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...

[Grant R Baker]

Looks okay... I would hop a little extra earlier and leave the 30 minutes hops to 20 min... and Riwaka works nicely as a bittering base.

Trouble with bookie is it is sometimes too plain... maybe better to wow some or lose some. my2cents.

[Peter Smith]

I have a biab setup check out my photos , I normally brew 21 L but sometimes larger,  I have a smaller pot inside the larger one with holes in the bottom, so I normally mash in with about 15L and I stir every so often, I add heat twice as its hard to stop too much loss.   Then I lift small pot up, put a screen between them and sparge through the smaller pot to bring up to about the 28L mark then boil I lose maybe 3L and then chill etc.

I have a sight tube,  now the amount of water for mash in depends on the gain bill size as I can only lower the smaller pot in so far due to elements etc.

The first biab is learning volumes make really good notes and on 3rd attempt you will nail it.   BIAB produces a lot of cold break, use koppafloc AND expect wastage at bottom or a lot of break in your fermenter.

if I was aiming for say 1.055 OG I would need to up the grain bill so that the Maris otter was about another 1 kg more, just my milage, yours may vary, how long is your boil?  

looks a nice drop

[Peter Church]

Thanks for the feedback.. downloaded beersmith now too so a little more knowledge maybe. Plan to modified the original plan now, going to up the grain bill by .5-1kg and hop earlier. 

[Peter Smith]

I often brew with 5.8-6.2kg bill   makes a bigger mash my efficiency was even LOWER before I started to do sparge, there is a lot written on the web about no sparge biab,   I get better numbers witht he sparge,  I boil a kettle to about 74C and pour that in zig zag SLOWLY through the grains ,    a bed forms well and it dribbles through, then rewarm another kettle up,   no where near as good as decent container and constant pour of water but it works for me.    I have done about 6 brews this way, results are ok, bad result due to bad recipe,    I def think  60 min boil and add the bittering hops right at the start works for me, the worst recipe i "modified" was to move to many hops to late addition and end up with too sweat a beer.   

The very first beer i did was ment to be a Guinness clone, tasted more like Pot Kettle Black from Yeastie Boys...   never mind that tastes great, brewing a milk stout as soon as i sort out new burner.

You just have to go for it, beer smith is v good for volumes etc, have a bit of spare water warmed to the sparge temp as you mash in, just in case

[Tilt]

If you want to do a nice attempt at a Bookie then this one is doing the rounds at the moment - its a beauty and sure to please the crowds.  With an English yeast its even better.  I'm not familiar with BIAB so I'd say stay with the other advice to adapt it to your process.

[Grant R Baker]

Yeah that is a nice one... starting at 28IBUs gives it enough to be interesting... and the steeped malt profile is cool too.

[Hamish Jones]

Just doing a bit of cleaning up of the brew area and realised I have about 12 unopened hop varieties I need to get using, was thinking about a NZ pale ale sort of thing, I have Pacifica, Pacific Gem and southern cross, Wai-iti and riwaka what's a good hopping combo to use these in as I have only used Wai-iti before and had n experience with the others?

[Mark Jackman]

I love southern cross both early and late, pac gem Im not so sure would work in a nzpa, all the rest are good. If you wabt tonuse them up Id start with pac gem @60, then up to you for later. I have an article on my site www.beergeek.co.nz/nz-hops.html with descriptions of the hops and my experiences.

[Hamish Jones]

Good article Mark, I am with you on the Nelson Sauvin as my palate gives up after a few sips and it takes to long to drink the beer, what about something like this

4.700 kg GladField Pale Ale (6.0 SRM)                  85.8 %
0.500 kg Gladfield Munich (15.6 SRM)                   9.1 %
0.200 kg Caramel/Crystal Malt - 60L (60.0 SRM)   3.6 %
0.080 kg Caraaroma (130.0 SRM)                          1.5 %
10.000 g Pacific Gem [14.90 %] - Boil 60.0 min      14.6 IBUs
15.000 g Pacifica [5.60 %] - Boil 15.0 min               4.1 IBUs
15.000 g Riwaka [5.80 %] - Boil 15.0 min                4.2 IBUs
25.000 g Pacifica [5.60 %] - Boil 10.0 min               5.0 IBUs
25.000 g Riwaka [5.80 %] - Boil 10.0 min                5.1 IBUs
10.000 g Pacifica [5.80 %] - Boil 5.0 min                 1.1 IBUs
10.000 g Riwaka [5.80 %] - Boil 5.0 min                  1.1 IBUs

[Grant R Baker]

Cool info... I'm bookmarking that one. Thanks

[Peter Smith]

I was recently at Deep Creek Brewing and tried the house IPA, has anyone here tried this beer and could estimate a recipe.

[Paul Broome]

I'm solliciting a (the) recipe for Waikato Draught. If anyone has successfully cloned this beer and would care to share ...

I have a few ideas as to whats in it, but I'm interested in what others have to say.

Also interested if anyone has done beers such as Tui IPA, Lion Red etc. etc.

Paul.