First Ag, Second Brew Ever!

[indeecent]

Thought I would share my first attempt at an an all grain...

It's supposed to be a dunkelweizen, but only having a small grasp on the concepts and a small knowledge of what grains attribute what to a brew I have no idea how it will turn out

some details about it so far...
OG: 1.057
FG: should be around 1.01, currently at 1.012 and still bubbling the airlock (2 weeks on, whether its just co2 being released from the liquid as opposed to fermentation is another thing...)

whole process done via BIAB method on the stove, around 20L of boil volume (done seperately as I didnt have a big enough pot)... I tried searching the suitability of doing 2 batches for the same brew, didnt come up with any concrete answers, but this seems to have worked.

If I recall correctly grain bill was..
3kg of Weyermann premium pils
2kg of munich II
1kg of caramunich II
0.2kg of carafa special II
using WLP351 yeast

hops were
tettnenger 3.5% 10g @60m, 5g@30
Hallertau 3.5% 15g@60, 10g@3

boiled water added to make up to 23L batch size

it had a slow start (took 24-36hrs to start fermenting) then after that went nuts for a few days, slowed down and seems to have stayed at that point

my god the smell from the yeast (read up about wlp351 and apparently it loves to fart... nothing like a bit of sulphur!) seems to be cleaning up the smell a bit now though.

Will leave in the primary for another week or 2, rack to keg and naturally condition for a few weeks or months...

keen to get another brew going as soon as this one is complete! oh the joys

 

[argon]

Nice one for making the jump into AG so quickly.

First thing that jumps out though cant really call it a dunkelweizen, as theres no wheat in the grain bill. Typically a dunkelweizen will have 50% or more malted wheat and make up the rest with Munich and or Vienna.

The other thing is what volume did you end up with? You said youre pre boil was 20L. With typical evap loss that would be about 17L post boil?

Regardless of brewing to style (which is fairly unimportant in the grand scheme of things), might not be an exact replica of a dunkelweizen, but will more than likely come out a tasty beer. :icon_cheers:

next time, just have a look at a couple of recipes of the style your chasing and have a read of the BJCP guidleines which is always a good resource for developing something close to what you're after.

 

[indeecent]

yeah i was questioning the exact type of beer

that said though, wort smelt spot on what i was after

pre boil yes 20L, final boil was yeah around the 17L mark


As for the jump to AG... if you're gonna do something you may as well do it right, extract brewing whilst easy, just wasnt what I was after, I wanted a good flexability in what I can add, what flavours I can get out of it, mixing a heap of grain together seemed like the way to be a bit more creative, even if the first AG wasnt anything different to things that have been done before, its more the step to it, the learning curve

 

[Pennywise]

Firstly, effin' kudos for trying a Dunkelweizen on your first AG, one of the hardest styles to nail IMO. Like argon said you'll need some wheat in there for it to be true to style, but the only time I give a shit about style is when brewing for comps.
Your recipe looks quite similar to the one out of Brewing Classic Styles (except you've replaced the wheat with more Pils malt) so I wouldn't expect anything bad from this one.
What temp did you mash at?

Oh, and welcome to AHB, where you start beer interested, and end up beer crazy :icon_cheers: B)

 

[indeecent]

Mash temp was 66-68 degrees, pretty amazed at how a covered stainless pot holds its heat over long periods!

I know what you mean with beer crazy... Trying to work out what to do next! too many options!

 

[manticle]

1 kg of cara anything is a fair whack. Was it someone else's recipe you were following?

 

[Pennywise]

Was thining the same thing

 

[indeecent]

It was a mixture of about 10 difference recipes, tried to get a jist of what people used and adjust it to suit what i was doing and had access to.

Like I said too, still not sure on what grains do what and what sort of mixtures it should have, so experimenting is what I'll do!

 

[manticle]

In future I'd look at lessening the crystal amounts. Their influence on a brew will be felt in much smaller doses (for English bitters, I'll use 500g in a 20-25 litre brew and that's the upper end of my crystal additions). They generally add sweetness and body in the way of dextrins and other unfermentables. Cara anything usually refers to a crystal malt.

With a mash temp of 66- 68 and 1 kg of crystal, you might not drop past 1012. 1012 is fine though.

Good work on getting it down. Reading about malts and what to expect, combined with suggested percentages will be a bit easier to work out than trial by error.

I reckon if you removed the caramunich altogether and replaced it with Vienna malt you'd get a beautiful drop. Still plenty malty and sweet but with some biscuit/toast and smooth maltiness.

 

[Lord Raja Goomba I]

If I may offer an opinion on recipe formulation for newbs:

I found when I was a newb AGer formulating recipes, the sheer number of everything available was completely overwhelming. Add in so many recipes, and so many beer styles I like, and you kind of take the bits you like from each and create a frankenstein beer - style wise.

It's like "ooh, I like a good weissbier, better whack in a good lot of wheat"; "I like noble hops and pilsners"; "I like a british ale"; "A nice APA is good, too" - and so on, and you end up with a bit of everything beer.

