First brew tinglers

[Beil]

Hey, figured jump right into a question and intro, from what I've read on here everyone seems happy to help each other out and a bit of banter.
Haven't frequented a forum for a few years so it'll be good to have somewhere to learn aswell and not just post random ****.
I'm here in Adelaide, originally from UK until 8 years ago.. eventually I want to brew a Newcastle Brown Ale clone .

I've read and am currently re-reading john palmers how to brew, which is all good except does anyone have a metric resource for the calculations I can read?

I'm just going to go through my plan, please anyone correct or chastise me for anything I'm thinking wrong. If you can provide any calculations as to what would happen then please, I'm all ears.
Basically I'm here to learn and have no problem being told I'm wrong and shown the correct way.

I do not know what I am doing, I'm just picking ingredients at random, until I know what each will do, just like cooking.


So I've just bought the starter kit from brewcraft, 30l fermenter etc.
It came with a tin of Black Rock pilsener blonde, I figure I may aswell use that as my first base but discard the 5g yeast that came with.

My plan is to go straight to KK or kits and bits, reading is all well and good but I need to just do it.


The kit came with 1kg brewcraft brew enhancer (75%dex.. 25% malt..).

I will be purchasing the following:
(All from brew craft)
1 kg band dried light malt.
1kg crystal malted barley.
11g safale us05 yeast
25g Amarillo hops.



First I will fill the FV with 20l boiled water to allow it to cool

I will steep 250g crystal malted barley in 5l water for 1 hour. (Assume 3l remaining at end)
At 15 mins before end add 10g Amarillo hops in bag. At one hour: flame out and mix in 1kg light malt and 250g dex/malt powder.
Then add the tin of pilsener.

When all mixed together, cold crash in the sink.

In meantime add 11g yeast packet to cup boiled water that has cooled to room temp.

Add wort to FV, ensure temp is about 20deg. C then add yeast.

Close lid, airlock, put somewhere.. maintain temp about 20deg. C.



I'll get into priming and bottling later.


Cool, so please, pick this apart, this is my plan anyways

 

[Brewnicorn]

Good luck and all the best Beil! I'm not an expert by any stretch but that sounds like a good set up. I'm sure folks will dive in after hours!

 

[Coodgee]

The kit came with 1kg brewcraft brew enhancer (75%dex.. 25% malt..).

I will be purchasing the following:
(All from brew craft)
1 kg band dried light malt.

**Use either the malt or the brewcraft brew enhancer. Depends what you want. the malt will make quite a malty beer that might have a bit of residual sweetness. The brew enhancer will give a drier, possibly crisper taste.
1kg crystal malted barley.
11g safale us05 yeast
25g Amarillo hops.



First I will fill the FV with 20l boiled water to allow it to cool

I will steep 250g crystal malted barley in 5l water for 1 hour. (Assume 3l remaining at end)
At 15 mins before end add 10g Amarillo hops in bag. At one hour: flame out and mix in 1kg light malt and 250g dex/malt powder.
Then add the tin of pilsener.

** Firstly, make sure the crystal is crushed. Then, steeping doesn't mean boiling. What you want to do is boil some water in your jug. 2L should be enough for 250 grams of crystal. When the water is less than 77 degrees, add the cracked crystal either in a sieve or cloth to keep it contained. or just add it loose and sieve it out at the end. Let it steep for a while, I think 20 minutes is probably enough. try to keep it between 70 and 75 degrees approx but this is not essential. Just no higher than 77 degrees or you might extract tannins from the grain. After this time, strain the grain and the resulting sweet liquid can be boiled for an hour. At flame out, throw in the hops. put the whole 25grams in. 10 grams will do Sweet F All. then stir in the malt and the tin and poor into your fermenter. Give it a good stir to get some oxygen in there. Try to get the brew under 20 degrees before you pitch the yeast.


When all mixed together, cold crash in the sink.

**yep.

In meantime add 11g yeast packet to cup boiled water that has cooled to room temp.

**yep

Add wort to FV, ensure temp is about 20deg. C then add yeast.

**yep

Close lid, airlock, put somewhere.. maintain temp about 20deg. C.

**yep

 

[user 31093]

Down the slope always good seeing new people getting in to the hobby.
I'm certain there'd be a newcy brown recipe out there somewhere when the time comes!

First tip from me - shop somewhere other than brewcraft... What part of Adelaide are you in? There's several better and cheaper places in most necks of the woods.

Those brewcraft packs are good but offensively overpriced

 

[Beil]

Brewnicorn: Cheers .

Coodgee: yes, thats exactly what I was hoping someone would do, thanks.

In regards to the malt and BE, you say use either, do you mean literally one or the other?
Or it really doesn't matter except that different values will give different attributes?

Ah yes, I'm going to have to suss out the terminology, or read Palmer's book to confirm something, simple mistake as trying to remember something wrong, in this case would lead to me boiling the grains.
I will have to crack the grains myself with a rolling pin as I've already asked at my local brewcraft about be crushed grains and they said they didn't sell too good so discontinued.

