Boonie's Lcpa With A Difference

[thuperman]

Sorry to start "another" thread on Boonie's LCPA but hopefully my questions are different enough not to have things thrown at me for it.

I wanted to clone LCPA using Boonie's recipe (first post in this forum: http://homebrewandbeer.com/forum/viewtopic...f=11&t=4814). This would be my first extract batch. However, when I got to the LHBS (The Brew Shop in Peakhurst, NSW), I couldn't find the ingredients exactly. Being in a hurry, I grabbed what I hoped was the next best thing.

1 tin Morgans Stockmans Draught -> got it!
1.5 kg of Morgans Extra Pale Malt Extract (Liquid) -> Used ESB Extra Light LME instead.
15g of Cascade pellets - 15min -> Decided to just grab a 12g "teabag" instead.
10g Cluster pellets - 15 min -> Decided to just grab a 12g "teabag" instead.
US56 Yeast -> US05.
12g of Chinook Pellets (dry hopped at rack).

I boiled 1.5L of water and then combined that with the LME and brought it to the boil. Once boiling I turned it down to a gentle boil / simmer and added the two teabags of hops. Should I have left the hops in the teabags?

After 15min of turning up and down the stove to keep it at the gentle boil / simmer, I dumped it into the fermenter and filled up to 23L with cold water and took my hydrometer reading: 1032 (adjusted from 1030 due to a pitching temp of 26C). This was much lower than the 1042 I was hoping for / expecting. This was my first problem. Is this expected due to my modified ingredients? How could I best raise this next time?

Fermentation started pretty slow at 18-22C but I did notice 1-2 inches of bubbles on top which I have not noticed before. Instead of dry hopping after 7 days, I waited 12 as the fermemtation was still quite active. I'm now at 19 days and the SG seems to have stopped at 1012 (no change over 24 hours). This gives me a whopping 3.2% alcohol after bottle fermentation.

In my last batch when fermentation stopped early I did give it a very gentle stir with a sanitised spoon, removed the dry hops (to avoid a grassy taste) and waited a few more days. This got an additional drop of 0.004 but I'm wary of doing this all the time.

So, is there anything I can do with this batch before bottling? If not, I will RDWHAHB but I'd love suggestions on how to improve it because I've read so many good things about this recipe.

 

[waggastew]

Suggest the sample you measured the SG with was not mixed properly. Based on ingredients it will be around 4.6% after you bottle it, 4.3% if kegging.

 

[thuperman]

Thanks waggastew. That makes sense. Would you recommend giving the mixture a good stir with a sanitised spoon prior to taking the OG measurement?

I also delved a little deeper into how IanH's spreadsheet works and discovered that it's only the weight of the kit and extract that contribute to the OG, not the kit/extract itself (the different kit/extract will obviously contribute to different bitterness and colour though). I was thinking that I had stuffed up somewhere in my process which had caused the low OG. I suppose once I start steeping specialty grains, I could actually affect the OG.

 

[yum beer]

stir that shi up dude, you need to get oxygen into the wort before pitching your yeast.
Dump ingredients in, mix like buggery, take hydro reading after throwing first sample out to clear tap, then add yeast.

 

[thuperman]

stir that shi up dude, you need to get oxygen into the wort before pitching your yeast.
Dump ingredients in, mix like buggery, take hydro reading after throwing first sample out to clear tap, then add yeast.

Thanks. To get oxygen into the wort, I've been opening the tap to full when filling to the 23L mark. I suppose this has worked for the oxygen but not properly mixed the ingredients. Lesson learnt.

 

[thuperman]

Any comments on the change of ingredients? Has anyone used ESB's LME? Have I bought roughly the equivalent? Should the minor modifications to the hops change it much?