Recipe Advice Thread

[denimglen]

Thought it might be handy to have a thread for some of the more advanced brewers to give some advice on recipes.

Let's see how it goes eh...

[Scarrfie]

I hope this pops up in the right place in the thread:-)

I bottled my Guava beer today and it is shaping up to be one of those beers that you would do again. Complex, dry, refreshing with the tannins and guava adding another dimension to the beer. it is going to be nice when carbonated and chilled. This was only 2Kg of Guava but I took the advice from here and transferred after 4 days to secondary. Pacific Jade and Motueka 50/50 to 40IBU works very well and might go into a pale ale at some stage.

Grist was 67% Malteurope PIlsen, 28% Plain flour, with a splash of Carapils and home dry toasted malt. Fermented with W34-70 to 4.8%

[Kelly Milligan]

Can't wait to try this one Jason! awesome. How'd the colour turn out? Any issues with lautering while using plain flour? 

[Scarrfie]

  The colour would be best described as muddy. Lol. Perhaps earthly might sound a bit more pretentious :-) The raw wheat means it probably won't clear totally but once carbonated and chucked in the fridge for a few days I might come up alright.

  Lautering is okay with my modified BIAB method, might be a bit tricky using the grain as the filter though. I backed the wheat percentage back from about 45% from last years efforts and this helped. It hangs in the bag a little longer than straight malt, but is isn't a problem. Using Hopville the final figure was 85% efficiency!

[Dan]

Im going to do my first A.G Bohemian Pilsner this weekend. I live in Welly and my water is from the Te Marua supply. This water looks very soft to me and probably as close to Pilsen water as its going to get for NZ treated tap water. I was thinking of adding a tsp of gypsum to the mash to boost the calcium to just over 50 and lower the mash PH to about 5.7 (room temp) . This will harden the profile slightly, making it less like the Pilsen water, but also bring the water  profile into the recommended range (ex John Palmer) for Ca and SO4 and drop the mash PH slightly. What have others done when using Te Marua water to brew AG lagers/ pilsners???

[Dan]

Also, not sure if I want to raise the S04 above 50 for a pilsner?? To get the Ca to 50 my SO4 will end up at about 80. Too high for a pilsner, where softer hoppy notes are required??

[Scarrfie]

Hey Dan,

I found this a helpful tool for calculating water additions. Although to be honest I have not really noticed a big difference between unmodified tank water when I have forgotten the additions.

[Dan]

Thanks Scarrfie, I used this one as well. Just not sure whether modifying the water  for a pilsner would have a negative affect, given Wellington water seems to have a pretty low Ion count, similar to Pilsen. John Palmer suggests min Ca ion count of 50 but this is well above pilsen water profile.

As you say,probably wont notice it any way so maybe Ill do two, one with and one without,cheers

[Richard Deeble]

Use Calcium Chloride rather than Gypsum. That way you only add chloride ions which will keep it tasting fairly soft. Apparently many German brewers don't worry much about the CL:S04 ratio but just try and keep the sulfates low.

[Kelly Milligan]

Gidday!

I'm planning a Coffee-Chilli-Porter with Chris from Hopful Thinking, it's pure 'Trifection', 3 things (Coffee, Chilli, and Beer) that it seems many beer connoisseurs thoroughly enjoy.

My question is what methods and quantitys to use both the Coffee and Chilli. I want to use whole beans, and I've got dried Birds-eye chillies to use. At this stage, the idea will be to Dry-Bean & Dry-Chilli the keg before racking. The Coffee will be removed after 24 hours, and the Chilli after maybe 48hours. I don't want to get that kinda green-capcicum flavour from the coffee which you tend to get when it's steeped for too long so only letting it sit for 24 hours. Are there any contamination concerns with these ingredients? I know the capsicin (SP) in Chilli acts as a very good ward for bacteria, and the coffee's roasting process may sterilise it, but not 100% sure. The chilli will mainly add heat rather than flavour, as the deep roast of the porter will likely overshadow the subtlety of the chillies. 

EDIT: I should mention, doing a ~10L batch as a test run the first time through, so please base your quantity suggestions on this :) I'm thinking 150g coffee beans, 20g dried chilli. 

Any help greatly appreciated! Will post up the recipe we settle on once it's in final cut.

Brew Strong,

K

[Hillman]

Hi there,

I've thought a lot about the dried chili question, as I had planned to make a mole beer last year. I don't think that putting it in the keg would have all that much effect. Maybe adding them to the boil would be more effective. Perhaps a couple of peppers fifteen or twenty minutes before flameout. Alternatively you could boil them in water to make a tea to add at any point, or extract the flavour into vodka and add that. Also, I personally think you should be conservative with the chili additions. When we experimented with this last year, what doesn't seem all that spicy when in food was unpalatable as a drink. In terms of flavour, if you got hold of some chipotle peppers you could probably extract a decent smoke dimension from them.

[David Wood]

Hi  I have made many chilli beers and have blown the heads of many a frend.  In a 28 L brew i used 3 habaneros and 3 long red chillis and the were missing in the final taste in another batch, 54 L I used 4 Bhut Jolikas and 5 dried cayenne  and I found it very hot and most people hated it. I have found the best solution is to place a chilli in the bottle, jalapinio, thai, cayenne, habenaro or bhuts if you want to scare someone. that way you can fine tune your beer to your taste with out killing a batch. I found there is little chilli taste just heat.

Dave

[Michael van Wijk]

Anyone come up with a Hopwired IPA clone? I'd love to have a go but not sure how to go about it. Would be interested in some pointers.