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This is the life, got the mash on whilst at work last night for a tropical stout, the recipe that @matt76 kindly shared on my black ipa thread. Tweaked slightly to add some flaked oats and as I was 200g short of Munich I added 200g vienna to use up the bag.

4.5kg otter
700g munich
450g crystal
350g carafa 2
230g roast barley
200g vienna
200g oats

Mashed in overnight at 68c but am aware this would have fluctuated over night.

Hops

28g chinook @60
28g centennial @10
28g cascade at flameout.

Chill to mid 20's and let the fridge do the rest, pitched us04.

So in the end my og was 1077, diluted with roughly 2.5l of water, looking at brewsmith it gives me an og of 1067. The wort was black as the night, really malty bitter I'm really looking forward to it, and it was bubbling like mad this morning!!
 
First taste of my kiwi pilsner and its........not great.

I mean it's ok but not fabulous.

The good, nice aroma, citrus almost lemonade hop taste, malty, toasted cracker (had to look that up, but it fits). Sulfary aroma, leads to citrus from the riwaka. Although undercarbed the head does last the whole glass.

The bad, it's quite full bodied...or perhaps high medium bodied, either way it's too much. It's also well undercarbed, this is becoming a chronic problem and I might have to start looking at putting my beer in the brew fridge or something because maybe the utility isn't warm enough at the mo.

The ugly, lots of chill haze, though not too worried about that at this point.

Overall, I mean it's more than drinkable so that's fine but a tad disappointed, I was really looking forward to this one.
I shouldn't worry unless it's still undercarbed and cloudy after 6 months. That's how long my pilsner and lagers take to come good. No kidding. Never tried kiwi, though.
 
Right then, bottling night!

Firstly the braggot, finishing at 1012 that makes it 6% on the nose, I got 16 500ml bottles, primed with 5ml of 120g sugar boiled in 300mls (this is the same as the southern brown ale i'll bottle later).

Taste wise...... well.....slightly sweet and then comes a massive hit of what I can only describe as german smoked cheese, well maybe not the cheese but the smokiness that comes with smoked cheese, you know what I mean? It's different thats for sure!! Slightly sulfury aroma, light hazy brown to look at.

The southern brown next, big yield of 40 x 500ml bottles, fg 1010 giving it an abv of 6.3% which is slightly more than I was hoping for. But taste wise it's excellent, roasty leading to chocolate, an earthy aroma less fruity than I thought it might be with my choice of hops (first gold and bramling cross). Quite dark still, but fairly clear, this could be a good one! I enjoyed it so much that when one of the bottles wouldn't cap and I had no replacements I had the pint, lovely!
 
Hops arrived yesterday from crossmyloof! El Dorado, ekuanot and amarillo! So its NEIPA time!!!

Copying my malt bill from my last neipa which worked well I'm going to overnight mash tonight, 6kg otter, 500g wheat, 500g oats.

Hops... a critique i had when I sent it off to a comp last year was that it wasnt bitter enough, I used know boil hops last time so thought I might use 15g magnum @60.

Then tomahawk, el dorado and amarillo 20g each @10, 5 and flameout.

Dry hops will be 40g amarillo ekuanot and el dorado at day 3 and at day 10 with 120g of whatever I have left, ekuanot and centennial probably.

Yeast will be cml haze.
 
I am far, far from a NEIPA expert... but since you asked I'm happy to throw in some thoughts.

If you're talking about the NEIPA you sent me last year I certainly don't recall it lacked bitterness - and that seems a very odd criticism for a NEIPA, bearing in mind it is not a WC AIPA. Unless you're aiming to score points in a competition I'd say make the beer you want to drink.

I don't think you'll go too far wrong with your current plan. Some alternatives to consider would be to move more/all of the hops to the whirlpool, say 90-85-80 degC.

You could do your 60 or 30min boil or whatever as normal. Add some bittering hops in the boil if you like. Then do a 20 or 30 min whirlpool, something like this - and bear in mind even below 100degC the hops will still isomerise and add bitterness.
Flameout - let it cool to say 90degC and add first flameout addition.
10mins later add another whirlpool addition.
10mins later add a 3rd addition.
Finally cool as normal.

The idea is to preserve more of the aroma and trasfer more hop "stuff" to the FV for more hop flavour and aroma.

Warning, I haven't tried it - I want to and plan to, but so far I've never done more than a 10min whirlpool/hopstand (at least, not on purpose!).

Either way I think you'll make a tasty beer, certainly hope so with that many hops going in! Good luck.
 
Some alternatives to consider would be to move more/all of the hops to the whirlpool, say 90-85-80 degC.
Just to make sure this is absolutely crystal clear, when I say move all the hops to the whirlpool I mean all the boil hops...

