# RecipeDB - Beginner Hops



## eddy401 (5/9/10)

Beginner Hops  Ale - American Amber Ale  Kit & Kilo                      Brewer's Notes ******* the hops i used are CITRA, not centenial, citra is new so it wasnt one of the options in the list.***********1.7kg can of coles lager (next time id use something like coopers canadian blonde)1kg Brew enhancer 21kg LDME (i used more like 750g, i dropped some)US-05 yeastSo, get 5L of water boiling on the stove, add 500g Light dry malt extract, add 20g Citra hops, let it boil for 20 mins, then turn off the heat and let it cool for 5 or 10. add to the fermenter, (some people like to strain out the hops, just make sure its sterile if you do) add the other ingredients above, pitch the yeast and let it ferment for a week or two.    Malt & Fermentables    % KG Fermentable      1.7 kg Coopers LME - Light    1 kg Generic DME - Light    0.75 kg Generic DME - Light    0.25 kg Dextrose       Hops    Time Grams Variety Form AA      20 g Centennial (Pellet, 10.0AA%, 20mins)       Yeast     11 g DCL Yeast US-05 - American Ale         23L Batch Size    Brew Details   Original Gravity 1.057 (calc)   Final Gravity 1.014 (calc)   Bitterness 12.8 IBU   Efficiency 75%   Alcohol 5.59%   Colour 12 EBC   Batch Size 23L     Fermentation   Primary 7 days   Secondary 7 days


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## kocken42 (5/9/10)

Hey Twardo,

Looks like a good easy recipe for the beginner!

In your recipe, I noticed that you gave advice on the boil saying to start the 60 min boil, wait 40 mins, then put the hops in for their 20 min addition...

If you only have one hop addition at 20 minutes, your boil only needs to be 20 minutes long, so as soon as that wort starts boiling, throw in the hops and wait 20 mins and then turn off...extra boiling is just wasting time and water.


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## eddy401 (5/9/10)

oh really i didnt know that! thanks :icon_cheers: 



My Little Pony said:


> Hey Twardo,
> 
> Looks like a good easy recipe for the beginner!
> 
> ...


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## bum (5/9/10)

My Little Pony said:


> In your recipe, I noticed that you gave advice on the boil saying to start the 60 min boil, wait 40 mins, then put the hops in for their 20 min addition...
> 
> If you only have one hop addition at 20 minutes, your boil only needs to be 20 minutes long, so as soon as that wort starts boiling, throw in the hops and wait 20 mins and then turn off...extra boiling is just wasting time and water.



Yep, but only for extract beers, obviously. Probably not wasting all that much water though. If boil off was 1L in that time I'd be a little surprised. 

Looks like a good'un, twardo.


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## eddy401 (5/9/10)

ok i fixed the instructions, thatll save me a lot of time in the future (well until i start using more than one hop or ditch the kits of course)

cheers


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## eddy401 (10/10/10)

just in case anyone reads this in the future;

i just tried a 'little creatured bright ale' for the firs time, and i think this recipie is pretty close to tasting the same, so if this is what you are looking for give this a go and tweak it with whatever you think itll need, or if you are gonna make your own LC Bright ale citra hops does the job!


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## Bribie G (10/10/10)

I've only done three extract brews in my career so no expert, however whilst I can see the clear necessity of boiling hops with a portion of the extract plus water to get good utilisation, personally I see no point in boiling the whole extract for ages, it's already had the bejasus boiled out of it at the factory as wort, then boiled again under low atmospheric pressure to concentrate it to a syrup, and LDME has been further insulted by being sprayed and dried in superheated air.

(edit: point being that TWARDO is good here, anyone looking at going all-extract is often confronted by statements by some of the Gods of Extract (Palmer, etc) that indicate you should boil 25 L of extract wort for an hour for some ungodly reason)


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## manticle (10/10/10)

Maybe because twardo's uses a pre-bittered kit whereas palmer is talking about bittering additions (explains the hour)

If you're talking about volume I guess there's a number of ways to do it. Full volume is practice for full mash but also boils all of the water. Depending on your water supply, that may or may not be necessary.


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## MaltyHops (10/10/10)

manticle said:


> Maybe because twardo's uses a pre-bittered kit whereas palmer is talking about bittering additions (explains the hour)
> ...


This being the case, would boiling a portion of the kit wort (1 or 2 litres, say) rather than
the entire 5 or more (before topping up to final volume) with the bittering hops additions
achieve the same goal? This would save gas/electricity and make it less hard to cool the
wort down to pitching temperature.

T.


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## manticle (10/10/10)

Perfectly legitimate way of doing it. Just make sure the boil is around 1030-1050 for optimum hop utilisation and add the rest of the extract 10 minutes before the boil ends to help dissolution and sanitation of the extract. Top up with cool water. Depends on your water supply - if you'd be happy to use it straight from the tap in a kit brew then no problem.

Sorry I misread- I thought you were talking about full volume extract versus small volume extract with top up..

You need to operate on the same gravity as the recip in order to get similar hop utilisation. The principle is the same as I mentioned above so you'd need to use the proportionate amount of the can. Chilling 5 L is no biggie and I think the gas/electricity would be negligible compared to stuffing around with x-fractions of a tin. Could be done theoretically but not sure I'd bother.


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## MaltyHops (10/10/10)

Good things to keep in mind. I try to keep the time between heating off for a pot
of kit wort (plus whatever) to pitching as short as possible without using any sort
of separate chilling gear and as little cold water bathing as possible so keeping the
volume being boiled (_which I get up to about 80C - 90C for a few minutes - is this
enough?_) low helps this.

I use water from an "under sink" (quoted because see pix) water filter and seem to
do ok. If need to boil kit wort because of tap water quality, might be good to boil
just the water and cool/chill beforehand again as a way to get to pitching temp
quickly.

I normally chuck everything (kit goo and some water) into a big pot for boiling and
convenient thorough mixing before putting into a fermenter and topping up (more
accurate SG readings) and it would be easy enough to tip out a little bit into another
pot, dilute to the required 1030-1050 SG for hops boiling over a longer period.

T.


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## bconnery (10/10/10)

MaltyHops said:


> This being the case, would boiling a portion of the kit wort (1 or 2 litres, say) rather than
> the entire 5 or more (before topping up to final volume) with the bittering hops additions
> achieve the same goal? This would save gas/electricity and make it less hard to cool the
> wort down to pitching temperature.
> ...


This is exactly what I used to do in my kit and extract days...


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