Aussie Ale

[Calais_5sp]

Will be putting this batch down tomorrow as i am keen to taste pride of ringwood as a finishing hop cause it just smells bloody awesome to me.
Anyway i only have 30gms left of it so ill try centenial as a bittering hop cause of its high AA and i have heaps of it.

300g caramalt
1kg ldme
1 coopers lme
20g centenial @ 40min
15g POR @ 15 & 5min
US05

What do you guys think. Any alterations i should consider, maybe some dex to even it out?

 

[kegpig]

i would do a 60 min boil on the centenial

 

[Nick JD]

If your coopers lme is 1.5kg you might still want say, 500g of dex just to bring the alc up closer to 5% if this is a 23L+ brew. It'll thin it out a little too with a lower FG (not by much though).

 

[manticle]

I'm in the same camp. All malt brews (extract that is) have a tendency to finish sweet and a little cloying. When I brewed extract I struggled to get much below 1020 as an FG. They still made nice beers but for something like this you probably want some dryness in there.

Centennial has a very strong citrus characteristic (which is tasty) so dependent on whether you want that in there or not maybe drop back to something between 60 and 45 minutes for the bittering addition (if bittering is all you want the centennial to do). Are the colour and IBU where you want them? Utilisation will depend on how much water and malt you boil up too.

 

[Rod]

Will be putting this batch down tomorrow as i am keen to taste pride of ringwood as a finishing hop cause it just smells bloody awesome to me.
Anyway i only have 30gms left of it so ill try centenial as a bittering hop cause of its high AA and i have heaps of it.

300g caramalt
1kg ldme
1 coopers lme
20g centenial @ 40min
15g POR @ 15 & 5min
US05

What do you guys think. Any alterations i should consider, maybe some dex to even it out?

After reading a post about the difference between using dry malt and liquid malt , assuming the coopers is liquid

I ask , from interest only and education , why would you add both and not all dry

 

[Screwtop]

Will be putting this batch down tomorrow as i am keen to taste pride of ringwood as a finishing hop cause it just smells bloody awesome to me.
Anyway i only have 30gms left of it so ill try centenial as a bittering hop cause of its high AA and i have heaps of it.

300g caramalt
1kg ldme
1 coopers lme
20g centenial @ 40min
15g POR @ 15 & 5min
US05

What do you guys think. Any alterations i should consider, maybe some dex to even it out?

Lets have a look:

OG guestimate around 1.038
LDME 1.5Kg fermentability guestimate around 72%
FG guestimate 1.012
IBU Guestimate around 20IBU
ABV around 2.7%

So if thats the beer you are looking for, all is good. Will be a low ABV AU/USA hybrid Pale Ale bittered using American Bittering/Finishing hops and finished using Australian Bittering Hops. Sweetness/bitterness balance should be ok.

As you asked what do we think:
POR for finishing would probably the least favoured of any finishing hop, and probably this combination would also be fairly unpopular.

Could try upping the LDME to 1.5Kg adding 250g of table sugar (yes I said sugar) to last 15 min of the boil to raise fermentability. Up the Centenniel to 30g add 15g Amarillo for 20 min and 15G of Cascade for 15min. Would have a bitterness of around 30IBU and OG of around 1.050 finishing around 1.013 for an ABV of around 4.5 maybe a bit better balance and more like an APA. My 2cw

Screwy

 

[Calais_5sp]

thanks for the replys guys, its pretty interesting to see what it works out to be.
still not sure how to calculate things up as im still a beginer, and the hops being such a high AA i didnt want to boil them up for too long and end up with a beer that is too bitter.
as for the ldme, only using it as its easier to measure out 500g to 5L of water for the boil.
also what would the gravity be if i steep 300g caramalt in 2L water then strain it out to 5L to use for the boit. would 500g of ldme be too much to add also.

 

[manticle]

Go to beer recipator.org and click on the spreadsheet. Use this to calculate your additions, ibu, gravity etc. It has a carbonation calculator and hydrometer tempertaure correction too. Simple to use and user friendly.

Alternatively a user here called ianh has developed a spreadsheet for kits and extracts. A search should bring it up.

A lot of people here use beersmith. While there is a small cost involved in owning the software you can download a fee trial version.

Otherwise you can go old school and research the equations for sorting this stuff out. Ray Daniel's 'designing great beers' is one text which tells you how.

 

[glennheinzel]

and the hops being such a high AA i didnt want to boil them up for too long and end up with a beer that is too bitter.

The easy answer to that is use less hops! As a rough idea how it works, instead of doing a 40 min boil with 20g of hops, perhaps you only need to use 16g of hops in a 60 min boil. Therefore you are saving money on hops whilst still hitting the same level of bitterness. (this was just a rough example - I didn't actually calculate anything).

Of course people do deliberately use hopping schedules such as yours. Using more hops with less than 60 minute boil contributes more flavour to the beer whilst still giving you the bitterness you need.

As noted by others, Centennial is way more popular than POR as a finishing hop. Of course that doesn't mean that your hop schedule is wrong, it just means that others prefer it the other way.

Perhaps having centennial as the aroma hop would be changing the beer from a Australian Pale Ale (which you want) to an American Pale Ale (although perhaps there are other issues besides hops being used)? We'll let the style nazi's argue that one out. h34r:

 

[Calais_5sp]

thanks fellas,
will give that spreadsheet a go, prob why my last few attempts at extract with my own recipies came out somewhat ordinary but drinkable.
ended up putting this down yesterday.

300g caramalt
1kg ldme
1 coopers lme
330g dex (all i had left)
20g centenial @ 60min
15g POR @ 15 & 5min
US05

tasted it when taking OG reading and it was pretty much spot on on IBUs and hop flavour to how i wanted it to be.
will let you all know how it turns out in a few weeks time.

 

[Calais_5sp]

Its been about 6 weeks now since i bottled this batch and it actually didnt turn out too bad.
still could do with a bit more hop flavour tho.
centenial wasnt the best idea for a bittering hop as it left a pretty strong citrus flavour which kinda overpowers the por the longer it sits.
but still a very drinkable beer.

put another batch down today but with a few different additions.\
hopefully this one turns out more to what i was chasing.

250g light crystal
500g dex
1 can coopers lme
1 can morgans wheat malt
25g POR @ 60min
15g POR @ 30min
20g POR @ 15min
may dryhop with 15g also
us05 @ 18C

what do you guys think.

 

[manticle]

Not to say you shouldn't try it - some people like PoR as a finishing hop but for many it's used purely for bittering. Definitely a better idea to do a single hop brew though to get an indication of what it brings.

Otherwise the combo of PoR, wheat and a bit of sugar is a good one.