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...

[Paul Broome]

I should have added the words ... all grain ...recipe. Cheers.

[JR]

I'm sure some people had a guess at a lion red recipe a couple of years ago.. it may even be in this thread somewhere, or perhaps on the old site.  Search and you shall find.

[Mark Meyburg]

Are you serious. I thought Waikato was bottled straight from the river. ( sorry I couldn't help myself)

[Crusader-Rob]

Haha, better than Tui, which is bottled stright from the estuary.... lol.

[Paul Broome]

Its ok, I was waiting for someone to make a comment like this.

Actually Waikato IMO is a very well made beer, delicious and well balanced.  Because it doesn't have barrow loads of hops and is comparatively light in flavour doesn't make it "river water". This type of beer is more challenging to make well than beers we are perhaps used to brewing, because like most low to medium gravity lagers, they have no where to hide any errors.

Yes, I personally rate Waikato over Tui myself.

I'm kind of over brewing malty or very hoppy beers, although I won't say altogether, and I'd like to try and replicate this beer well.

Here's where I'm headed:

90 % pils (MaltEurope)

a little Buscuit (about 200 gms) although I suspect Waikato has none, instead I think this buscuity, bready character is as much a result of LN's fermentation systems as its recipe.

a tad of Chocolate (about 30-40 gms)

a tad of dextrose. (about 250 gms)

Super Alpha 90 mins and 15 mins.

1.040 OG

1.006 FG

Mash @ 64 C for 70-80 mins.

Bohemian Wyeast 1 L. ferm @ 15 C.

Carbonation: approx x2 vols.

SRM 9-10

IBUs 23 (will settle around 18 after a few weeks in the bottle)

Thats about as close as I can get with the "research" I've done. Sounds simple but I'll bet it will need tweaking after the first batch, and probably the second and third.

[Grant R Baker]

I am going to +1 that. When the wife and I travel up North we struggle to find good craft beers... but we do enjoy Waikato, Kauri Draught and a few others.

 I wouldn't try to make them but when yer hot and thirsty...

[Mark Jackman]

I would guess the hops would be wakatu (nz hallertau) for most of those beers as it is nzs main hop grown and not really used in any craft...

[Crusader-Rob]

My Suggestion is more of a Cream Ale, with a touch darker malts added? probably not far away.

Good luck with the brew Paul, hope it turns out well.

[Paul Broome]

Further news on my crusade to clone Waikato Draught, for all two of you interested (in one of NZ's most popular beers); I'm experimenting with molasses at the mo.  Brewed a 2nd batch attempt at Waikato a couple of months ago using only 200 mls of molasses as a tentative taste test to see if anything crappy resulted. ( no smart comments...haha. :) ) As expected there was not much flavour detectable from the molasses. Oh, and I also included about 30gms of chocolate malt to adjust the colour, which I estimate at about SRM 13, dextrose to thin out and lighten the flavour and added also 200 belgian buscuit. 

I've since thrown out the buscuit and the chocolate malts as I suspect LN use only Malteurop pils and ... something else... possibly molasses. So this morning's batch was the third atttempt and I decided to fly pants off, go the whole hog and use 700 mls of molasses and 150 dextrose along with a mere 3 kgs Malt Europ pils.  That's it.  

Hops were NZ Green for my standard 26L batch.    Hops were NZ Green Bullet 90 mins and Perle at 15 mins.  I'm using what hops I have on hand at present until I get the malt profile sorted, then I will go with the hops that I suspect LN use which I suspect are Super Alpha (any advice from those in the know, gratefully received).

I used ditilled water plus 3gms CaCl for the mash and most of the sparge, hit my efficiency numbers bang on, then added the dex and molasses late in the boil.  The wort looks a tad dark but I may be a little previous judging that.  I will pitch Wyeast Bohemian slurry from 1500 mls of starter (stir plate) and ferment at 15 C.

[John Pagler]

Hi Guys, I have a big coffee/choc porter origonal Brix on the refractometer 18.5 in 45ltrs. Pitched 2x10gms Mangrove Jacks Newcastle Dark yeast at 20 C which shot up to 24 before I caught it, then 20C thereafter. Racked off after 13days after a pretty steady hydrometer and refractometer reading of 1032 and 10.5 Brix respectivly two days on the trot. Discrepancy between the two readings seem pretty huge to me as to convert the Brix to gravity is about 1042-1044. Repitched 5ltrs of active yeast using Mangrove Jacks West Coast Yeast and the wort appears to have achieved nothing as the readings are still 1030-31 and Brix still 10.5 using two refractometers. I know the FG is going to be quite high (Mash temp 67 C) but is 1031 too high and why the discrepancy between Hydrometer and refractometer?

Any help greatly appreciated.

Cheers, John

[Robert McLeod]

Hi John

Your OG from the Refractometer reading looks around 1.076.

Once the beer has started fermenting and producing alcohol, you need to use a conversion table to figure out is actual gravity. Alcohol content messes with the way the light refracts, so you're reading will be off (especially as you get into the higher gravity stuff)

If you're reading 10.5 on two separate refractometers then its probably a good reading.

Using 18.5 as an original Brix with 10.5 as the final Brix gives a real gravity of about 1.022. Try this calculator.

At least - thats what the interwebs told me when I had the same problem and couldn't understand the difference.

Cheers

/r

[Robert McLeod]

For more Math Geekery about how this works ... read this.

The comments section is quite interesting. The author explains many of the intricacies of the calculations he used and the rationale behind using them.

... or don't ... depends on whether you have an incessant need to know absolutely everything about something before you'll believe it ... I fit squarely in this category ... get it ... squarely ...