First brew ideas

[chemfish]

So, I'm just gettting into brewing and have a mix of things on hand and hopefully in the post from craftbrewer. My plan is to get a couple of lighter flavoured brews going to keep the old girl happy then get a few more stronger brews going for myself (the lady does not heavy beers). I have on hand the following; tins of coopers lager, cerveza and blonde with 1 box of BE1 and a brew fridge. I should be getting soon some a few kg of light DME and dextrose, chocolate and crystal malt for steeping, some us05 and s04 yeast and some challenger, cascade, EKG, nelson and willamette hops. So now I just need a few more ideas about what I should brew up first. I was thinking of the following but any better ideas would be welcome.


Cerveza tin
700g dex
300g DME
10g cascade at 15m
10g cascade at 0m
us05 yeast fridge set to 18

Blonde tin
either 50/50 dex/DME or 30/70 dex/DME
10g willie at 20m
10g willie at 5m
us05 yeast fridge at 18 degrees

Lager tin (aiming to turn it into more of an english bitters)
1kg DME
100 choco grains (light) steeped 30min
200 crystal grains (mid) steeped 30min
10g challenger 60min
10g EKG 15min
10g ekg 0min
s04 yeast around 18 maybe a little higher

 

[wereprawn]

cervesa would be an easy drinking beer for the missus. your recipie looks fine to me.

 

[damoninja]

Agreed!

Those recipes all sound good, the cerveza and blonde will both be pretty easy.
Glad to see you've done a little research and using a good yeast, controlling your temperatures and adding grains/hops.

Will make some great beer.

 

[chemfish]

I'll be happy with good beer let alone great. My craftbrewer order finally showed up so hopefully in a couple of months I'll be tasting the fruits of my labour, give it a couple of years of good missus pleasing ale and I might even be able to upgrade to kegs! beer on tap certainly gives me a happy feeling.

 

[damoninja]

I think you'll be quite satisfied with your results, you're avoiding the woes of many new brewers before you've begun!


Since you're brewing a few clear beers, something you can do at the end of your fermentation is cold crash, where you drop the temperature to 1-2 degrees for a few days. Helps settle out some of the yeast, will suit a style like a cerveza and blonde quite well.

If you want to be really adventurous, you could try re-using the yeast from Brew 1 for Brew 2 since they're the same type!

 

[chemfish]

How close to 1 or 2 degrees do you have to get to effectively precipitate the crud, it's an old fridge and I'm not sure it's going to be able to make ti down that far.

 

[damoninja]

How close to 1 or 2 degrees do you have to get to effectively precipitate the crud, it's an old fridge and I'm not sure it's going to be able to make ti down that far.

Ideally, 1-2 degrees otherwise as low as possible, it will still assist.
Just set it as low as you can go. If the thermostat has been bypassed you might be able to get lower than it's "designed" to.

Make sure you're certain it's finished fermenting, you should have 2-3 days with the same gravity.
Assuming you're brewing to 23 litres which will give you a final gravity of approximately 1.005.

Good idea to post these details when asking questions too by the way - such as original gravity, est final gravity, volume of wort in litres, etc.
Helps people help you

 

[chemfish]

Well, I started my first brew yesterday, ended up doing a 23L blonde first and decided to use the BE1 rather than start the DME so I could follow the coopers recomended recipes to see what it tastes like as base (well, I lie, I also did the willamette hope boil). Turns out it's going to be a pretty light brew as the OG was only 1.037. I didn't prechill any water and tap water only got it down to 33 degrees. Sitting it in the brew fridge for 8 hours only managed to get it to 22, would have thought it would be faster. Pitched the yeast at that point as it was past midnight, 6 hours later when I got up it had dropped to 19 degrees. Will be interesting to see how the fridge manages to hold temps.

At the moment I have a digital thermometer probe gaffer taped to the side of the fermenter and the temp probe for the fridge thermostat sitting in a 2 litre jug of water, I assume this should work ok?

 

[damoninja]

Well, I started my first brew yesterday, ended up doing a 23L blonde first and decided to use the BE1 rather than start the DME so I could follow the coopers recomended recipes to see what it tastes like as base (well, I lie, I also did the willamette hope boil). Turns out it's going to be a pretty light brew as the OG was only 1.037. I didn't prechill any water and tap water only got it down to 33 degrees. Sitting it in the brew fridge for 8 hours only managed to get it to 22, would have thought it would be faster. Pitched the yeast at that point as it was past midnight, 6 hours later when I got up it had dropped to 19 degrees. Will be interesting to see how the fridge manages to hold temps.

At the moment I have a digital thermometer probe gaffer taped to the side of the fermenter and the temp probe for the fridge thermostat sitting in a 2 litre jug of water, I assume this should work ok?

So that's a pretty radical change to the recipe, coopers BE1 is 600g Dextrose and 400g Maltodextrin. Maltodextrin is not fermentable so it will leave some "body" (but not the same way DME will) to the beer and be a little sweeter. Your alcohol might be around 4% using US05.

22 degrees is a great temperature to pitch US-05 at, it likes being brewed low (under 20) and slow but pitching a little high helps it get up and running.