Sit down, decide on style and direction (is it sweet, sour, bitter, hoppy, what percentage of the base malt and the signature malts are standard in this style, normal hops used, normal IBUs and so on), get the best of the recipes you like, then cull almost all of that off, and make the recipe simple. Otherwise you'll end up with a beer that does too much, has too many flavours (and sometimes these conflict) and it ends up being crazy.

Alls I'm saying is don't overcomplicate things, nor re-invent the wheel style wise.

The other thing is that, if you invent recipes with a high number of ingredients at the start - you never learn what those ingredients actually contribute from your own tastebuds' point of view.

Maybe do a couple of SMaSH (single malt and single hop) beers, get an idea of what hops you like, what malts you like, how to balance a beer. I did, and learned more from that, than the dozens of 10 malt, 5 hop beers I later produced.

Goomba

 

[indeecent]

Cheers for the advice!

Will be plenty more brews to research and brew, might look at redoing this one later with a better idea too, this was more about the process than the ingredients

 

[Pennywise]

SMASH recipes are good for getting the process down pat, also an excellent way to see what each ingredient brings to the table, without having other ingredients masking it.

 

[TmC]

I noticed that there weren't a whole heap of Smash/Simple recipes around so maybe we could start a thread with some simple recipe's for people wanting to get into AG. I know the thing that put me off (only for a little bit ) was the lack of "noob" recipes for AG, it was only when i asked around that a few people pointed me in the right direction.

EDIT: Also nice work on going AG on your second brew! I didnt even know what AG stood for until about last monday

 

[Lord Raja Goomba I]

@TMC and OP - here is my SMaSH recipe that appears to be newb-proof. I created the recipe and made it when I was a newb, had another inexperienced AGer PM me about it, do it, and found it easy and the beer good (and it has even got a rating).

Smash Citra Ale

Hope this helps you out.

Goomba

 

[TmC]

@TMC and OP - here is my SMaSH recipe that appears to be newb-proof. I created the recipe and made it when I was a newb, had another inexperienced AGer PM me about it, do it, and found it easy and the beer good (and it has even got a rating).

Smash Citra Ale

Hope this helps you out.

Goomba

Apart from that one Goomba, i've got two mini batches of this already in fermenters, using 2 different hops. Smells good even after 3 days in the fermenter. Going to do your duff street darkie when the grain arrives too! :icon_chickcheers:

 

[Lord Raja Goomba I]

Apart from that one Goomba, i've got two mini batches of this already in fermenters, using 2 different hops. Smells good even after 3 days in the fermenter. Going to do your duff street darkie when the grain arrives too! :icon_chickcheers:

Don't forget to rate it, to help others out (even if the rating is bad).

The Darkie is a seriously nice beer. I think I drank about 2 bottles of it - the rest was drunk by others who got a taste of it, and cleaned me out. I'll be hiding this one for myself, this time around. I was going to enter it into the QABC, but due to others consuming it on me, I was unable.

Go to ALDI (if you have one) for the tinned cherries in syrup.

The funny thing is, I've only placed 3 recipes on the recipedb, and all of them are newb-proof recipes I've done when I had far less experience and are repeat batches (therefore replayability has been established).

Tell me how they turn out, and what the difference is between the hops you are using makes to it.

Goomba

 

[TmC]

Don't forget to rate it, to help others out (even if the rating is bad).

The Darkie is a seriously nice beer. I think I drank about 2 bottles of it - the rest was drunk by others who got a taste of it, and cleaned me out. I'll be hiding this one for myself, this time around. I was going to enter it into the QABC, but due to others consuming it on me, I was unable.

Go to ALDI (if you have one) for the tinned cherries in syrup.

The funny thing is, I've only placed 3 recipes on the recipedb, and all of them are newb-proof recipes I've done when I had far less experience and are repeat batches (therefore replayability has been established).

Tell me how they turn out, and what the difference is between the hops you are using makes to it.

Goomba

Will do, don't have an ALDI but will look around for the cherries, do you think they are noticable/and or would it still be great without them?

 

[Punkal]

Nice work on going a AB brew on your 2nd brew... I did my first BIAB on brew 3 and it turned out great.

 

[Lord Raja Goomba I]

Will do, don't have an ALDI but will look around for the cherries, do you think they are noticable/and or would it still be great without them?

I think you can get them at BiLo, Coles and Woolies - I said ALDI primarily because they are cheaper.

I think it would be pretty good without it, though.

The syrup drawn into the boiled wort adds a sort of aroma, whilst the "dry hopping" method adds some nice subtle flavour. It certainly isn't "bang, wow, cherry", neither is the honey for that matter, but everyone who has drunk it has noticed a background aroma that seems to add depth to the beer.

I think the wheat and the rye add some real nice depth, but I personally would prefer the cherries in. But it's up to you, really. I just can't speak much from experience. If you hadn't ordered it, I'd have said double the rye in place of leaving out the cherries.

Any other qu's, feel free to PM me, I'm more than happy to help out. I just don't want to derail this thread. :icon_cheers:

Goomba

 

[TmC]

Yup good point, sorry didnt mean to stray :icon_offtopic: