make up the 1k of light malt extract, use x amount of the crystal malt grain (i have 450g) and x amount of the lager malt crushed grain (i have 450g). from what i have read, the Saaz is the aroma hop and the cascade and norther brewer from the hoppy taste.

The hops have all came vacuum packed, they are dried whole hops i believe. As far as what to use, how much, when to add and for how long i am stumped!! :wha:

I guess it comes down to experience and this is my first stage of building upon this experience to get the principles well grounded in my head.

 

[olly77]

Aleman, thanks for that, thats a huge help already.

Just to get clear in my head, when soaking the Lager malt crushed grain, the 7ltr of water I'm draining off; do i keep this water I'm draining off to use in the boil with the hops and malt extract or disgarding thus this process of soaking and draining the grain is to set up the grain for the boil?

I hope this makes sense what i'm getting at..

cheers :

 

[Aleman]

the 7ltr of water I'm draining off; do i keep this water I'm draining off to use in the boil with the hops and malt extract

That's right . . . what you are doing by draining and rinsing is removing the sugars from the grain . . . at the end of it you throw the grain away and just use the liquid in the boil

 

[olly77]

Brilliant, makes perfect sense! Looking forward to reporting back on how it goes. thanks guys.

 

[Zwickel]

Before you´re going to add the hops, you should determine the bitterness of your beer.
The bitterness of beers is expressed in IBU (International Bittering Units)
For example, Lagers are around 20 to 28 IBU, Pilseners around 25 to 40 and up.

definition: 1 IBU = 1mg of alpha acid per liter
Alpha Acid shortly called AA

Basically there are two sorts of hops, that´s bittering hops and aroma hops.
Bittering hops are mostly hops with an alpha acid content of more than 8%
Alpha acid is the stuff that bitters the beer.

By boiling the hops, the alpha acid from the hops is going in solution, that´s called isomerized.
How much AA gets isomerized, depends on the concentration of the wort and the boiling time.

Lagers and pilseners should get boiled around 90min.
There is a formula after Glen-Tinseth that says: if you´re going to boil a wort at an OG of around 1048 for about 90min., you´ll get ~25% of the AA isomerized.

An example: take 100g hops with 10% AA, means 10g pure AA
boil it in wort for 90min., you´ll get 25% AA in solution, thats 2,5g (2500mg) isomerized AA

Remember: 1 IBU=1mg AA in 1 litre of beer
with 2500mg isomerized AA you could be bittering 100 liters of beer to 25 IBU, that would be just right for a dry lager beer.

In your case, you´re aiming for ~25l of beer, that would be just one fourth of the above mentioned amount of hops.

was that understandable?


Cheers :

 

[olly77]

Hi Zwickel,

Thanks for that note - it is understandable however will take a few times of calculating till it is embedded in me head!

So with Aleman's recipe, my Northern Brewer Hops are 8% AA. take 125g at 8% would mean 10g pure AA thereby going by your mentioned calculations would get my 25IBU lager if i take a 1/4 of the measurements for my modest 25ltr brew :grin:

I'm going to have to start writing this stuff down in a note book for quick reference!

thanks

 

[Aleman]

Olly . . . Its your first time brewing . . . forget all the technical details about formulating recipes and IBU's and AA's and BU:GU ratios, HERMS, RIMS and what not . . . . . The one thing you need to remember however is KISS . . . If you want to have a look at recipes then try Here

Let us know what equipment you have, and the quantities of the ingredients and we can come up with a recipe and a method that suits what you have.

 

[olly77]

Olly . . . Its your first time brewing . . . forget all the technical details about formulating recipes and IBU's and AA's and BU:GU ratios, HERMS, RIMS and what not . . . . .
Let us know what equipment you have, and the quantities of the ingredients and we can come up with a recipe and a method that suits what you have.

Thanks for that.

I have done 3x beer kit can brews so far and this will be my first extract brew; the equipment i have so far built up;

25ltf fermenting barrel with a bubbler and a 25ltr Fermenting tub
a 10ltr stainless steel pot
a thermometer
a hydrometer
long mixing spoon
a capper
a syphon
around 70 bottles

Ingredients i have;

1kg light malt extract
0.5kg Lager crushed malt grain
0.5kg crystal crushed grain

Hops; Northern Brewer Alpha 8% 113g & Saaz Alpha 2.1% 113g and Cascade alpha acid 7.6% 100g.

