What are you brewing?

[nzbrewer]

Since this is the most popular thread on the RealBeer.co.nz forum I thought I would start it here just to see what happens

[Stu McKinlay]

Yeh, I'd agree with Dan here. Dry yeast is so simple (and it is 15-20% of the price of liquid). Don't forget that Barry Hannah won homebrewer of the year and all his beers used dry yeast. It is limited in its use but if you are making English or American style ales you should be pretty fine, especially when you are working on recipes and learning (or re-learning) the art of brewing. I've been brewing all grain for a few years now. I've used dry yeast in around 90% of my beers - one or two of them have been quite drinkable. My time is so limited that it really has been the only way to go.

As for priming - I used to use table sugar (I keg now and use nothing), it's just enough for carbonation (I like my fizz at the flat end) and I've noticed no difference in flavour using anything else.

[Barry]

Yeah I use dry yeasts.
I'm firmly in the "liquid yeasts are undoubtably better, but until wyeast or white labs open a New Zealand Lab and the price drops to a reasonable figure I'll stick to dry" camp.
I brew an awful lot of English and American ales. If I change to lagers, belgians or some other funky styles I'll get liquid yeasts for them.
The results from dry yeasts with good temperature control are very very acceptable.
The last couple of beers I've brewed have gotten up into the early 20's - a porter with S05 and an ordinary bitter with S04. Neither are very good, you mentioned whiteboard marker Stu? I'm calling my porter Whiteboard Porter. Hoping a bit of time in the keg will sort it out.
Good thing the date for the NHC has been pushed out, gives me time to get them right!

[Tony]

Thanks Dan. The safale is working very well on the pale ale at the moment, I can't wait to taste it.

I am almost ready to bulk prime the Lager ( I used saflager yeast). It is down to 1.011 and has a subtle bitterness followed by a nice hopy finish. The only thing I am concerned about is the clarity? It still has a day or two to go, but it is still somewhat cloudy. I was wondering which sugar would perhaps do the better job of 'second ferment' in the primer, therefore hopefully clear it up a little? I know this isn't the prime job (excuse the pun) of the priming, but it does help somewhat, does it not?

I appreciate your input guys, thanks.

[Dan]

Im a bit confused! you say you are ready to bulk prime the lager, then second ferment in the primer!
Anyway if you want it clear you want to rack it for at least 2 months!
This is basically what I do with lagers!
-Ferment it right out, usually 10-20 days depending on the yeast, raise the temp to 15oC for 2 days, carefully move into another clean fermentor and leave it as long as I can, average 2-3 months, then bottle. It should be clear as a whistle by then.

[Edward Siddle]

as was covered in a different thread or subthread of this one, the general consensus is dextrose. i'm not sure that the type of priming sugar will affect the clarity but i do think you want a nice neutral priming sugar that won't affect the taste (unless you're trying to do something flavourwise). if it's a 20L batch, and you're bottling, i'd go for about 100g.

not sure whether you're kegging or bottling, but true clarity is unlikely to happen for a while yet, and is unlikely to ever be as crystal clear as something you get at the supermarket (others may disagree). you might also i suppose achieve it if you lager in a secondary for quite some time but mostly i find that it happens after about a month in my bottles (with lagers i let them carbonate first and then cold condition for as long as i can afford to let them take up fridge space - 3 weeks minimum).

[Edward Siddle]

unless you want to bottle straight away to free up fermentors (like i usually do), do what Dan says - he's a winner (literally) with lagers. so he knows what he's doin'

[HerrSchnapps]

So my Muntons bastard-extract-Bohemian/German Pilsner lager thing is happily bubbling away now in the bathroom at about 11-12 degrees (yay!), and I'm already working out my next brew after I rack this to secondary. Plan is to do a dry-stout (i.e Guinness), with the following recipe:

225g English Chocolate Malt
225g Roasted Barley
100g British Black Patent
3.6kg Amber LME
30-35g Pacific Gem (~14%AA) for 45 min
15g Goldings (~4%AA) for 25 min

This is kind of my own take on it from looking at a lot of recipes on the net. Not sure what yeast to use though? According to "the beer recipator" spreadsheet, it should come out with an OG of 1.051 and an IBU of 33-38...

[Edward Siddle]

ordinarily i'd suggest saf04 because my experience with dry stouts is that us05 can hollow them out a bit, but since you're using LME i'd definitely go with us05. i'd also probably drop the patent in favour of an equivalent amount of roast barley (but leave the chocolate), but that's a personal choice. it looks a good recipe.

[HerrSchnapps]

Cheers for that, I just had a look around and generally the consensus for a dry-stout is the s-05. Also would I be fine going with 1.8kg of light, and same of dark instead of all amber in order to get the right colour? As the amber looks like it'll fall short without the black patent.

[Edward Siddle]

again, personally, when i was using extract as the base of my beers, i always used light extract and built on top of it. do you not have any more than 225g roast barley, because if for example you used 325g roast barley and 225 chocolate it will definitely be dark enough. the other issue with the amber or the dark extract is that in all likelihood the extract has been made up using some crystal malt in there, and that may detract from the dryness. it won't make a bad beer though.

maybe you should just ignore all i've said and go with your first instinct: it looked fine, really!

[HerrSchnapps]

Well I haven't actually purchased anything yet, hence why I don't mind changing the recipe at all :) But yeah, I can see what you mean - and I like the idea of more roasted barley - so 350g of roasted barley and 3.6kg of light LME. Awesome, now I've got to go buy it sometime this week :D

[Tony]

Excellent, I was planning a stout for my next brew. That recipe looks somewhat close to what I had in mind. I would like to put some oats into mine. Has anyone got some good advise on how I should treat the oats- pre boil or in a bag?