Brewing With Hops/coldings Help

[krayzie]

hey all

i have a brewcraft kilkenny style kit and it came with 15g coldings + 15g fuggles

on each of the backs of the packets they both say to:

add bag to 500ml (2cups) boiling water and allow to keep for 10min

then prepare the brew

then add hops + coldings just before the yeast



but the website says:

10g Fuggles and 10g Goldings hop pellets. Simmer in a cup of water for 2 min then stand for 10 min before straining into beer mixture. FINAL VOLUME 20 LITRES ONLY.



also, in the instructions it says to add a total of 21L (3.5 of hot, 17.5 of cold), now does the volume of the hops and coldings add the the volume of the 21L making it 21.5 or 22L depending which instructions

and why does it say a final volume of 20L when the instructions say 21L

sorry if this sounds like a bit of a newb question/rant

thanks for all your help guys

 

[phonos]

The instructions on the can are generic instructions, whereas the website instructions are specific to the type of beer you are trying to clone. Follow the website ones and make it up to 20L.

I'm assuming that everywhere you've written "coldings" you mean "Goldings" and it is just a spelling mistake.

What I would do is (assuming there is no grain):

1) Dump your tin of hopped malt extract into your fermenter and use hot water to rinse out and risidual malt extract from the tin. Gently stir.
2) Add your sugar/dried malt to your fermenter. Ads about a litre of hot water. Gently Stir
3) Put your hops in a mug and fill with boiling water from your kettle. Leave for ten minutes then add to your fermenter. Gently stir
4) Fill your fermenter with cold water to the 20L mark, thoroughly mixing and aerating once you pass the 10L mark.
5) Add yeast.

 

[Snow]

I would recommend you do not put your aroma hops in boiling water. This will speed up vaporisation of the aromatics. Just put them in room temp water for a few minutes (2-3) and tip into the fermenter.

- Snow

 

[krayzie]

yes sorry, Phonos the packet was really hard to read as the etching on the packet was coming off

so do i put the goldings in the same mug?

thanks for the tip snow!

does this sound right?

1. malt into fermenter with 1L of hot water
2. add dextrose with 1L of hot water
3. stir
4. add 500ml of water with hops
5. add 500ml of water with goldings

bringing the total amount to 3L

then do i only add 17 of cold water?

thanks again guys

 

[mesa]

Personally I would use the boiling water. Dry hopping (adding hops once the wort is cold) is not entirely interchangable with adding it to hot water. With a 10 minute steep you will still be getting some bitterness from the hops and I wouldn't want to loose that if the kit designers intended it. It doesn't matter if you use 1 cup or two cups, but if you do it all in one, try to do it in a 1L jug rather than 2 cups (so that you get twice the water) Hop extraction is dependent on concentration. I'd probably add the cold water to the fermenter before adding the hops, mostly so I wasn't sitting around so long.

 

[krayzie]

ok so do i only add 17 L of water then?

 

[Bugglz]

Yes, 20Lt final volume.

 

[krayzie]

thanks!

sorry

1 more question

do i leave them in the bag when i put them in the fermenter

 

[buttersd70]

thanks!

sorry

1 more question

do i leave them in the bag when i put them in the fermenter

hops in a teabag? yeah, leave them in the bag. Nice and easy. No floaties (not that this is really a problem, they settle out anyway.)

The teabags are good when starting out, cos of the ease....But for cost, you might want to consider just buying hops from lhbs or a sponser, and tossing them in as-is. $3 for 12g vs $7-8 for 100g.

As far as steeping is concerned, it also depends on whether you are more after flavour or aroma. Both steeping in hot or chucking in dry/steeping in ambient will give both flavour and aroma....but the hot steep will favour flavour, and the dry/ambient steep will favour aroma. But, for a newbie, even a hot steep will make you go "god, that smells hoppy!".

One of the great things about hops is that, due to the inherrant anti-bacterial nature of the hops (which in the 17th/18th century were used as a preservative more than anything else), you don't need to sterilise/sanatise them by boiling (as you would do to most anything else added to your beer.) Palmer says "....hops dont cause infections. They just don't."