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

[Grant R Baker]

Give it a go... 

 If you want darker then replace the Munich with Caramunich or Crystal 60 - its darker with a bit more malty caramel flavour.

 

I'll be interested to hear how your hops go.

[Tonz]

Ok will keep you posted. Ive had to up the hops to cover all the malt, do you think it will be outta balance? Already brought grain so plan to put down in the next couple of days.

[Grant R Baker]

It looks very hoppy.

40grams of Green Bullet at 60mins  = 57.4 IBU

15grams of Hallertau at 15mins = 6.4 IBU

So you will have a beer over 60 IBUs... that's pretty high. Depends what "Hoppy" lager you are after, bitter, flavour or armoa (or combination).

 

Quick Guide - Bittering Hops at 60mins (adds onyl a small amount of hops flavour). Flavour hops at 20-15mins (add bittering & aroma as well). Armoa hops at 5-0mins (almost no extra bittering comes from these).

[Haish]

Not to mention the bittering that will already be in the kit, probably 20-30 IBU.

I'd scale back the bittering addition and look to add the majority of your additional IBU with the 15 min addition. Look to add about 1g/L at 15 (10 IBU) and 2g/L at 0. This would give you around 30-40 IBU with no bittering addition. You could easily take out the dextrose too and wind up with a pretty tasty beer, but it sounds like your after a bit more alcohol :)

[Tonz]

Care to comment ?

Ive changed my recipe (see below) around and discarded the Kit Beer as I over compensated the hopping to tone down the sweetness.

 

1.5 kg  LME

1.5kg  dextrose

1.5kg  Maris Otter

.5kg Munich T1

Mash @ 66 *C  60mins

 

Kettle Additions:

20g Green Bullet 10.9%   60mins

10g Hallertau 6.9%  15 mins

Heaped Tspn Irish Moss  10 mins

10g Hallertau 6.9%  5mins

 

Saflager S/23 yeast

 

OG 1.060    FG 1.009    6.6% ABV

IBU 29.8      SRM / EBC 4.8 / 9.5

 

Anyone to comment  if this recipe is balanced or is it leaning one way to being either too bitter or sweet.

 

 

 

 

 

[Tonz]

I created my recipe on Hopville and have now checked out BrewMate. On my just posted new recipe there was 9.1 IBU difference alone. Any idea which website is more realistic?

Also as mentioned by haish I didnt take the Kit beer into account when adding bittering hops.

Love to hear your comment on my new recipe :)

[Kelly Milligan]

Looks good Tonz! Glad we were able to pull you away from that kit ;p The hopville calculator uses the Tinseth formula by default for calculating IBU's, while BrewMate maybe uses Rager's or a different one. These calculations are really just loose estimates at IBU's though as there are so many real factors in the bittering utilization. It's tricky to say which one will be more accurate, but what's important is getting into the habit of using the same formula each time. That way you can adjust bittering additions up or down the next time you brew :)

[Scarrfie]

I will third the advice given. I did a stout on top of a coopers kit and used 15g of green bullet, which was about right and that had a 750g of crystal. I then used 30g for a porter and that took sixth months or more for the bitterness to fade to be drinkable. Coopers Lager is around 20ibu for the kit.

[Grant R Baker]

Tonz.. new recipe looks pretty good. I think you will enjoy the result of that one better.

 

As Kelly pointed out the differences in each recipe software is to be expected. Basically I know what 30IBUs (from BrewMate) tastes like and will base my target IBU number for a new beer on previous experience.

Another freebie is BrewTarget... not as easy to use as BrewMate but has most of the bells and whistles.

 

Don't waste the kit.. just make it up and add a small amount (200gr) of steeped Carahell or Caramunich (steeped for 60minutes in 1 litre of 67C water) and make a small teabag of hops to the fermenter.  It just punch up the Kit.

[Sam]

Just brewed a robust porter (BCS standard)... It's been a long while since I've brewed a dark beer. Everything hit spot on. I adjusted the grain bill to eat up a few leftover base malts I had lying around - Malteurop Pale Ale, Weyermann Pils. 

Since I had finished brewing one beer, I brewed two. Went for a Tripel (also based off the recipe in BCS), the first time I've tried to brew one. I calculated my pH would come out a bit high due to the light malt being used, but there was nothing I could do about (I must get some acidulated malt, or some acid..) Efficiency went down, and I missed my target 9.6% ABV by a whole 1%. I put this in a converted fridge monitored by an STC-1000, with a 75W bulb as a heat source. I didn't want to constrain the fermentation temperature, but it's so cold at the moment, ambient temps are about 12C. 

[Ralph]

I find that mashing bigger mashes leads to a loss in efficiency if simply batch sparging etc... it might not have been so much the pH being too far out.

[Dougal]

Here's an interesting link on efficiency declines with batch-sparging. The third graph is particularly useful- if you plot your own results for different gravities you'll see a decline curve that closely follows the one on the graph. You can then use it to predict your system's efficiency for bigger beers.