Leaving wort 8 hours without pitching is not great practice, that's an 8 hour head start your yeast could have had over other microbes such as wild yeasts! You should be OK just in future try to get pitched sooner. I've pitched US-08 at 28C without issues before.

If you have a temp controller on your fridge it won't budge at holding a brewing temperature, just make sure it's not switching on/off every 2 minutes not good for the compressor.

US-05 fact sheet: http://www.fermentis.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/SFA_US05.pdf

Ghetto chilling

Ice
If you want to drop a few degrees you could freeze some boiled water in sanitised coke/juice bottles, sanitise the outside of the bottle, cut it away and drop the ice block into the fermenter. Don't use bagged ice even if it's food grade, it's clean to eat but not sterile.

Sink
Are you doing a smaller boil for your hops? I assume so. Put the pot you've boiled the hops/water in to a sink of cool / iced water, this will drop in temp rapidly as it's a small volume and very hot so heat will exchange quickly.

I used to do this with full volume all grain from 100 degrees, not fun with 20 litres but MUCH easier with a small hop boil.

 

[damoninja]

At the moment I have a digital thermometer probe gaffer taped to the side of the fermenter and the temp probe for the fridge thermostat sitting in a 2 litre jug of water, I assume this should work ok?

I missed this bit - it should be fine if you have it taped to the side of the fridge, you should use a glass thermometer in a few different spots in the fridge to ensure the reading on the digital one is consistent and accurate.

 

[chemfish]

Yeah, it was a rush job. I was just going to chill water so I could get straight to pitching temp and start the brew tomorrow but it turns out I have to go visit someone in hospital after work, that means the choice was to start then and there or leave it till next week sometime... so I got impatiant and just decided to start.
I was also going to do a 30/70ish dex/dme but decided that BE1 should be fine (hell, it's the coopers tin recipe) and since my scales decided to give up the clap I didn't want to just guesstimate how much to add. I ended up doing a 2 litre boil for the hops then using that to disolve the BE1 in afterwards.
I didn't really want to wait 8 hours but i figured it was better than pitching too early and getting some funky flavours, everything got a good dosing of starsan before the brew so it should be right, honestly I was expecting the temp to come down alot faster than that, guess the thermal mass of 23litres of water should not be underestimated.
To clarify, yes, the fridge temperature controller probe is in a jug of water in the fridge with a seperate thermometer probe on the fermentor, when I can find some styrofoam or something else insulating I will tape the controller probe to the fermenter and cover the other side of the probe to shield it from the fridge air temp.

 

[yum beer]

Just to clarify for chemfish...BE1 is 50/50 dex/malto.....Coopers Brewing Sugar is 60/40 dex/malto.
I know its only small but may make a difference down the track when measuring weights.
BE2 is 50/25/25 Dex/malto/LDM.

Looking at your recipes I would be flipping my proportions ie 70/30 LDM/Dex.
The cerveza works real well with 1 box BE1(1kg) and 1 box LDM(500gm). That gives you 500gm of each dex/malto/LDM.
I'd drop the cascade to 1 addition at 5 min. I think it will be too much in such a light beer.

 

[damoninja]

Starsan doens't kill wild yeast mate, else it would kill your US-05

 

[damoninja]

Just to clarify for chemfish...BE1 is 50/50 dex/malto.....Coopers Brewing Sugar is 60/40 dex/malto.
I know its only small but may make a difference down the track when measuring weights.
BE2 is 50/25/25 Dex/malto/LDM.

Ah, yep... Thought that was the case, someone posted those numbers in another thread here. Was probably also corrected.

 

[Alex.Tas]

stubby holder works well taped over the side of the probe

 

[Not For Horses]

Turns out it's going to be a pretty light brew as the OG was only 1.037.

Just a thought here, did you take that reading at 33 degrees? If so did you correct for temp?
If not, corrected would be 1.041.

 

[chemfish]

Thankyou, that was actually at 33 degrees, I didn't think to correct for the temperature.

I'll have a look for a stubby holder, I think there are a couple around somewhere.... Personally though I've always believed if you need one to keep the beer cold your drinking it too slow

I will try doing the cerveza with the reduced hopping, I don't want to overpower it. I was actually planning to remake a couple of brews identically and just change dex/dme ratios to try and get a handle on how they change the taste. This brings up the big problem.... so many beers to brew, so little time.... Ideally I will be able to get some cheap 5ish litre bottles at some point to make mini brews to test out recipes. Last thing I want is to try something and end up with 20 litres of something that tastes like carlton mid, last time a carton of that got left at my place it took me nearly 6 months to finish.

 

[chemfish]

Well, she be brewing now. Last night I moved the fridge controller thermostat to the side of the fermenter with some styrofoam over it and there barely seemed any activity yet, just a couple of small rafts of foam. About 8 hours later when I peaked in this morning there is a 1/4 inch of krausen on top. Looking forward to taking a peak tonight when i get home.

 

[burrster]

Good luck, sounds like your on the right path! As mentions, its best not to have such a long time before pitching the yeast, but it's done now. chill water next time and brew below 20 for a cleaner larger'ish' style, to better suit the missus. Id recommend the cerveza brew with the cascade, 15g at 15 and 5, and dry hop.(45g total)