Boiling the grain wort for an hour, will this have the hot break I need to watch for?

No need to boil the tin? Doing so will boil off any hop oils already in it?

Under 20 c to pitch yeast, got it ... the yeast will raise the temp of the wort so better to be on the lower side at this point I guess?

Everything else looks like it should be good.

Thank you.

Damoninja: I stopped smoking weed years ago otherwise I'd probably be having a go at growing that instead of this, alas my missus wouldn't approve haha. I've got my veggie patch atleast.
I had a look after you post and found one
I'm in Salisbury, so the main north road Salisbury one is closest so figured use that as local.
I will have to do my research or atleast buy a few brews so I can compare anyways

 

[user 31093]

Damoninja: I stopped smoking weed years ago otherwise I'd probably be having a go at growing that instead of this, alas my missus wouldn't approve haha. I've got my veggie patch atleast.
I had a look after you post and found one
I'm in Salisbury, so the main north road Salisbury one is closest so figured use that as local.
I will have to do my research or atleast buy a few brews so I can compare anyways

Make your way to beerbelly, more stuff, better stuff, cheaper stuff!

If you went to the brewcraft at Modbury you would have probably driven past beerbelly and weren't too far from Brew Maker which is also on NE road

 

[Matplat]

When you get to a Newcy Brown clone, you only need maybe 50g of pale chocolate, and 200g of special roast (on the assumption that you make a standard 23l batch).

This is probably a bit specific for your current stage of brewing knowledge, but I brewed the northern english brown ale in the book 'Brewing Classic Styles' (highly recommend getting a copy) expecting something similar, and it came out way too roasty from how I remember Newcy Brown.

This is just an anecdote I have stored in my memory next time I get to making a brown ale....

 

[Crakkers]

Make your way to beerbelly, more stuff, better stuff, cheaper stuff!

Yep, you're not too far from Beerbelly in Salisbury. I only use Brewcraft in an emergency, or occasionally Country Brewer - they're both pretty expensive.
Even though Beerbelly is a long way from where I live, it's still worth the drive out there if I need a big stock-up. For smaller amounts their delivery service is excellent and only $6 or so in metro Adelaide.

 

[pablo_h]

US05 yeast and amarillo hops won't make a a newc brown, also 250g crystal and a pilsner blond kit either.

You can do what you've said and make a pale/golden ale though, nothing wrong with that.
If you want to experiment further, replace the LDME with a can of amber liquid malt extract, add some choc grains to steep (50-100g), use a british ale yeast (anyone out there tried the new danstar english ale yeast - I bought a pack but haven't used it yet), otherwise windsor, s04 or one of the mangrove jacks yeasts, and ekg or fuggles hops. I don't think newc has a hoppy flavour or aroma, so 20g should do in a 10min boil (none at flameout)

E:
BCS malt bill is (roughly):
pale/light malt 2kg (so your can and the kilo of LDME should do it)
220g med crystal
170g dark crysal
100g choc malt
57g black patent malt
25g EKG hops (boil only, no aroma or flavour late additions)
s04 yeast

Or like I said, use the kit can, amber malt can, crystal malt (200g max since you're using amber malt) ,100g choc malt. Save the kg of ldme for a different brew

E2: Don't forget to buy a grain bag, have a grain mill, blade grinder or rolling pin to use, accurate scales etc
Cleaning stuff! Sodium percarbonate and starsan, and a clean trigger spray bottle (to spray utensils etc) and bottle brushes.

I don't boil the top up water anymore, I fill the fermenter with ~17L clean tap water and let stand overnight with 1/4 campden tab to get rid of chlorine and cholormine. (some use vit C tabs instead, or potasium metabisulphate powder)
Then I steep the grains at ~65C-70C for 30-45min.
In the meantime filling and boiling the kettle again
I raise the temp slowly to 70C over another 15min if it has dropped (lower temp better for flavour/sugars, higher temp better for colour)
Pull the bag up and rinse with that kettle water I boiled 30-45min ago
Bring to a boil, add the malts, dex and boil for 20min or so depending on recipe, add hops as required for flavour and aroma
Add cans contents, (so now we are talking about 5-6L), cool in the sink for 45m-1hr with 3-4 water bath refills gradually reducing temp to ~35C, then pour into my fermenter for 21-23L total volume (depending on recipe)

 

[Beil]

Damoninja/crakkers: I know research road, so beer belly would make a good after work stop as I work like 5 mins from there.

Pablo: not trying to make newcy brown this time so all good
Be good to get round to making that, I know some other geordie expats who would appreciate it.

I went and got everything today, only thing I forgot was the spray bottle, but woolies tomorrow can sort that. Already have some digital scales and digital thermometer I bought for my other hobby/craft.
And a 19L crock pot, figured get the biggest I could so I don't need to re-buy at a later date if I got a small one.

