I was hoping for a very hoppy pale ale, so far was going on this theory:
4kg Golden Promise
.5kg Crystal
Riwaka Saaz:
15g / 60min
30g / 30min
30g / 10min
30g / 1min
S-04
I need to educate my palate more on hops, at least this might make me remember how Riwaka Saaz turns out.
Given the complexities I will have dealing with the equipment, the simpleness of it appeals...
The most crystal (60L) I've ever used in a 5 gal batch is 330g and I thought it was too much.
I'd recommend that you look back at your previous brews with steeped grain and base your crystal volume on something that you've brewed before and liked.
All you are doing really is replacing pale extract with base malt (and opening a whole new world of mashed malts) the rest is the same as what you've already done. Trust what you know.
Unfortunately, all of my ME brewing has been with the bog-standard maltexo from Bin-Inn - this will be the first ever non-kit beer I have brewed that is anything lighter than dark brown in colour :)
Beersmith states 4kg + 300g crystal will be 7% crystal
That's good, I like it. Palmers standard American & British ales on how to brew are about 6-7% crystal and sound recipes. I like the look of the hops too - go for it. You can always taste, evaluate and experiment from there
Thought I should let you know how this turned out...
I went for
4kg Golden Promise
350g Crystal
150g Munich
Riwaka Saaz:
15g / 60min
30g / 30min
30g / 10min
30g / 1min
The grain mill worked great.
Had a few small teething problems with the mashtun, and need to work more on sparging volumes - I think the set-up is fine, I just need to understand the process better.
Things went a bit wrong with the chiller. It's a Mashmaster plate chiller, and I thought that I could easily get the hot wort to flow down through it by siphon. I also forgot to consider all the hops in the wort. Everything became quite chaotic resolving this and I will be very pleasantly surprised if the beer turns out not infected.
I appreciate all the advice from you all - hopefully in a few weeks I'll be able to tell you the good news.
My next brew but one is planned to be a Porter. I'm not sure whether to just repeat my Anniversary Day Porter recipe (which was very nice) or do a twist on it. I'm wondering about JZ's Choc Hazelnut Porter or a Vanilla Bourbon Porter. My only concern is whether or not I'll want to drink 19 litres of one of these experiements.
If you get the FG right - I can't see any reason why you wouldn't be able to get through 19 Liters of Vanilla Bourbon Porter... it really depends on how much you like bourbon I suppose.
If it were me, I'd tweak the anniversary Porter up by using double the Flavour hop additions, and subbing them out with Amarillo...