Professional shopper to first AG

The Homebrew Forum

Help Support The Homebrew Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

Croni486

Junior Member
Joined
Nov 21, 2015
Messages
52
Reaction score
5
Location
Lauder
After months of being a professional shopper as my wife called it i'm now in the position to try my hand at my first AG brew.

But before i start i need to make my first purchase of grains and hops and would like some advice on the matter.

Being the type of person that i am I've jumped in head first and gone straight to AG and having watched hour upon hour of you tube clips i feel i have the basic knowledge to hopefully brew something that is at least drinkable, probably not on the first attempt but one day. I'm into heavily hopped beers such as Joker IPA so my aim is to try and brew a hoppy beer and have taken this from Beersmith.

The ingredients are:
5.44Kg Maris Otter
0.91Kg Vienna Malt
0.23Kg Cara-Pils
0.23Kg Crystal Malt
21.26g Centennial @60 mins
14.17g Centennial @45 mins
14.17g Centennial @30 mins
21.26g Centennial @15 mins
1 Whirlfloc @ 10 mins
14.17g Centennial @0 mins
1 Pkg Denny's Favourite 50 (Wyeast #WY1450)
28.35g Cascade Dry hop 14 days
28.35g Centennial Dry hop 14 days.

I'm probably biting off more than i can chew. The recipe is for a final batch size of 22 ltrs with a 6.8%ABV. The chances of me reaching that are probably slim, if the ABV is lower i'd be more than happy. If i do get anywhere over the 6% i'd be looking at diluting to lower it.

If the recipe looks OK i'll be placing the order at the weekend. Unfortunately the idea of taking two weeks off in October so i could enjoin myself trying to brew beer fell on deaf ears and m wife has booked a holiday so it'll be the middle of October before i get the chance.

Does it look OK?
 
I don't do AG yet but someone else on here will be able to help :)

Welcome to the forum and i wish you very best of luck :)
 
The recipe looks good. Definitely a nice malt bill.
Do you have temperature control for fermentation? You'll really need it for that abv.
If you don't I'd suggest keeping the abv below 5%, it stresses the yeast a lot less giving less chance of hitting off flavours.
Also, consider pushing the hops a lot later if you like hop bombs.

Good luck mate :-)
 
Thanks for the replies.

I've been taking months to get all the gear together that's why the wife calle me nothing more than a professional shopper.

I've a fermentation fridge that currently has a TC in it just to stop the wife nagging.

So i'd be better off putting more of the hop additions near the end or would I get more of the same affect by increasing the amount of the latter additions.
 
Good luck! My only advice after also going straight in to AG is a) make sure you clean everything properly (my 2nd brew turned south in the fermenter) and b) make sure your FV is air tight (why I actually think it turned south, had a slight crack in the lid by the bung).

Sent from my SM-G935F using Tapatalk
 
I do a 60, 15 and 0 mins hop additions.

I would suggest you do something similar to make your brew day simpler. 45 and 30 mins additions are a bit no man's land between bittering (early) and aroma/flavour (late) additions.

Just tweak things in beer Smith to give you the same ibu's but achieved with 60, 15 and 0 additions.

Should be good though, centennial and cascade are superb hops.

Good look with it and welcome to the forums bud.
 
Thanks for the tips, just need to get to grips with Beersmith and try and figure out how to change the hop additions.
 
Brewers Friend is also a good program. Does the job for me.

Sent from my SM-G935F using Tapatalk
 
IMO the carapils level is fine. I've used more than double that in a batch and it wasn't even close to being cloyingly sweet. The reason being, like yours, the recipe had a good dose of hops to counterbalance the sweetness.
 
Thanks for the tips, just need to get to grips with Beersmith and try and figure out how to change the hop additions.

I use Beersmith for mobile on my Android tablet thingy.

Make a note of the current IBU's before tweaking.

You should then be able to edit the recipe and just edit/remove your current hop additions.

You are aiming to hit the same IBU figure (broadly) just with a 60, 15 and 0 addition.

Basically you are upping the weight of the 60 and 15 minute additions and removing the 45 and 30 minute additions. Whatever is left over from your original 85g of Centennial I would chuck in at 0 mins.

Good luck with it.
 
Good on you....
I started straight into AG brewing as well....
I made mistakes, as you probably will - but that's how we learn.
Despite all the fine detail and technicalities of brewing beer - its a fairly resilient process and I can guarantee that in some form or another you will have Beer at the end of it.

If the Monks could do it 400 years ago over fire and in dirt pits - I'm pretty sure you'll be fine with all the modern advantages we all have :whistle:

I would echo - what has been said on here. If you like Hop Bomb beers add more towards the end so the aromas don't get lost in the boil.
 
I'm ten AGs in. The advice I'd give is try not to overthink it. As long as yr kit is sanitised, your beer WANTS to be made.

Have a punt, learn from yr mistakes, rinse (& sanitise), repeat

:)
 
I too would drop a proportion of the grain bill for a target abv closer to 4%abv the reason being as its a heavily hopped brew your going to want to drink it sooner rather than later and higher gravity brews tend to mature slower.
 
I assume you've had a read of this - http://www.thehomebrewforum.co.uk/showthread.php?p=614523#post614523

What brewing setup have you gone for? As this will have an effect on efficiency.

I did two 10litre stove top AG brews before upgrading to my peco biab setup. It may be worth trying a smaller batch to start with (remember you'll still boil off the same volume, about 3 litres for me in my current set up, regardless of batch size - so adjust your sparge water accordingly).

If you want something closer to 5% have a play with brewer's friend to help reduce the grain bill.
As a rule of thumb I get about 1% alcohol per kilo of grain* at about 70% efficiency (according to brewer's friend).

*speciality grains have different absorption characteristics.

Unless you have really accurate scales, I would stick with whole grams in your recipes as it is tricky enough to weigh out hops, particularly in leaf form.

As others have said, if you like hoppy brews then late additions are your friend.
My best hop bombs to date (even without dry hopping) have had
10g at 60mins
30g at 10mins
30g at 5mins
30g at flameout

(check your IBUs/alpha acids in brewers friend*, as this hop schedule works for me with quite high 12-15%AA
*it's free as long as you dont save more than 5 recipes and just playing with recipes ther gave me a lot of insight)

Enjoy whatever you make*!

*I too loved joker ipa - but found it quite tame recently...maybe i'm over hopping my beers (if thats possible ;) )
 
Thanks for all the replays and help on this.

My set up is 3 stainless steel pots and will be using an electrical element to heat the water controlled by a PiD. I have the option of using a Herms but thinking of not using it till I get to grips with the process.

As I don't know the efficiency of my equipment I'm unsure whether to drop the grain bill to lower the ABV or just use the recipe i have and use this brew as a benchmark for future brews. If it comes out at 6% then I'll just feed it to my son as he will drink anything.

Played with beer smith and now cut down the hop additions but kept the same IBU.
 
I'd plug in 68% and see what beer smith gives you abv (and ibu as you adjust it) wise and adjust from there.

I think 65-70% is a good first brew estimate (the gf can boost it a lot which is why I was asking). Others may disagree, but have a play around 65% and see how much you want to tweak the recipe.

If you do get a higher than wanted sg you can use a dilution calculator and just have more beer at a lower strength.
 

Latest posts

Back
Top