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...

[MrC]

Ahh, well done jt. I'll try harder next time.

p.s. - I purchased a can of Coopers Lager yesterday for an experiment. Don't tell anyone.

[jt]

p.s. - I purchased a can of Coopers Lager yesterday for an experiment. Don't tell anyone

I was considering getting the draught ...

[David Wood]

Hi guys, I'm gonna do a smoked (imperialish) porter spiced with star anise in the near future and have thrown together this recipe.
I'm not sure what amounts of smoked malt and star anise I need to use to get the flavour so these ratios are all guesses.
What should I change here?

Recipe Specifications
--------------------------
Batch Size: 22.00 L
Boil Size: 25.18 L
Estimated OG: 1.079 SG
Estimated Color: 44.8 SRM
Estimated IBU: 47.2 IBU
Brewhouse Efficiency: 80.00 %
Boil Time: 60 Minutes

Ingredients:
------------
Amount Item Type % or IBU
3.50 kg Pale Malt, Maris Otter (3.0 SRM) Grain 49.30 %
2.50 kg Smoked Malt (9.0 SRM) Grain 35.21 %
0.40 kg Black (Patent) Malt (500.0 SRM) Grain 5.63 %
0.40 kg Caramel/Crystal Malt - 20L (20.0 SRM) Grain 5.63 %
0.30 kg Chocolate Malt (450.0 SRM) Grain 4.23 %
50.00 gm NZ Hallertau 6.5%AA [6.50 %] (60 min) Hops 28.7 IBU
30.00 gm Nelson Sauvin 11.5 [11.50 %] (20 min) Hops 18.5 IBU
40.00 gm Anise, Star (Boil 30.0 min) Misc
2 Pkgs US-05 (Safale) Yeast-Ale


Mash Schedule: Double Infusion, Light Body
Total Grain Weight: 7.10 kg
----------------------------
Step Time Name Description Step Temp
30 min Protein Rest Add 13.33 L of water at 55.6 C 50.0 C
60 min Saccrification Add 11.85 L of water at 80.6 C 63.0 C

[vdog]

I haven't done (and don't know much about) smoked beers - my only comment would be that much star anise boiled for that long might be a bit overpowering. Maybe shift it to 5 or 10min - you'll still get a good whack of aroma out of it.

[Soren]

Weyermanns smoked malt is great, if you like smoke you can easily use it as the entire base malt. 8 Wired's autumn release will be a smoked porter, I'm going with about 50% smoked malt there but I figure that's conservative. I find that these beers need a bit of age to come together as well, generally the more smoke the more age needed to become great.
As far as spice goes, I am no expert but 40 gms seems like a lot. Andy at Renaissance is working on a spiced beer, I think he's going for what eqivalates to 5g/20L and he's usually not subtle! He's got other spiced in there as well though. I'd do as joking suggests, make a tea and add it little by little, you cant take the spice out again once its in...

[JR]

I just made Jamil's Smoked Porter and that had 1.7kg of smoked malt in it. I tried it the other day after 3 weeks in the bottle and it was far more subtle than I expected. Waaay less than the smokin Biship type smokyness.
I reccon 2.5kg is in the ballpark.

[MrC]

I agree JR. I brewed that recipe about a year ago and swore I would double the smoked malt next time. It's was still a very nice porter though.

[Reviled]

Yeah if you want the smoke to last I would consider using all smoked malt for your base, or at least swap the maris and smoked because the weyermann stuff is quite subtle, especially if you dont have any chlorine in your water! Smoking Bishop is made with their own smoked malt isnt it? Manuka wood smoked or something? The weyermann stuff is smoked with beechwood afaik

[David Wood]

Cool, that makes sense then. So do you think that 40g of star anise boiled for 30min will get a nice aniseed character going? I'm hoping for something like JP '09. Maybe put some star anise in a secondary fermenter?

[JoKing]

Yeah - I reckon you'd want to spice away from the kettle - it's too much of a guessing game. You can boil some star anise in a small amount of water and add the soup into your secondary. This way, you can fully control the amount of flavour you are adding to the brew: if it's not strong enough... add some more.

[Mark Kessell]

what type of smoked malt did you use?
i used 100g of bairds medium peat smoked malt in my stout out of a 6kg grain bill, and it's a very noticable flavour.

[MrC]

I used the Weyermann smoked malt from Liberty. It's great malt, I just need to use more next time.