I would say pretty much go ahead and dry hop exactly as you've outlined above 👍
 
Ok, I like that idea and I'm very tempted to go with this and I will if I can get away from the family for that long, it seems a bit more labour intensive than my plan was going to be!
 
Went for a compromise in the end and changed my hops as I had some open packs that I thought in should get rid of, 15g magnum @60, 20g chinook, apollo and tomahawk @5 and a 10 minute whirlpool at around 80c of 20g apollo, 30g tomahawk, 30g chinook and 20g cascade.

I have definitely noticed with this one and the pilsner in which I whirlpooled, the wort is much happier than simply boiling. Quite pleased so far!
 
Went for a compromise in the end and changed my hops as I had some open packs that I thought in should get rid of, 15g magnum @60, 20g chinook, apollo and tomahawk @5 and a 10 minute whirlpool at around 80c of 20g apollo, 30g tomahawk, 30g chinook and 20g cascade.

I have definitely noticed with this one and the pilsner in which I whirlpooled, the wort is much happier than simply boiling. Quite pleased so far!
You can't beat a happy wort 😂😂
 
Went for a compromise in the end and changed my hops as I had some open packs that I thought in should get rid of, 15g magnum @60, 20g chinook, apollo and tomahawk @5 and a 10 minute whirlpool at around 80c of 20g apollo, 30g tomahawk, 30g chinook and 20g cascade.

I have definitely noticed with this one and the pilsner in which I whirlpooled, the wort is much happier than simply boiling. Quite pleased so far!
Sounds good. I think Chinook and Tomahawk will give more of a classic IPA flavour but I definitely like the sound of it 👍

Good that the wort tastes more hoppy, that's the idea of the whirlpool 👍 I really want to try an extended whirlpool at some point but so many other things already on the list!
 
I
I have definitely noticed with this one and the pilsner in which I whirlpooled, the wort is much happier than simply boiling. Quite pleased so far!
I'm having a blonde day today, sorry, Pilgrim. What do you mean (not the happier/hoppier thing)? Do you mean that a hop steep at 80C gives a different hop character to chucking them in at flameout (I would agree with you there) or is it something to do with whirlpooling?
 
I'm having a blonde day today, sorry, Pilgrim. What do you mean (not the happier/hoppier thing)? Do you mean that a hop steep at 80C gives a different hop character to chucking them in at flameout (I would agree with you there) or is it something to do with whirlpooling?
Out of interest @An Ankoù , what difference do you find?

I've tried getting a "whirlpool" going in my little Klarstein but with the hop bag I use and other factors I'm really doing nothing of the sort, and certainly nothing that's going to result in a magic cone of hops and trub in the bottle of the kettle! So when I say whirlpool I really should be saying hop stand or hop steep...

I've tried both...
- Throwing in the flameout hops basically as soon as I've started the chiller, and then keep cooling all the way down to 20degC (only 5-10mins for my 12L batches)
VS.
- Cool quickly to 90 or 85 or 80degC and then do my hopstand for, say, 10mins (lid on? lid off? I don't know) and then chill to 20degC.

But to be honest I'm too inconsistent and alway changing what I'm doing to be able to say clearly for me doing it this way or that way works best - one of my plans for this year is to try try and be a bit more methodical!
 
I'm having a blonde day today, sorry, Pilgrim. What do you mean (not the happier/hoppier thing)? Do you mean that a hop steep at 80C gives a different hop character to chucking them in at flameout (I would agree with you there) or is it something to do with whirlpooling?

Apologies, thought i'd replied, yeah simply that the hop steep at 80c seems to give a different hop character, that and a good stir to get it all moving about! 👍
 
Anxious moment this morning when I had a look to see if everything was ok, nothing was happening! Arrgh! Anyway by 5pm a little crust of krausen was forming and things were moving along.

I neglected to mention that I got an OG of 1072 in just over 18l so I added 1.5l of boiled water to the fv, after diluting it should be around the 1067 mark.
 
Nice one 👍 I need to get my not-particularly-stout American Stout bottled actually (maybe today 🤞)

Then I've got a Tropical Stout of my own planned.

And then another bash at my Porter.

It's all about the dark beers :beer1:
 
@pilgrimhudd remind me again, what did you ferment the tropical stout with?

I think you wrote "us04" - was it S-04 or US-05?

Just been thinking about those numbers, 1.067 to 1.012 is 81% attenuation - which frankly scuppers my latest theory about poor attenuation in dark beers! 😂

(That said, when I've done overnight mashes before it somehow seems to produce a more fermentable wort so that might be the reason 🤔)
 
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