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...

[Mike Neilson]

3787 All the way, Ardennes for Yellow beers

[vdog]

I've just been thinking about non-traditional ingredients for brewing, and one that struck me as maybe being worth a go is szechuan pepper - it's pretty aromatic stuff, and gives you a cool numbing sensation when you eat things with it in. What I'm wondering is how that would go in a beer, and what sort - any thoughts?

[Llew Bardecki]

My bet is a pale ale with spicy/resiny/grassy hops. Or maybe a Belgian IPA with some spicy character coming from the yeast?

Dieu du Ciel in Montreal makes a black pepper IPA that is pretty tasty (in small quantities at least...)
While they aren’t the same spices, I reckon Szechuan pepper would work with the bitter, hoppy character of an IPA in a similar fashion.

[denimglen]

Chili beers were the hot thing a few years back so there should be a few recipes around that will give you a starting point.

[Ray]

Hi all

Im brewing my first all grain on Saturday thought I would do an easy pale ale but need some help with my hop additions

recipe as follows

4.5 MO
.5 Muncih (light)
.2 Crystal

23 Litre brew
mashing at 65-66c
us-05
Im expecting FG around 1.010

I have 100g of NZ cascade hops any advice would be good Im just looking for a good flavour and aroma not too overpowering

[Richard Deeble]

For mildish pale ales I really like doing a small 60 min addition (10 IBU's) and then adding the majority of my hops (20-25 IBU's worth in total) at 20, 15, 10, 5, 0. That way, with a hop like you cascade you'll get lots of nice grapefruity flavour and spice and great aroma.

So if you are boiling 27 litres of wort using Cascade that is about 7%aa you might use a schedule like this:
15 grams at 60, 20,15,10,5, and 25grams at flame out.

Use the beer recipitator here to work out your bitterness. http://www.hbd.org/recipator/. A 30-35 IBU beer will be plesantly bitter but not over the top if you are wanting some thats not too full on.

[MrC]

What Richard says sounds pretty good to me.

As another option with dry hopping you could try something like:
40g @ 60min
20g @ 10min
20g @ 0min
20g @ Dry Hopped

Good luck with your first all grain batch! It's not as scary as it seems :-)

[Ray]

Awesome thanks for the advice

[Justin M]

golden ale help required!

after putting down a golden ale (GP 95%, 5% med crystal, US05) i have noticed the beer was fairly hazy. Apparantly this is an issue that is crops up with US05 when fermenting pale beers.

If sticking to the dry yeast world, has anyone done a similar recipe with Safale 04 (the english variant)? I thought i might try this but am cautious that it could be a bit more fruity in style then what i am targeting (which is a crisp and clean malt profile).

Also, thinking of putting a bit of carahell in there in place of the crystal. i have never used carahell however so any thoughts on that would be useful...

[warra48]

Carahell is about the palest of crystal malt produced by Weyermann.

I use it to about 2 to 3% in hefeweizens to give them some body. Can't see any point in using it over more standard crystal malts in a pale ale, as any flavour complexity and body would be lost in the base malt character.

I don't use US05 these days, as I use the White Labs and Wyeast equivalents, but when I did I never had any trouble in getting very clear beers with a few days of cold conditioning before bottling.

Safale 04, I think, gives the wrong profile for a beer of this style. I no longer use it either, as I much prefer WY 1968, but I'd stick to using US05 for a golden ale.

[jt]

Another vote for S05 Justin (oh, and good to see you about too)
S05 often comes up in discussions being cloudy, if it's a big deal use some finings or gelatine

I've brewed 95% pale & 5% crystal with S05 and SO4 and they're completely different beasts.

can't se any problem with using carahell, it's only a step above carapils (or a couple below caramalt, and a really nice grain) and people seem to pour that in with gusto.
just don't expect the same flavour as you'd get with a darker crystal

[Justin M]

cheers JT - sorry i missed your message of late - first time i have logged in for a while! In any case, I've moved to auckland for a job a few months back. That, and a baby have slowed the brewing up of late. But i'm back on the horse now...