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

[Mark Meyburg]

Wow I know that you need to have lots of yeast for pils - Do you make up the 5l from dried malt extract? 

[Peter Smith]

No I got a 28L container of extract from BC for $70,  it the cheapest way to do starters easily unless you freeze unhopped wort....  but once you have a yeast cake from first batch you are away and just pitch a decent ammount of cake...   at 10C you need a big starter and even then they are slow to take off..  you dont need a blowoff tube  8)     you discard the nasty beer from starter so you only really add about 700ml of the 5L and I run my starters at shed temp , about 20C   then cool to 10C before discarding yuck and pitching at 10C

This is my 4th larger/pils, first 2 from kits where crap first ag was ok,  have high hopes for this batch as have process nailed now

[Mark Meyburg]

Thanks - who is BC - forgive my ignorance :)

[Peter Smith]

www.brewerscoop.co.nz

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=446832705428825&set=a.3...

not mad about it as extract its out of date, but for starters its really cheap...   boil for 10mins and your away

[Mark Meyburg]

Thanks Peter - brewerscoop must be a good shop - but they have the worlds worst website / commerce site (thus I don't use them). It would be nice to see a description of what the product's actually are.  Sorry but is this the one listed as LME at about $70 or the one further down at $53.50 - guess I could just ask brewerscoop.

Great Idea about using extract though - I have used dried recently for starters and it doesn't go far.  Does it store ok?

[Peter Smith]

well once oxygen gets into it it may get a surface infection, BUT boiling for 10 mins will solve any issues imho....  you are only after the sugar!!!!

[Matthew Vincent]

For no other reason than 'experimentation' ... I'm going to try the following tomorrow -

Boil 2 cans of Coopers Lager in around 16 litres of water for about 15 minutes.

Cool rapidly (with my immersion chiiler) down to about 18'C. (Hopefully ending up with about 15 litres of wort).

Throw in 1 x sachet of rehdrated US-05 and ferment it for a couple or 3 weeks trying to keep it around the 18'C mark the whole time. (Due to my temp controlled fridge having a Dutch Pilsner & an American Lager fermenting @ around the 12'C mark I'm going to have this fermenting in a glass carboy that's in a large stainless steel pot with 16'C ish water in it).

After the couple to 3 weeks fermenting, the plan is to dryhop with 100g US Cascade (more than likely split it over 10 days, 50g for 10 days, adding the remaining 50g on day 5})

Has anyone done anything like this before? Any constructive comments?

No idea what IBU I'll end up with - it'll obviousley be pretty malty but guessing the fairly substantial dryhopping 'should' balance things out a bit??

[Aidan Curran]

What do you expect to gain by boiling the coopers kits? I don't see any benefit in boiling them. It's going to be overly bitter with 2 kits made up to 15 litres. I see dry hopping as working on the aroma to enhance the hops flavours but you don't have any flavour hops so I'm not sure if the dry hops addition would do much. I reckon you'd be better with 1 can of coopers and a can of plain extract. Boil the plain extract and split your hops between a 10min, 0min and dry hop addition.

[Peter Smith]

I tried this once with a can of coopers real ale in 10L and some sugar thinking if the og was equal to a barley wine og I might end up with a barlywine... was like cough mixture.

Assumming that the single coopers larger can has about 25 IBU in 23L of water,   then with two cans you would end up with 50IBU in 23L  but you said 15 which is more like high 60's

one can in 23L no added kilo would prob give you a 1.035 og     2 in 15L would give you maybe 1.107og,  it will ferment real fast with no temp control as well,  I got hot cough mixture from the can experiment...

you could do one can with following

1kg DME at 60 mins boil

10.00 gm Nelson Sauvin [12.50 %] (15 min) Hops 7.1 IBU
15.00 gm NZ Cascade [7.00 %] (15 min) Hops 5.9 IBU

1 can of coopers larger at 5 mins
15.00 gm Nelson Sauvin [12.50 %] (0 min) (Aroma Hop-Steep) Hops -
15.00 gm NZ Cascade [7.00 %] (0 min) (Aroma Hop-Steep) Hops -
1.22 tsp Irish Moss (Boil 10.0 min) Misc

or use cascade for all hops

use us of and try to keep about 15-16C

maybe a dry hop as well? = hoppy larger, up the dme to get more alcohol...

[Matthew Vincent]

Thanks for the replies Aidan & Peter.

Good to hear it would've been a disaster before I wasted my time :)

I've got a stash of DME (from BrewShop) so I'll cancel the 2nd can and replace it with 1 kg of DME.

The carboy is only about 20 litres and from past experience 15 litres is all it can handle (minimises mess).

I'll wait until the hops arrive next week and boil some hops like you suggest Aidan.

I might even add 1.5kg of DME, aim for an end result of around 18 litres of wort and control the overflow with a blow-off tube.

Is there negatives with controlled overflows? I'm guessing you could lose yeast out through the blow-off tube??

Re: Nelson Sauv - I've got about 400g of NS and maybe 200g of Motueka that have been in the freezer (double bagged)  for something like 18+ months. Just tonight I had a look at both and they look absolutley fine - still good colour and solid (pellets). What's the negatives with old hops??

[Aidan Curran]

No major negative as long as it's not such a serious blowoff that you loose significant volume and you use a blowoff tube to keep it sanitary. Yeast loss would not be an issue as yeast will be well dispersed at the active fermentation stage.

[Peter Smith]

Over 18 months they do lose alpha acids, according to Beersmith app if the NS was 12% alpha when you got it, its now 9.44%   so in theory you need to adjust the amount you add to get the desired bittering levels.     They can also add an oxidised taste to the beer according to some judges....   you have to assume that the flavour acids are even MORE volitile, so It will have a bigger effect on the aromatics and flavours, but I have not seen an analysis of this.... safe to say use fresh hops for late additions where possible,  if you listern tot he craft brewers they always talk about the freshest ingredients....

Old hops fine for experimenting with I tend to try and use everything I have within 9 months , have done some interesting blended IPAs with 5-7 hops....   just keep good records (Buy beersmith) so that when you make an awesome beer you can repeat it again.

re blowoff, us05 works at 15C with less head....    I would only add 1 kg of dme to 18L of wort otherwise the og is too high and there wont be enough malts in there due to pilsner mix to balance out IMHO

I have read some good stuff about mot / nel sav blend 1 ns to 4 mot at 15 / 5 and flame out...

and dry hop the same