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

[Chris P]

Brewed up an 18 l batch of an attempt a Donkey Oatie. A few small differences: I used london Ale 3 for the yeast and also used Brown malt instead of biscuit and Oat malt instead of Flaked Oats.

I am pretty happy with the first brew to break in my Blichmann Burner and also pretty happy I hit target of 1.051 for OG.

Having Mark on hand to help was a big help in that though and the use of his chilly bin and Immersion chiller was awesome. 

Im on dry july so had to believe him when he said the samples were quite tasty.

[Hillman]

Does the Blichmann burner fit onto gas tanks in NZ, or do you need some kind of adapter? 

[Chris P]

Comes with an adapter from INI. I also feel I wont ever have to upgrade it now that I have it. Its a beast =)

Mashed in and including heating water from time to time to hit temps it took about 4 hours for an 18l brew. Way better then my first AG of 7 hours of struggle and tears (lots of tears) trying to use the old ceramic stove ... 

[Hillman]

Yeah they're awesome. We have a container filled with all our belongings, including my homebrewing gear, that should be arriving from the US in the next few weeks. Just wondering if I'm going to need to do anything to make the burner work here. It's a seriously good piece of kit.

[Tonz]

Any advice welcome on my 1st mini mash.

1 can Brewtec lager

1 can unhopped Light Malt Extract

.200g Maris Otter

 

Protein Rest @ 60*C  20 - 30  mins

Mash 65*C - 68*C  60 mins

Additions

25g Green Bullet Pellets 10.9%  60 mins

15g Hallertau Pellets 6.9%  15 mins

Irish Moss  1 heaped tsp  10 mins

15g Hallertau Pellets 6.9%  5 mins

 

Can anyone plz let me know the expected OG and FG and should I use 1 or 2 pkts of saflager S/23 yeast

 

[Grant R Baker]

To work out your OG and FG I sub'ed the Brewtec Lager with Amber LME... so using BrewMate I got OG-1.028, FG-1.007 and a IBU of 44.9

Some of these number will be off - I have found BrewMate a little off when using LME... it really depends on how much sugar is in the Brewtec Lager kit.

 

One yeast packet will do if for about 23litre brew.

[Tonz]

Thanks for the reply Grant.

Sadly the OG is not what I expected. lol I thought I was on the way to creating my first high gravety beer, esp since I was using Malt Extract, a brew kit and mashing 200g of grain. Any idea how I can up the gravety? I was really after a 6.5% beer

[Kelly Milligan]

Hey Tonz,

How come you're only using 200g of grain for this mini-mash? That's going to add at least 2 hours to your brew day and it's almost negligible. I don't recommend you worry about a protein rest. Most modern malts are 'modified' enough that such stepped mashing isn't as necessary as it used to be. Something like Maris Otter converts fine with a single step infusion, especially above 65c. I use Hopville to do all my recipe stuff and I love it, try adding all your stuff into this and then you'll be able to play around to get it how you want it :)

[jt]

Any amount of grains will improve a beer.

If you're upto mashing/steeping and boiling, why not go read http://howtobrew.com/section2/index.html and skip the kit ?

[Tonz]

Thanks for the Hopville site Kelly, looks really good. Site down for a couple of days maintenance but I will definately have a look.

Cheers.

[Grant R Baker]

Like the others suggested you can add more Maris Otter... and also the numbers looked odd...  so I ran them through another calculator and got 1.037 and 1.009... those Kits cans have questionable sugar levels.

 

If you have the mashing room bump that MO up a kilo... that should put it over 1.048 - 1.012.

 

When I was doing Extract brewing I used two cans of LME and speeping malts, it removed the question of what was already in the kit can (sugar, hops etc). .. in the end I switched to all grain as it was cheaper (except all the gear for setting it up) and gave me much better results.

 

Good luck

[Tonz]

Hi Grant,

Took everyone's advice and bumped up the grains. Check this out !

1 Tin Brewtec Lager

1 Can LME

1kg Dextrose

1kg Maris Otter

.500 Weyermann Munich Type 1

40g Green Bullet @ 60

25g Hallertau @ 15

20g Hallertau @ 5

Saflager S/23 yeast

OG 1068    FG 1018

37.2 IBU   14 EBC

Anyone got any ideas on this recipe - esp interested if its gonna be either too sweet or will the exta hops take care of that. What Im actually after is a dark hoppy lager round 6.5%