Newbie to brewing - advice needed

[JonB1510]

Hi all, I'm about to do my first ever brew and hoping to make a golden ale or Ipa type beer. I've never done this before and reading up so many different things which is just confusing me now. Basically I want someone to be able to tell me if what I have is enough and any advice on how to do it. This is the stuff I have... I got a lot of different hops as want to expirent with them.
8l cooking pot
1kg spray dried malt Amber extract
Boadicea hop pellets alpha 8.1%
Olicana hop pellets 8.10%
El dorado alpha 13.6%
Azacca hop pellets alpha 12.5%
Moutere hop pellets alpha 15.1%
Archer hop pellets alpha 3.6%
West Coast yeast
Brewing sugar
2 bottling buckets. One for fermenting and then will syphon in to other bucket then in to bottles.

Anyway that's it. But reading so many different things that u need more than just dried extract and not sure best way to boil it and add extract etc

Cheers all

Jon

 

[terrym]

I suggest you look through this.
https://www.thehomebrewforum.co.uk/threads/a-simple-guide-to-extract-brewing.75501/In your 8 litre pot you are likely to have a working volume of about 6 litres, and 6 litres of wort including 1 kg DME will give a beer of just under 6%.
DME should be dissolved off the heat otherwise the clumps will stick to the bottom of the pot and may burn.
Next, for hops, in general terms, the higher the %AA, the more hops you use, and the longer you leave them in the boil the more bitterness you will have in your beer. And since you are dealing in small volumes you will find only a few gms of hops may be needed for bitterness as well as late additions for flavour.
Although you have many different hops I suggest you stay with one or two for simplicity. But I have no experience of any of your hops so can't help there.
Finally in the absence of any other comments offering help, you could get to grips with this which will help you formulate a recipe.
https://www.brewersfriend.com/homebrew/recipe/calculator

 

[JonB1510]

I suggest you look through this.
https://www.thehomebrewforum.co.uk/threads/a-simple-guide-to-extract-brewing.75501/In your 8 litre pot you are likely to have a working volume of about 6 litres, and 6 litres of wort including 1 kg DME will give a beer of just under 6%.
DME should be dissolved off the heat otherwise the clumps will stick to the bottom of the pot and may burn.
Next, for hops, in general terms, the higher the %AA, the more hops you use, and the longer you leave them in the boil the more bitterness you will have in your beer. And since you are dealing in small volumes you will find only a few gms of hops may be needed for bitterness as well as late additions for flavour.
Although you have many different hops I suggest you stay with one or two for simplicity. But I have no experience of any of your hops so can't help there.
Finally in the absence of any other comments offering help, you could get to grips with this which will help you formulate a recipe.
https://www.brewersfriend.com/homebrew/recipe/calculator

Thanks a lot for this feedback. Much appreciated. And I'll definitely take a look at the link, but I'm curious.. You mention 6 litres of wort and the 1kg of spray dry extract will give a 6% beer. Do you mean I need to make the wort first as I thought I could just add the dry extract to the water and that's my wort?! Then add hops?!?! Then add to fermenting bucket? What would the percentage be if I just used dry extract and hops?!

I found this online but doesn't say if it's liquid extract or dry etc. Would this work with what I have

Ingredients:

• 13l (23pt) of water
• 1kg (2lb 2oz) malt extract
• 55g (2oz) dried hops
• 750g (1lb 10lb) sugar or pale dried malt extract
• Ale yeast

Method:

1. Bring half of the water to the boil and pour in the malt extract. Boil this mixture for 30 minutes. Then throw in the hops and boil for a further 30 minutes.
2. Strain the liquor into the fermentation bin and add the sugar or dried extract. Stir thoroughly to ensure that the sugar has fully dissolved.
3. Pour in the rest of the cold water and allow to cool. When the temperature is lukewarm (about 18°C), sprinkle on your yeast.
4. Seal the bin and leave it for a week or until it has fermented (when you have a consistent hydrometer reading over a few days).
5. Place half a teaspoon of sugar into each empty bottle and siphon the liquid into the bottles, ensuring that you don’t siphon in any of the sediment.
6. Leave the bottles for 10 days. Then they are ready to drink.

Again thanks for your reply. Cheers, jon

 

[RichardM]

Seeing as it says "pour in the malt extract" that suggests it is liquid. There calculators around that will tell you the equivalent amount of dried malt extract for a given amount of liquid. e.g. LME & DME Conversion Calculator - Brewer's Friend
Also, if you use the recipe builder that @terrym linked to, you can plug your recipe in with it as LME and then as DME and see how it comes out. I would expect 1kg of LME to give a lower ABV than DME

Edit
@terrym meant 6l of wort made with 1kg of DME, so yes, dissolve the DME in water, bring to the boil, add hops etc

 

[JonB1510]

Seeing as it says "pour in the malt extract" that suggests it is liquid. There calculators around that will tell you the equivalent amount of dried malt extract for a given amount of liquid. e.g. LME & DME Conversion Calculator - Brewer's Friend
Also, if you use the recipe builder that @terrym linked to, you can plug your recipe in with it as LME and then as DME and see how it comes out. I would expect 1kg of LME to give a lower ABV than DME

Edit
@terrym meant 6l of wort made with 1kg of DME, so yes, dissolve the DME in water, bring to the boil, add hops etc

Thanks so much for this reply. Just used the converter and it suggests I use less DME which is great help!
Tried looking at that recipe link but it was like a foreign language for me. Will need to properly sit down and go through it but as a complete beginner that confused me!