Lager Yeast

thats it I think, any and all this help much appreciated guys!!

 

[Aleman]

this will be my first extract brew; the equipment i have so far built up;

25ltf fermenting barrel with a bubbler and a 25ltr Fermenting tub
a 10ltr stainless steel pot

Ingredients i have;

1kg light malt extract
0.5kg Lager crushed malt grain
0.5kg crystal crushed grain

Hops; Northern Brewer Alpha 8% 113g & Saaz Alpha 2.1% 113g and Cascade alpha acid 7.6% 100g.

Lager Yeast

Hmmm, well with that lot you can't make a full sized 5 gallon batch . . . but that is not a problem . . . just scale down to say 10L. What I've done is to use the recipe tool to put together a simple recipe for a European Style Lager

If I was doing this I would ditch all the grain, and just use more of the Light/extra light spray malt . . . doing a mini mash with 500g of Lager malt is hardly worth anything. . . . but its fun and potentially a useful technique to play with for flavouring additions in other extract beers.

Firstly we need to remove any chlorine from your tap water. Fill your sanitised and rinsed FV with 15L of water and add 1/2 a crushed campden tablet. . . . and stir . . . rest for 2 minutes.

Now we have to convert the starch in the lager malt into sugars that the yeast can use for fermentation, and we do this by making a porridge of the grain.

Heat 1.5 litres of water from the FV to 68C, and put the grain into the water contained in a fine muslin / nylon bag (A cut of leg of a pair of clean tights works) . . . And put this in the oven at 65C. . . . . You can do this in a large saucepan . . . should be enough room.

. . Rest for 60 minutes . . . Now we have to get the sugars out of the grain porridge . . . and we do this by sparging . . .

Bring another litre of water from the FV up to 72C, then remove the saucepan from the oven . . .remove the sock of grain from the liquid in the saucepan and put it in a sieve over your 10L stockpot . . . pour the liquid from the saucepan over the grain sock . . . . then when that has drained . . . do the same with the additional Litre of water. . . . throw the sock and grain away. . . . . .

Mix the malt extract with 5L of water from the boiler (Its easier to do this while its cool) stirring until there are no big lumps . . . then add that to the stockpot, and start to bring it to the boil . . . watch out for the foam as it comes to the boil. . . . when its been boiling for a few minutes and the foam has subsided, add 15g of Northern Brewer hops, now we are going to boil these for 60 minutes to extract the bittering compounds . . . as the boil goes on you will loose liquid in the pot to evaporation . . . simply top this up with boiling water taken from the FV.

After 45 minutes of boiling add 25g of your Saaz Hops for flavour. . . . and continue to boil for the final 15 minutes.

Turn off the heat and carefully transfer the stockpot to the kitchen sink which is full of cold water . . . stand the stockpot in the cold water to try and cool things down. . . . you will have to stir the wort and replace the water in the sink . . . when its cool to about 80C add and additional 15g of Saaz hops for aroma . . . continue cooling until you are down to 25C if possible.

Using a sieve try and remove as much of the hops as possible from the stockpot . . . then give it a stir put the lid on and wait. We now need to move this into the FV so empty the FV of water (Keep some in a jug . . . you will need to top the FV up). Now syphon the cool wort into the FV allowing it to splash around to pick up some oxygen . . . . . If you keep the end of the syphon near the side of the pot you should leave a lot of gunk behind as it will have formed a cone in the middle of the stockpot.

Top up to 10L with the treated water you retained, the gravity at this point should be around 1.043 . . . If its a couple of points off you can always add a couple of hundred grams of sugar to make up the difference. Stir like blazes until your arm is tired to work up a good froth. . . . Then pitch your yeast, and give it another really good stir. . . . . As you have a lager yeast you will ideally want to ferment this cool, ideally around 15C if you can achieve that. . . . It should be finished fermenting after 10-14 days, so you can bottle it using 1/4 to a 1/2 a tsp of sugar per 500ml bottle.