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...

[Crusader-Rob]

a nice English Brown Ale type beer?

Use Goldings or Fuggles.

[Josh C]

Yeah that was the thought, aiming for ~4.5%. Maybe Is should sub some darker crystal too. I think I still have some EKG and Fuggles. Maybe go EKG at 20 mins and Fuggles at 5, and whatever I need to hit IBUs at 60.

[Miles]

I just did a Brown Ale using -

80% Maris Otter Pale

15% Crystal

3% Chocolate

Plus for some interest I add 

2% Lactose and some vanilla beans.

The lactose has given this beer a very smooth mouth feel.

I used Golding & Hallertau hops ~ 25 IBU

And used Mangrove Jacks Newcastle Dark Ale yeast

[Richard Rice]

Somewhere in this whole site, I found a 'Nugget' of wisdom from JoKing...Nugget hops give a very smooth bitterness, not a big, crisp, smack in the face bitterness like some others.  Did it for my Brown Ale and enjoy it very much.

My recipe is

4kgMO

.500 Pale Crystal

.250 Med Crystal

.150 Pale Chocolate

 

I used Nugget for bittering and Citra just cos I like it, but you could always go with the English hops.  I think my percentages work out fairly similar.

[Richard Rice]

So, my brother-in-law and I have been discussing a "Barrel-aged" stout recipe - except we don't have a barrel, we plan to age it on woodchips used to age home distilled Bourbon.

Recipe is similar to my Guinness Clone recipe:

5kg Base Malt (Probably Bairds Pale)

2kg Flaked Barley

500gms of Roasted Barley.

Med and/or Dark Crystal somewhere in there too.

 

So a few of questions:

1, we want it a bit sweeter to counter-act the higher alcohol, but how much Crystal is too much?

2, can we go more Roasted Barley for this recipe despite the SRM it shows? I used 500gms in my Guinness Clone and that was 10%

3,what amount of woodchips should we use?  200gms?  500 gms?  Does it even matter?

4, since I'm currently brewing a Guinness Clone using S04, would it be worth using the whole yeast cake from that to pitch this beer considering the higher gravity we expect (around a 1.080) or will that be too much?  Will that cause a horrible hotness to the beer?  Even still, won't that age out on the chips?

 

Any ideas, thoughts or advice would be very much appreciated - doing this next weekend.

[Miles]

Some interesting questions ... been doing some reading on a similar brew, have you considered Oak Cubes v's Chips?

[Grant R Baker]

Start with about 500gms of Crystal med... maybe adjust in later versions, all depends on how much hop you are adding. 

Amount of oak depends isn't so important, the darkness of the oak (virgin oak, light toast, dark toast etc) release more tannin the lighter it is....so what ever you use taste it every second day until you think it has had enough time on the oak.

Also soaking the oak in a sprint (vodka, bourbon etc) a few week before you use then (and not adding the spirit to the beer) helps slow the release of oak flavours and tannin into the beer. Also help kill any bugs on the oak.

[Richard Rice]

Sweet - definitely planned on soaking the chips.  Brother-in-law has a pre-crushed bag of Dark crystal he wants to use, so has ended up going with that.  Might have time to change tho...

Just doing a single hop addition of Columbus (15%AA) at 60 minutes.

[Grant R Baker]

Dark crystal is good... just use a touch less.

I would chuck in a late 10min hop... counter balance the sweetness, add some fruit, floral or spice.

[Richard Rice]

Goldings, perhaps?  It's supposed to have a light spiciness that would work well in a stout.

A touch less than what, tho?  He's already dialled in 600 gms (this IS going to be a Double/Imperial, is that still too much?

[Grant R Baker]

20g of Goldings at 10mins will be nice.

If dark crystal is 80 and medium crystal 60.. then split the diiff... so just round down 10%.... but 600g is not too much. If it finishes too sweet the dial it back next time.

[Richard Rice]

Is there any benefit to using Rolled Oats as well as flaked Barley?  2:1 ratio in favour of the barley?