Converting AG recipe to Extract - Gamma Ray Clone

Hi Everyone,

I'm hoping to get a bit of advice on converting an AG recipe I found for a Beavertown Gamma Ray clone. I'm close to bottling my first brew, which was a Youngs American IPA kit. I want to move up to AG eventually but I thought to try my hand at extract brewing first as it seemed like the logical step. I'm a big fan of Gamma Ray so thought why not try a recipe!

The recipe I found is here: https://www.brewtoad.com/recipes/beavertown-gamma-ray-clone-v2

Found the recipe on a UK site and it's for 4.5L, which converts to about 1 gallon. I've assumed up-scaling by a factor of 5 should get me roughly to where I want to be for a 5 gallon brew.

AG Recipe as follows:

1054 OG
1011 FG
5.7& ABV
49IBU

5kg Pale 2-Row (UK)
500g Caramalt 40L
250g Carapils (DE)

20g Magnum AA 12.5%
85g Amarillo AA 9.3%
85g Bravo AA 17.3%
85g Columbus AA 15%

Hop Schedule:
20g Magnum 60 min FWH
10g Columbus 10min
10g Amarillo 10min
10g Bravo 10min
15g Columbus 5min
15g Amarillo 5min
15g Bravo 5min
35g Columbus 0 min Whirlpool (do I need to whirlpool or can I just chuck them in at flameout?)
35g Amarillo 0min
35g Bravo 0min
25g Columbus 5 day Dry Hop
25g Amarillo 5 day Dry Hop
25g Bravo 5 day Dry Hop

Yeast: Safale US-05

Brew Efficiency = 68%

Can I assume that I can just use any Pale LME and steep the Caramalt and Carapils? Or would I need to find a Pale 2 Row extract? Using the efficiency rating, that would work out at 3.4kg LME is that correct?

The thing I'm not sure about is the amount of hops to use all I've done is upscale by a factor of 5 from the AG recipe, but from reading around it seems that I might need to increase this due to using extract as opposed to mashing. Would increasing the hops by about 20% do the trick, or is there a more scientific method?

Appreciate any help and tips with this. Planning to brew this on the May bank holiday weekend so hope to get everything in place before then!

Thanks in advance for your help!

I would recommend using dried extract. You want 2.8kg dried malt extract, but I'd bung 3kg in, as the sugar extraction from the steeping grains never hit the expected amount when you don't mash them.

Steep the caramalt and carapils in your pan of water (as much as possible of the 22.5L) as it heats up, take them out after 20-30 minutes and not higher than 80C, bring to the boil, add about half the extract, hop at recipe times, switch off and mix the rest of the extract in. Cool, strain hops and transfer to FV.

Multiplying the hop amounts by 5 is fine. Recipes often give hop amounts as grams per litre, g/l, because it is a proportionate calculation. I haven't checked the IBUs from that hop schedule, sorry. You need to check the AA% of the hops you actually use.

clibit said:

I would recommend using dried extract. You want 2.8kg dried malt extract, but I'd bung 3kg in, as the sugar extraction from the steeping grains never hit the expected amount when you don't mash them.

Steep the caramalt and carapils in your pan of water (as much as possible of the 22.5L) as it heats up, take them out after 20-30 minutes and not higher than 80C, bring to the boil, add about half the extract, hop at recipe times, switch off and mix the rest of the extract in. Cool, strain hops and transfer to FV.

Multiplying the hop amounts by 5 is fine. Recipes often give hop amounts as grams per litre, g/l, because it is a proportionate calculation. I haven't checked the IBUs from that hop schedule, sorry. You need to check the AA% of the hops you actually use.

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Thanks for the reply @clibit

Is DME recommended due to ease of measuring it out plus improved shelf life?

I thought with extract you could have a smaller boil size? Or is the larger boil size for greater hop utilisation?

I've got a 33L stainless steel pot, which I'm guessing would take longer than 30 mins to get near 80C - is there a recommended or ideal time to temperature to consider when steeping? Also I'm guessing I'll lose some water to evaporation and end up light - if I wanted to end up with 22.5L post-boil, should I increase the recipe to account for this or just top up with water to get to 22.5L? I suspect this would affect the OG, though.

When I get hold of the various hops for the recipe I'll check their AA%. I had a look at the IBU calculator on this site and it asks for utilisation % - wasn't sure how to calculate that - how would you go about this?

Sorry for all the noobish questions!

I would only bung half the extract in before the boil aswell.. and add the last half towards the the end that will aid the hop utilisation.

Clibit does make a good point about the aa% of the hops you have, sometimes you see people quote a Alpha acid %s but your supplier may supply one that is different.

I would say try Brew mate if you can get a copy of that, and have a play around with that. But its been recently bought out and turned into brewers friend and whilst longterm that is probably a good move when I looked the other day it looked badly broken..

If you want to do a smaller boil, that's fine. I was just thinking that with so many hops you need to try to maximise the amount of water you use. I wouldn't go below 10L.

