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...

[denimglen]

Can't comment on the recipe itself as I haven't done many bitters but if you use US-05 you may want to up your mash temp a couple of degrees as it attenuates pretty well.

[Steve Baker]

I was going to aim for about 68deg mash.

[denimglen]

67 - 68 worked out for me with 1968, could even go a touch higher with US05, but 68 would be a good starting point.

[Matthew]

At this stage I'll be doing a Hefeweizen next. In the past I've found Hefe's and Wit's a bit boring so I've decided to go a little oustide the BJCP box with this one. It's a combo of a fairly standard hefe recipe and one I stumbled across on HomeBrewTalk.

Bloody Hefe

20L
50% Pale malt
50% Malted wheat
30gm Pacifica @ 60 (16 IBU)
20gm Pacifica @ 10 (3.9 IBU)
Zest and flesh of 4 Blood Oranges
Zest of 1 Lemon
1tsp Coriander

T-58

The fruit zest and orange flesh (no pith) is placed in a hop bag and boiled in 2L of water for approx 10-15min (could change at the time depending on how well the citrus oils are extracted)
The water and and fruit hop bag will be added to the fermenter.

I've seen a lot of recipes have either malted or unmalted wheat. Can some one fill me in on the difference (apart from the fact one is malted ;-) I'll be using BIAB if that makes any difference. From what I gather unmalted is harder to work with?

Cheers

[Karle]

I don't have any experience using unmalted wheat (in fact, I usually get stuck mashes when I use any wheat at all), but I'm still interested in this. One day I will have a good mash tun!

Anyway, I found this on unmalted vs. malted wheat.

Your recipe looks very interesting, I'll have to give that a go once I've managed to make my first 'normal' Weizen.

[Matthew]

Cheers Karle, that info was exactly what I was after. I'll stick with malted wheat for this one. I'm using BIAB so it'll make it a little easier to work with the wheat.
Now I just need to find some blood red oranges...

[Matthew]

Hopefully brewing this labour weekend. I'm thinking about using Koelsch malt for the pale. Can I get some feedback from those who have used Koelsch, what did you think of it? Given it's a hefe, I don't want the malt to dominate too much - mind you the amount of citrus going in this puppy it might just need it :P

Haven't been able to source the blood red oranges yet (I'll try moore wilsons this weekend)

[Mike Neilson]

Trust me, I have a Hefe in the keg at the moment brewed with 60/40 Global Wheat and Kolsch and it is fucken superb if I do say so myself!! I believe you do want a bit of malt character with Hefes, Remember Schnider Weiss is 60/40 Wheat Munich, Also That amount of citrus is going to give the beer some wicked tartness if its flavour you want from the orange maybee a touch of Carbonate could help? other wise full steam ahead!!

[Matthew]

Aye aye Capt'n!

So 60% Kolsch or 60% Wheat?

[Matthew]

Oh, and what would you use for a carbonate?

[JoKing]

60% Wheat - and it's a beautiful beer: I was really impressed. If you use some acid in your mash (lactic acid / tartaric / citric) and mash at 4.9pH - the beer pH will be very low giving the exact same effect as adding the blood orange into the fermenter

Infact, it might be a better idea to add the flesh of your orange into your strike water to pull the pH down. Then later on in the boil - chuck the skins in.

Heaps of ways you can do it... brewing is experimanting.

[Mike Neilson]

+1 for Jokings comments.