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...

[James P]

Nope, only Pacific Gem, Green Bullet, Tettnanger, Hallertau (NZ and O/S), Riwaka, Czech Saaz, and a couple others.... remember I'm a lager / pilsner man so not much need for anything else although it was bred with a noble Saazer... I can see an exbeerimental coming up!

I still want to get Amarillo to try out... maybe this month??

[Reviled]

Who knows, the amarillo could be your "gateway drug" into the wonderfull world of Ales :o)

[Martin Bridges]

I'm trying to come up with a Best Bitter recipe with a decent amount of malt complexity. I'm thinking of:

75% Golden Promise
10% Munich
5% Crystal 60L
5% CaraMunich
5% Wheat

SG about 1.042, hopped to about 30 IBUs with whatever I have. Yeast will probably be Wyeast 1469 West Yorkshire Ale or the Thames Valley Ale (can't remember the number).

Any thoughts?

[Reviled]

Is there normally wheat in a bitter?? Grain bill looks good, maybe some cara-aroma would go down well?

[Martin Bridges]

I often put a small amount of wheat in. Improves head retention, allegedly. One of my more tasty bitters had some in so I keep it there!

[Reviled]

Fair enough, will freshen up the malt taste too :o)

If you want a few hundred grams of cara-aroma youre welcome to it, nice complex malty crystal malt, I got a few kgs for free of Shane Morley a few months back.. Let me know

[jt]

Yes, a bit of wheat is great. I find it can dry it out a bit, crisps it up. Can be good if you want to take the edge off a lot of crystal
Is that Caramunich 1 2 or 3 Martin ?
Thames Valley - 1275 - is an excellent yeast, love it when fermented right at the bottom of it's range, ferments really well - produced a massive krausen for me @16C which popped the lid off the fermenter and oozed yeast everywhere

[Martin Bridges]

Er, not sure what sort of CaraMunich it is. I got it off Mike a month or so back.

[Reviled]

Most probably CaraMunich II, I got it off Mike a month or so ago and it was the only one he had at the time..

[jt]

If it's cara 2 then it's not too far from the 60L crystal.
Maybe better off using some of that cara-aroma with either the cara 2 or 60L crystal
You might want to drop the amount though ?

[Reviled]

Go the cara-aroma, a heap of the aussie guys use it exclusively in all of their bitters.. Ive only used it in dark beers but allways happy with it! :o)

[Martin Bridges]

So replace either the CaraMunich or Crystal 60 with Cara-Aroma? But maybe just 100g instead of 200g?