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...

[Ally Mcg]

I've read or heard that dry hopping at cooler temps (cold conditioning temps rather than lager fermentation temps) can lead to the hops giving a bit of a vegetal character so I always dry hop at >18c. Not sure what rules you should apply for a lager.

There are probably quite a few people on here who know a whole lot more about dry hopping and should be able to give you a definative answer tho

[JoKing]

I'd dry hop finished lager with lower amounts of hops than what I'd dry hop most Ales with. I probably wouldn't go over 25g in a beer that's between 1.040 and 1.050.

Normally, Ales have a lot of residual sweetness in the beer. I believe that it is this amount of sweetness that carries the types of flavours that you get with dry hopping. For lagers - I assume that the purpose of dry hopping is to help exaggerate the "freshness" of the beer - and to not make a point of dry hopping (or showcase it as it were).

In this case, I'd get the beer relatively bright first and put the dry hops in without any yeast in the bottom of your secondary 18 degrees for a week will be plenty. I'd then keg it - by means of bulk priming. This way the remaining yeast will scavenge the oxygen you have introduced by dry hopping henceforth delaying the oxidation which is inherently inevitable from this process.

[David Wood]

Dry hop the hell out of it and see what happens :-P

[jt]

Well I thought I'd dry hopped the last one I did, but that was 104 batches ago and ithout looking at the notes my memory was a little hazy - so I dry hopped 20gm mot in 24 litres and I'll keg it after 5 days - Thursday

[jt]

Kegged & bottled tonight & I was very surprised how sweet this was with the 4% caramalt (ok, 10% Munich I as well) considering the attenuation, 1040 to 1007 - maybe it's the yeast - any comment - I haven't used it before ?

Plenty of hop character (floaties) which'll come through in the bottles which were filled last.
I gassed it up and it's waiting for me to finish the last few pints of mild before it's fair game

cheers, jt

[Dougal]

Doing an American pilsener tomorrow with a mate, but the recipe calls for 1 kilo of flaked maize. I don't have any so I'm using polenta, but what do I do with it?
Should I boil it first or do I have to do a proper cereal mash?

Opinions please.....

[James P]

Two ways I have done it, where to cook it and the add it to the mash, do a 'cereal mash' of 300gm pilsner malt + 1kg of polenta at 67'C for 30 min, then add to your main mash for the remainder of the time.

[Dougal]

Cool. I'll give the boiling a go.

[Matthew]

Chaps, just working on a Saison at the mo and would appreciate some feedback on the malt. I want to make the most of trying some the belgian malts Liberty has so this how I'm currently sitting:

Pale 81.40 %
Munich I 6.98 %
Wheat Malt 5.81 %
Aromatic Malt 3.49 %
Special B Malt 2.33 %

I have all homegrown smoothcone for hops but I'll finalise that once I have a better idea of the malt.

[jt]

I've got no idea on Saisons, sorry chap.

But I do have a question myself. brother Bob turned up the other day with his brewing ingredients, can't take them with him. Most things are straight forward, but I now have 70gm of 4.5% tetnanger to brew with.

I was thinking I'd stretch to repitch #3 with the 34/70, but how to use those hops ?
I have Motueka, Green Bullet, Super Alpha, NZ Hallertau, Pacific Hallertau, Cascade to partner them.

I was thinking a healthy bittering addition of GB or SA and then split the tetnang between 20 or 15 and 10 or 5 or 1

Or maybe they'd go great as a flame out in an pale ?

Opinions ?

[Ally Mcg]

Never used Tetnanger but if they were mine I'd go 20IBU at 60 with the SA, then Tetnang at 10 and at FO to see what it comes out like. Maybe one of the lager brewers on here (crabbies and james p) might be able to advise better than me.

[Nick T]

The proportions are about the same as the recipe out of BCS, however it uses Pilsner malt, not Pale. Mosher's book also uses Pilsner malt, but at 55% with the Munich upped to 25%.