Merry xmas bitter & twisted.
Your comments are worth quite a bit as I'm still making up my mind on exactly what I'm doing.
I'll probably make the 27th my brew day, so I'm open to suggestions until then and whatever I finally put in will probably be partly spontaneous.
I do have a couple of more questions now though. Firstly, if I boil around 100g of the roast barley in a pot of a few litres, can I throw the hops in there (I'd probably just use 1 kind) for the full 10-20 mins? Then just throw that in with the 'hot' kit and malt. Also, do I take the hop pellets back out after boiling them or do they dissolve?
Secondly, if I were to just use one of the malts what would be the estimated time for letting it mature in the bottle and what would the abv be around? And also how much bottling sugar would I use then, half or all? Thanks again for the help everyone.
jonny when using specialty grains you have to steep them first @ 80/c -ish ...for say 1/2 hour then strain the resulting liquid into a pot and you then MUST BOIL the resulting lquid for at least 5 mins 10 or more is better or you will get an infected brew...
the easy way to answer your questions is to use your recipe as an example ok...i'll explain the way i'd go about it (others may disagree...)ok here goes...
lets say you choose this recipe for example...i'll leave out the liquorice as i don't use it ok...
hopefully you'll get the idea ...
1 can of Morgan's dockside stout.
1.5 kg Liquid Dark Malt Extract
1Kg Morgans Master Blend Chocolate Malt
hops
25 g fuggles @ 15 mins
10 g willamette @ 2-3 mins
specialty grains (steeped 30 mins @ 80/c...)
150 grams Bairds Roast Barley (milled).
DCL Safale yeast US05 11.5g
SPECIALTY GRAINS
ok take 150 g Bairds Roast Barley place in a pot ...boil kettle say 2 litres water allow to cool to about 80-85 /c add grain ...take temp ..add hot or cold water so it ends up at around 80/c...put lid on pot....leave steep 1/2 hour ...at the 25 min mark boil kettle again ...strain liquid into another pot ...if you've a stock pot use this ....run say a litre of the recently boiled water from kettle over the grains in your strainer to extract any sugars that are still there.. don't squish the grains or stir them when you do this ...just rinse them ok..discard spent grains
take your liquid you've got and boil for 5-10 mins ...don't put the lid on it and watch for boil overs ok ...open can of 1.5 kg Liquid Dark Malt Extract and add say 300 ml of it to the pot (put glad wrap or something santized over the top of the rest of the can to stop any nasties getting in) ...add more water to your pot if you need to you don't want it to claggy ...bring back to boil and turn heat down a little so you don't scorch the extract ...stiring also helps...you want a nice rolling boil ok ...
HOPS
now add 25 g fuggles for 15 mins ....and then 10 g willamette @ 2-3 mins...(in other words 12 mins after you add the fuggle hops then add the willamette for 2-3 mins ...so a total of 15 mins for the fuggles and 2-3 mins for the willamette ...)
remove pot from heat put on the lid and crash the temp in a bath or body of water ...don't lift the lid up ok ...at the moment what you have inside your pot is hopefully free from nasties due to the boiling process ...
while you pots cooling take these ingredients
1 can of Morgan's dockside stout.
remaining 1.5 kg Liquid Dark Malt Extract
1Kg Morgans Master Blend Chocolate Malt
open them add them to your fermenter...add a little boiling water to thin them out if you wish or instead of crashing the pot in a water bath use that ...mix well add water to top up to 23 litre mark of your fermenter ...
YEAST
a good idea is to collect and sanatise a heap of 2 litre drinking bottles the day before brew day and cool them down in the fridge the night before ...you want to pitch your yeast at around the 18/c mark ...a few degrees here and the won't hurt but he closer to that mark you get it the better ...
before you pitch the yeast stir the absolute crap out of the wort in your fermenter ...you want heaps and heaps of froth and air mixed into it ok ...the way yeast work is this they run on two cycles...
the first is called aerobic digestion...when theres oxygen present they reproduce...this is what you want early on in the fermenting process ...get those yeast numbers high ...
the next is called Anaerobic digestion... this is when they've run out of oxygen and start to go into survival mode... and its when they'll stop reproducing and start to convert your sugars (all those malts etc..) into yummy beer...
the reason you want to ferment your beer (for ale yeast strains ) at around 18-20/c is that yeast is alive and it'll stress out or die when the temp is to high ...when they stress out... they ferment your brew differently and produce nasty fuscels (higher order alcohols ...that will taste like crap and give you a nasty hangover) so the aim is to keep your boys nice and happy ....
ferment it out around the 18/c mark ..when ready bottle (use your hydrometer to make sure)...with this brew as stated by MHB leave to condition for 6 months or so ...drink and enjoy..
thats how i'd do it anyway...oh if you can get a stock pot the bigger the better ...if you don't understand anything about what i wrote just ask...
TRY THIS LINK FOR A LONG WINDED REPLY I 'VE DONE BEFORE ...don't stress or get to confused or try it all at once ...just might be handy to have some of this info around if you need it (my post is #10 )
http://www.aussiehomebrewer.com/forum/inde...=17640&st=0
cheers simpletotoro