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...

[JackoNZ]

After some advice on a barley wine, never done one before so I'm not sure if I need to go a bit bigger in the hop department than usual. Grain bill, I Was thinking about 90% base, 5% light crystal, 5% sugar and a touch of choc for colour. I'm not sure what light grain to use, I have carared, pale crystal, melanoiden, caramalt, caraamber and dark caramalt. Shoud I keep it simple and just use pale crystal or maybe a combo? 

 

This is only for a 10L batch as I use BIAB, when I come to do this for real I'll probably use a mash tun and go 18-20L.

 

Ugh, what's up with the formatting on here today. Can't paste the recipe in without it looking shit.

[JackoNZ]

10L Batch size

SG 1.101

IBU 97

SRM 15

 

90 min boil

 

90.5% Pale malt (Marris Otter)

4.5% Carared

4.5% Sugar

0.5% Pale Choc

 

97 IBU of Warrior at 60

50g of Ahtanum at 0

50g of Amarillo at 0

 

Planning on building up a S-05 yeast cake from an ordinary bitter for this.

[JoKing]

I'd slide those hops back to about 5 mins - maybe 10. I dont think that you'll get the most of them at flameout with that much malt. If you're really keen to have the flame out addition there, then maybe split the hops into to 10 and a zero: it's still quite a lot of late hops considering your small boil size. 

[JackoNZ]

Thanks Jo, you don't think that much hop at 10 will make it too bitter?

[JoKing]

Hell no mate. Infact, your 97IBU at 60 will actually be something more along the lines of 40 - 50 IBU. When the wort is so saturated with sugars, the other compunds that you are trying to disolve into the wort (in this case isohumulone) don't get disolved as easily. There's no real way around it, other than adding iso-hop extract to get the exact bitterness you require.

 

Anyhow... bla bla bla - it won't be too bitter. I gurantee.

[JackoNZ]

Great stuff, cheers. I'll probably go with your 10min addition then. Any thoughts on the grain bill and light crystal specs? Is Carared on it's own going to be ok with this type of beer, is 5% spec enough?

[JoKing]

5% spec is heaps when you look at it from the weight for weight persective. 5% in a 1.100 beer is the same as 10% in a 1.050 beer (there or thereabouts...) so you're going to get a load of flavour out of that addition - the same amount of flavour as you would at 10% in a 1.050 beer. That's the way I look at it.

[Stu McKinlay]

1.100 of pure maris otter would be intense enough... it'll be awesome even with a little carared in there. Nice simple grain bill.

I'd go back even further than Jo with those hops and get them in at 15min. Your young beer will be a bit dull without either a bit of hop flavour or some interesting yeast characteristic. US05 won't give you much of the latter, so get some more hop flavour in there. The extra bitterness will help lift the hop flavour through the malt too.

 

 

 

[Matthew]

Now that's the sort of advise that will get you invites to 'Hopstar' events...

[JackoNZ]

Thanks again guys, I want to age this beer for sometime to get the best out of it. From what I have read it seems like there are Barley Wines you can drink now and some that are much better left to age. I don't really know what you would change for either one though.

[denimglen]

And brew more than 10L.

 

Trust me.

20L still isn't enough, the more the better, stash 10L under the house and forget about it for a few years.

[Michael]

I am going to show some people in Miami how to make some home brew. It seems that the favourite beers for these guys are along the lines of Monteith's Pilsner, Landshark, and other lightly hopped light in colour beers.

Personally, I want to avoid using any lager yeast, as fermenting in Miami will be a constant battle against the heat. As such, what would you recommend putting down? Although they generally like lightly hopped beers, I would not mind kicking it up a little bit. Probably a beer that is very light in colour, and a somewhat flowery hop.

 

Recommendations or recipes?

 

Thanks!