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...

[Dan]

Awesome, thanks Scarrfie!

[jt]

Am generally interested in IT's idea re partial mash

You could do it in the 16 litre pot, but for the effort of juggling grains in one pot maybe do a small BIAB ?

 

Any amount of grain you get into there is going to be great

 

[Chris Mills]

I used to use my slow-cooker for partial mashes. I'd warm it for half an hour and then switch it off and cover the tiny mash with a bath towel to keep the heat in. Then I used a strainer to lauter into a pot which I then added to my 'kettle'.

Here are some photos of my partial mash process from a while ago:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ambientspace/sets/72157623322655510/wi...

[Dan]

That is a really helpful link!! Thanks, Im definitely going to try that, it doesn't look like too much more work than steeping anyway!!

Cheers

[Liam Callaghan]

Hey Dan, any oats will do.  They add a really nice creamy texture to your stout, don't over do them though.

16 litre pot will be fine for a partial and you can use that to add all of your flavour grains easily.  Follow the threads below regarding it, easy enough mate, just remember that you can do nothing wrong.  It will always turn out better than if you didn't do it.  Well worth the extra time and effort.  You'll have a brewery in no time :p

[Richard Jack]

Anyone got any advice regarding "dry-beaning" with coffee? I'm brewing up a mini oatmeal coffee stout and I'm wondering how best to proceed. It'll be about 3.9%, but it should finish out rather sweet. I've got a nice bean for it, whole, I can grind if that's a good idea, but I'm just wondering about times and quantities. All recipes around using beans in secondary seem to be for big imperial beers, and mine will be pretty unimperial!

[John H]

Hi Richard

I recently did a Robust Porter based on Jamil's Black Widow Porter. OG 1.064 so bigger than yours, but yours will probably have more roast.

Anyway I used 200g of whole beans for a 23L batch. I ground the beans and added to cooled boiled water and did a cold infusion over 24hours in the fridge. This is supposed to avoid extracting too much bitterness. I filtered it and added it prior to bottling.Bitterness did seem higher than the calculated IBU of 37

I used a "4" coffee

Turned out ok. Coffee was prominent but not too much in your face. Slight ashtray notes that softened after a few weeks. My notes indicate that next time I would add more Munich and maybe try a "3" coffee, even dropping the IBU a smidge to get it a little smoother.

Not sure if this helps.

[Richard Jack]

Thanks mate, that does help plenty, cheers.

[denimglen]

I reckon with a small beer like this you'd want to add as little water as possible - espresso may be a better idea?  Or cold steep the coffee in beer itself rather than in water if you want to avoid bitterness.

[Hugh Grierson]

A few of the Homebrewtalk guys just drop espresso into the wort, if it gets poured and dropped into the cool fluid quickly you should get no bitterness.

[Scarrfie]

I have looked into coffee indepth before and the expresso technique done correctly should not have bitter flavours, the working temperature range ensures that (below boiling).

But this question got me thinking about cold steeping so I went looking for answers. Seems that cold steeping may also avoid the bitter flavours, but I will have to try it out and see how it goes.

[Stu McKinlay]

I dry beaned a low gravity mild a while back and it was ok but I detected a DMS-like "beany" note and some cocoa that was not in the unbeaned beer (I put some aside).

 

I've since moved on from the coffee idea... everyone else is doing it and I've got a few other ideas that have possessed me.

 

I really liked the Green Bean Saison that Garage Project put out... this also had that similar DMS-like note and the cocoa. I loved the sensory havoc of seeing a pale golden beer and then smelling a chocolate note. Nice base beer too, though I can fully understand why some people didn't like it - it was pretty wild.