Also appreciate the confirmation that I can just use DME and add hops. That recipe with the method I gave suggests I could make about 40 bottles of beer. Does that sound about right? This is the link and I was following the medium estra brewing method.

https://www.countryfile.com/how-to/food-recipes/learn-how-to-make-real-beer/

 

[RichardM]

Edited
Wasn't thinking and answered as though you are doing ag

 

[terrym]

@JonB1510
I suggest you obtain 'Home Brew Beer' by Greg Hughes, which will help you better understand the homebrewing process. And within it there are many AG recipes that have be converted to an extract equivalent. As a general principle AG and extract recipes can be scaled up or down. So in your case a recipe can be scaled down from 23 litres to say 6 litres by factoring everything by 6/23 or 0.26 (or roughly a quarter). As far as hops are concerned you can also prorate the % AA so if a recipe calls for a 7.5% AA hop but you have a 10% AA hop you use 0.75 of the quantity of your hop to achieve the same bitterness. And because of you smallish pot size you could do what I do with my 9 litre working capacity pot (actual about 11 litres) which is to keep topping up during the boil to maintain the wort volume at 9 litres.
Finally you need to investigate what type of hops you have. Some hops are mostly bittering hops, some flavour/aroma and some dual purpose then use them accordingly. But if you cant find much about them and recipes to match I suggest you buy 50g of Cascade US and use them in a single hop beer which should give you a nice citrussy beer and a recipe for same is in Greg Hughes book. You can use your own hops laterHops can be bought from Crossmyloof.
https://www.crossmyloofbrew.co.uk/online-store

 

[An Ankoù]

As said above, I think you need to read a bit first, in order to have a better understanding of the process. I would try and get a bigger pot- 8 litres is a restrictive. A kilo of amber spray malt isn't going to go far- about 1050 in a 5 litre batch, and you've got some interesting hops, Archer and Bocecia are good for bittering, but I wonder what kind of IPA you have in mind.
Wheeler is better on method than Hughes, but Hughes' reeipes are better. I'd start with Wheeler.

 

[JonB1510]

@JonB1510
I suggest you obtain 'Home Brew Beer' by Greg Hughes, which will help you better understand the homebrewing process. And within it there are many AG recipes that have be converted to an extract equivalent. As a general principle AG and extract recipes can be scaled up or down. So in your case a recipe can be scaled down from 23 litres to say 6 litres by factoring everything by 6/23 or 0.26 (or roughly a quarter). As far as hops are concerned you can also prorate the % AA so if a recipe calls for a 7.5% AA hop but you have a 10% AA hop you use 0.75 of the quantity of your hop to achieve the same bitterness. And because of you smallish pot size you could do what I do with my 9 litre working capacity pot (actual about 11 litres) which is to keep topping up during the boil to maintain the wort volume at 9 litres.
Finally you need to investigate what type of hops you have. Some hops are mostly bittering hops, some flavour/aroma and some dual purpose then use them accordingly. But if you cant find much about them and recipes to match I suggest you buy 50g of Cascade US and use them in a single hop beer which should give you a nice citrussy beer and a recipe for same is in Greg Hughes book. You can use your own hops laterHops can be bought from Crossmyloof.
https://www.crossmyloofbrew.co.uk/online-store

OK awesome thanks alot for all the advice, really appreciate it. I'll have another look at the hops I got and see if they are more for bittering or flavour etc, but I chose mostly citrus and grapefruit type hops with peach and apricot aromas from what I remember. I want a nice refreshing hoppy type beer.

Cheers, jon

 

[JonB1510]

As said above, I think you need to read a bit first, in order to have a better understanding of the process. I would try and get a bigger pot- 8 litres is a restrictive. A kilo of amber spray malt isn't going to go far- about 1050 in a 5 litre batch, and you've got some interesting hops, Archer and Bocecia are good for bittering, but I wonder what kind of IPA you have in mind.
Wheeler is better on method than Hughes, but Hughes' reeipes are better. I'd start with Wheeler.

Thanks a lot for your advise too. Really appreciate it. I chose mostly hops that had citrus, grapefruit and zesty flavours according to the site I got them. I want a nice refreshing hoppy Amber beer and hoping those hops will give me that. But just no idea on the process. Basically need a step by step guide. The guide I saw on one of my replies above made it sound so easy!