In my experience (I did kind of skip extract brewing but I've used extracts a lot and tasted extract beers), DME is more consistently good beer than LME. When I've used tinned LME or beer kts I've always tasted a twang in the beer, which has gradually faded over time, but I wouldn't make an LME extract beer myself based on what I've exprerienced. Others may disagree. DME does not seem to have the same problem, for me anyway.

Hop utilisation is guesswork I think - like Covrich says, a brewing recipe calculator will work out the IBU's for you without all that, Brewmate is what I use, it's been bought by Brewersfriend and is now their 'Windows' version calculator. It's free.

Thanks for the replies - I did read somewhere before about only using half the extract at the start of the boil, but forgot about it so thanks for reminding me!

I'll go with DME in that case and I'm assuming any light DME will do?

I've got no problems with doing a larger boil, would I need to boil more than 22.5L though to account for evaporation loss? Or should I just start with 22.5L and then top up with water once I've racked to the FV where I can measure the volume?

I'll checked out the calculators on Brewersfriend and calculating the AA% looks fairly straightforward, thanks for the tip. I actually downloaded Beersmith with the free trial as well last night and had a tinker

Yes light DME. To replace the pale malt of an all grain brew.

You can either boil 22.5L and top up, or add a bit (around 10%) to account for evaporation. I would do 22.5L this time and then measure the top up, so you will know next time how much to add - it depends on your boiler.

That's great, thanks. I'll go with the top up, seems easier than potentially overshooting the volume and ending up with too much post boil.

I just had a thought - when I was initially reading up on homebrewing, I kept seeing 5 gallon brews and converted that to ~23 litres. I've just realised that they were likely talking about 5 US gallons which is 19 litres.

Which is the "standard"? I'm planning on bottling the beer so I guess it doesn't matter too much, but it would probably be an idea to get into the habit of brewing the same volume each time for best practice.

23 litres is standard in the UK, 19 litres in the USA. You can convert recipes between the two either by using a brewing calculator, or good old fashioned mathematics! Divide each ingredient in a 23 litre recipe by 23, then multiply by 19, if you want 19 litres. Divide each ingredient in a 19 litre recipe by 19, then multiply by 23, if you want 23 litres.

Haha thanks, I realise it was a bit of a dumb question, but starting out it's easy to get bogged down in the minor details :)

I think I'm sorted for now - will order the ingredients on pay day and get stuck in, can't wait!

Decided I want to try to make this clone into a Black IPA - I've just bottled my Youngs American IPA, so I want something a little different.

Would adding an extra 5% of Carafa special III do the trick?

@clibit Just a question about steeping the grains: do I want to be steeping them in less liquid than the full 22.5L? I've read that when steeping not to use too much water as if the solution is too dilute, pH will be higher and more likely to extract tannins.

Should I steep in a lower volume, remove the grain bag, and add it to a second pot with sparge temperature water, then add the sparge water and then top up to 22.5L?

Right, so the Black IPA is extremely promising and tastes great after 9 days conditioning.

I'm going to do this recipe next, but with different late addition hops.

I've got lots of Magnum that I'll use for bittering, I've got 15g each of Amarillo, Bravo, and Columbus leftover so I'll probably chuck all that in at 10min. But I've also gone and picked up new 100g bags of the following:

Amarillo
Columbus
Chinook
Cascade
Citra

I want to throw in a combo of these in at 5min, flameout and the dry hop. Question is which ones?!

I definitely want Citra in there, but will it overpower other hop flavours?

hey project beer,

how did it turn out ?

quick (probably stupid) question: how much yeast did you use for this brew ? (the gamma ray attempt)

tks

hi, any news on the gamma ray?

i have tried 4 versions. 2 partial mash & 2 all grain. i end up with a good, hoppy / fruity beer - bu NOT gamma ray,,,,,

i keep trying :mrgreen::mrgreen::mrgreen:

matto said:

i have tried 4 versions. 2 partial mash & 2 all grain. i end up with a good, hoppy / fruity beer - bu NOT gamma ray,,,,,

i keep trying :mrgreen::mrgreen::mrgreen:

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Soooo this reply is long overdue - I basically took over a year off from brewing after having shoulder surgery at the beginning of last year and couldn't really lift or carry anything for a long time. Getting back into it with my first all grain brew in a couple of weeks!

Anyway - as for this beer...it was certainly nice, hoppy and fruity, but it definitely wasn't gamma ray. I think things are limited as far as extract brewing goes, but it was a good recipe nonetheless :)

good luck with the shoulder

i try version #6 this weekend. will see if i can get closer

ProjectBeer said:

I think things are limited as far as extract brewing goes

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They are, but with that grain bill it's relatively easy to replicate with extract if you use DME and steep the speciality grains, as effectively you're doing the same thing.

It's really hard to replicate some commercial beers, I've tried. Some I've managed no probelm, but others I haven't got even close despite multiple attempts - I think the deciding factor is the brewery yeast.