Calling All Extract Brewers

[SJW]

I have got myself a big 10 litre stock pot and am about to give my first extract brew a go. This was the recipe i was going to try, what do u think-

3kg's Liquid extra pale extract

25g of a high alpha hop (at 15min's into the boil)

20g of Tettinger (at flame out for 15mins)

150g of Viena grain steeped for 15mins & added to boil (at flame out for 15mins)

All brewed up with 34/70 Saflager

How does this sound for a first timer?

 

[user 384]

Hi SJW

Vienna is a base malt and must be mashed. If you were after some specialty grain maybe some Carapils, but it willadd little to the flavour, just more body, which wouldn't be a problem with the extract which tends to be less attenuative. You could try some fairly light crystal like CaraHell, but again with the extract you don't want to add too much extra colour.

It's not easy to make very pale beers with extract, even extra pale.

How about looking at an Octoberfest which would work quite well with the extra pale malt and some very light crystal?

Cheers
MAH

 

[PostModern]

There is no point adding a little vienna at the end of the boil.
If anything, mash the vienna (or "steep" it for an hour in the 60's C - which is the same thing) and boil the runoff for the full hour then add you extract later in the boil.

The flavour from 150g of vienna will be lost in 3Kg of extract anyway....

Maybe just go without the grain altogether?

Also what do you mean by "at flame out for 15 minutes"?

 

[SJW]

Also what do you mean by "at flame out for 15 minutes"?

After the boil

 

[SJW]

How about looking at an Octoberfest which would work quite well with the extra pale malt and some very light crystal?

Cheers
MAH

If u got a recipe i would love to see it. As i am not fussy what i brew.

 

[Rubes]

When you add the extract to the pan make sure you don't have it on the flame. You can very quickly caramelise (darked and add burnt sugar flavours) the extract as it all sits on the pan bottom and takes a good while to mix in.

Also is the extract pre-hopped? If not you may find that the high gravity of the wort means that you need to add a bit more hops. When you say high alpha hops do you have a figure?

Last thing that yeast works best around 10oC - you probably knew but just in case.

 

[SJW]

Yes RUBES its all unhopped, if u had any ideas for hop additions i am all ears.
I am just after a nice light style recipe to get into extract brewing and away from kits.

 

[PostModern]

Also what do you mean by "at flame out for 15 minutes"?

After the boil

So how are you going to pull them out after 15 mins?

If the hops are purely for aroma, just leave them in the fermenter. They won't hurt anything and will just settle out (I assume pellets) during primary and lagering. Also, considered flavour hops. Plain extract could do with some help in the flavour department. Maybe another 15-20g of tettnang about 20 mins before end of boil?

And as Rubes pointed out, you need to ferment cold with that yeast ie 10-12C. You have temp control?

 

[Snow]

SJW,

I recommend you take a look at the ale recipes in John Palmer's www.howtobrew.com

He gives all-extract versions of his beers and if you want to add extra flavour with some grains, you can take his cue from the caramel grain additions he does in the all-grain version. Hop additions and fermentation schedules remain the same.

Another tip with boiling extract is to leave at least half of it until the last 10-15 mins of the boil, to minimise the amount that gets caramelised and changes the colour. This also helps your hop alpha acid utilisation.

Good luck, mate - sounds like you're ready for the next increment in this great hobby!

Cheers - Snow

 

[PostModern]

Yeah, good call there, Snow. A basic Ale would be a much better choice for a first extract + hops brew. I'm into large partials now myself but still chuck on the odd small all extract batch for quick bottle filling or yeast propagation.

 

[Rubes]

If you are after a lager or pilsner style I personally wouldn't add very late aroma hops or dry hop. I would go with the high alpha bittering hops for 60 mins and your Tettnang flavour hops for 30 - 20 mins. Use the recipe tool or Promash to get a feel for your IBUs. You'll need to know the AAU% value of your hops. It should be labelled - if it isn't take a mid-point value for that hop type. I like my lagers clean with not a lot of floral hoppiness. Bland is a word that some hopheads might use But then again I make them piss weak at just under 4% so I can drink buckets and not fall over too often so don't listen to me.

 

[deebee]

For extract brewing, you need to take account of the high gravity of the boil when calculating bitterness. Palmer's book has a table to give you the bitterness extraction efficiency. I use that table and then enter the percentage given into grumpys hops pellets calculator to work out how much hops to use.

I also like Snow's suggestion. Just follow a recipe to minimise the number of things that could go wrong.

 

[Guest Lurker]

For my partial mash high gravity boils I also used the Tinseth table in Palmer. I ended up making quite high IBU beers and thinking I was a hophead, with 45 IBU being no problem. But the first few ag lower gravity boils I did came out a lot more bitter than I expected from the calculated IBUs. Now I have to recalibrate my palate to a new IBU scale where 45 IBU is quite bitter. It seems I was getting lower hop utilisation than indicated in the Palmer table for the partial boils.

 

[barneyhanway]

so deebee and Guest Lurker,
if you don't mind me asking, how many litres do you boil?
and are they boils of all your malt, or do you boil some and add the rest late?

I have a recipe to try, probably tonight, and had worked out the hop utilisation (using promash/Tinseth) based on all of my extract in the 60 minute boil: 3 kilo's LME, in an 8 - 10litre boil (haven't measured my pot yet, its big but I'm not sure how big - want to leave myself some headroom!)
Interested in your thoughts.

also I have 500g dextrose to add for a bit more kick (opinions?), is it better to add that dissolved into the fermenter once the wort is in, or should I bung that in the boil too?!

my first extract only brew, wish me luck!

 

[Prof. Pils]

For someone like me who was raised on the teat of VB it took a long time to get used to the taste of all malt beer. I've used less & less dextrose over the years.
If you want a pils style it will make it lighter in colour.And a bit cheaper too.
500g in the boil. Good luck.
Cheers Glenn.

 

[barneyhanway]

cheers for the reply prof pils, I'm still reeling in envy for your ag setup. one day...

I'm brewing an APA, something like this:
1.5kg Black Rock amber LME
1.6kg John Bull diastatic LME (it was on special)
500g dextrose
8 or 10 litre boil for 60 minutes
28gm NZ green bullet 12%AA @60min
12 gm NZ pacific hallertau 5%AA @10min
10 gm NZ pacific hallertau %5 AA @ flameout, sit for 10

got 8 litres of water chilling in the fridge to help me get the fermenter to the right temp, will dump the boil pot in a sink of ice to bring it down, add it to the chilled water in the fermenter, and top up to 23l.
pitching 2 packets of Muntons gold ale yeast, probably dry.
pitching temp will be a bit hit or miss like this, hope it works out.. I can chill it some more or even top up with warm water to bring it up if its too low...

fermenter will warm up over the next week to probably around 24deg (ambient), hopefully no warmer than that! might have to wet towel and fan it!
3 weeks in primary, then bottle. (no secondary fermenter yet)... going to see how this one pans out and get some more gear: a fridge, another fermenter.

never ends does it, hee hee. getting thirsty just thinking about it.

 

[Josh]

That all looks pretty good to me. The biggest problem you might face is cooling the wort down to a temp where you can pitch at 23L. An immersion chiller works well for this if you have the time and money to make one.

There are plenty of sources on the net showing pictures of home made ICs. Otherwise you should look at sitting the pot in some cold water in a tub and change the water fairly often to cool down the wort. I have contemplated sitting the pot with lid on in the pool on the first step, but haven't tried it yet.

And no, it never ends. Can't believe how well the grain mill idea went down with SWMBO. Keep your ears peeled for mates buying new fridges and offloading their old ones. I now have 3 fridges in the barroom doing various jobs at different temps.

 

[pint of lager]

With your boil, 3kg of LME in 8 litres of water will be syrupy. Rather than boil the whole 3kg for 60 minutes, boil only 1-1.5 kg of the LME with your hops.

If you boil high gravity brews, they darken alot. Pus your hop utilization is way down on high sg boils.

If you want to sanitise the rest of the LME, 10 minutes before the end of the boil, remove the pot from the stove, dump in the rest of the LME, stir really well to dissolve it and make sure there is none on the bottom to scorch, bring back to the boil for the last 10 minutes. If it is canned LME rather than bulk LME, you could dump the remaining 1.5-2 kg straight into the fermneter as it will have been treated and sanitised from the manufacturers.

Keep a kettle boiling and top your boiling wort up as it evaporates.

The dextrose could be dumped straight in the fermneter too.

A few minutes before the end of boil, pop the saucepan lid on to sanitise.

Standing the boiler in a sink of cool water works well. Keep the sink water away from the lid. Change the water a few times, and as the wort cools, gently swirl the pot so that the wort moves around, otherwise the centre stays hot. Don't use the ice straight away, let your plain tap water bring the temp down, then use some ice.

An immersion chiller would be nice, but on saucepan batch sizes, standing in a tub works fine.

Have a great evening, watch out for boilovers. These occur at the very start and when you throw the hops in.

 

[barneyhanway]

ack!
never made it to the store to get some kitchen scales so I'll have to wait 'til tommorrow night to get it on - can't measure the hops without scales!
bugger.

cheers for all the advice,
I've read as much as I can find on partial boils and I was in two minds whether to leave some malt out and add it late in the boil, or get as big a boil as my pot will handle (its a big pot, probably 19 litres), with comfortable headspace and go with all of it. Taking into account my lack of an immersion chiller (thanks Josh for reminding me of yet ANOTHER essential piece of kit I need ) and how hard it might be to crash cool.
Twas easier for me to work out the hop utilisation going with the whole lot for 60 minutes so had decided to do that - now I'm undecided again!
So many ways to skin a cat.

I worked out with my 3.1kg malt at 10 litres for 60 minutes and my hop regime above was going to give me 39 IBU's, I've read an APA should be between 30 and mid 50's, so 39 was a decent nudge towards the middle of that range for my first. Was prepared to sacrifice some colour to make the maths/boiling/hopping regime easy. I'll have to recalculate if I go with half, don't want my first one to be too bitter...

tommorrow then.

cheers again, most excellent help.
bH

 

[pint of lager]

With a big pot, you may as well stick to your original plan. I thought it was a smaller pot.

I did quite a few partials and extracts with a 19 litre pot, including dunking it in a sink to cool.

If your hops are in a 100 gm bag, you can always divide it into 5 heaps to give you about 20 gms, that should be close enough accuracy.