I also downloaded a 'wort homebrew calculator' to try and help me get my head around stuff.
Based on that (it said my IBU would only be 8 after I entered all the ingredients) I bought some topaz hops aswell as I'm liking really hoppy stuff, had a pint of Hop Heaven today and when looking it up saw it had an IBU of 41, I thought I'll get some strong bittering hops to add.

Not sure if those calculators are any good, but if it gives me a rough idea of what I'm making then great

 

[Beil]

All went well today, took longer than I thought though.
Boiled 10L for the FV which took long enough (ended up with 9 in the FV) and decided to use 14L in the pot for everything else. Took ******* ages to get the temp up-to 100 after steeping grains for 30 mins at 70 (cooled to 62 over the half hour).

I missed the hot break, I was expecting more foaming boil, it sort of just built up in pieces and there was a thin layer of foam, I reckon I boiled it for another 15 mins before I figured that must have been it :/.
Added 13g of topaz (17%) at 60; Then 17g at 30. Then 13g Amarillo (8-5%) at flame out. Got another 20g to add day 5 of ferment.

Tried to cold crash it in the sink, but the sink was too small for the 19L crock pot so there wasn't much water around it which heated up pretty damn fast with ice blocks packed in too, swapped them/water out like 4 times.

Just poured it into the FV which ended up sitting at 30 for ages, tried to get it under 20, but could only get it to 22 before having to spend time with missus (after spending most of the day on this) so pitched the yeast and filled the bath up to out the FV in, hoping to take a few degrees off over night.

FV has 21L in it. Lost 2L in the boil.
Ended with an OG of 1.049 @25deg. C (adjusted reading for temp)
Tasted bitter as **** lol.

Going to look at camden tabs instead of boiling the water to speed the day up. And not boiling a 14L wort!!

 

[Beil]

I was worried I couldn't see bubbling in the airlock, even though I've read to not take the airlock as a sign of anything. But 24hrs after pitching and there is a good 10-15mm krausen, funky looking stuff.
Double tightened the lid incase I hadn't actually tightened it fully, squeezing the FV moved the water in the air lock. The water in the S bend seems to be getting pushed further to the top, so I'm just going to assume there is a lot of space for the extra CO2 to build up pressure in before actually bubbling though.


(Ignore my multiple posts, and put it down to excitement at beginning a long journey)

 

[pablo_h]

Yeah I got cheap thin walled SS 15L, 20L, 40L pots back when I thought about doing AG or BIAB, but lack the heat source to use them, (or finances for an upgrade now).

For extracts all you need is a top quality 8L tri-ply stock pot. Nice and thick construction, gets up to temp quicker than the thin walled large pots and the whole process takes less time, especially skipping boiling all the water.

 

[Beil]

Atleast I can use this big pot for crabs aswell, good timing I guess

 

[mosto]

Hi Beil, congrats on the first brew. Just a couple of suggestions to make life a little easier. When doing kits and bits, you only need steep grain in ratio of about 10:1 water, ie for 250g grain use about 2.5L water. No need to boil the rest of your water, if you drink it without boiling it normally, no need to boil it for brewing. Steep grains at the temps suggested earlier for about 20 min. Then you only have to boil that liquid for about 20 min, long enough to kill any nasties from the grain. With the pre-hopped cans, ie Coopers, Blackrock etc, they've already added the bittering hops, so no need to do 60 min additions, 10-15 min for flavour/aroma is plenty. That's why it tasted bitter, you did a bittering addition and added it to something that's pre-bittered. All part of the learning curve mate. The pot you've bought is a bit big for you're needs at present, but will serve you well when you move to using unhopped extract (then you need 60 min boils) and all grain.

Cheers,

 

[Beil]

Hi Mosto, thanks for those.
In regards to water, it's just from the tap, not even filtered. I do drink it as is, but would you not boil even to try and flash off the chlorine? As was mentioned above, Camden/vit c seems like the go if I want to remove Cl without boiling?

Haha, yea maybe I shouldn't have added the bittering hops, I guess I'll find out, either way I'll drink it, got 15g of Amarillo to dry hop still to go in on Friday/Saturday (day 5/6). I'm sure I'll be onto unhopped extract, this just used up the tin that came with the FV, but as this is a cost saving excercise aswell as taste exercise, cheap tins of coopers extract with new yeast and a few extras will no doubt come into play.

As for rookie error: I had saved a **** load of 330mm stubbies to use, like about 60, I hadn't washed them out so soaked them to remove labels then went through and bottle brushed the gunk out of them, got to within the last dozen before cracking the ***** and dumping the lot and vowing to just buy some big 650mls to bottle in so I don't have to ******* clean the bastards in massive numbers (also to wash as I go!)

 

[Garfield]

Congrats on your first brew!

Sounds like these guys all had on the right track so I'm sure you'll do well.

When I was back in the KK days, a had major attenuation issues do to a few factors.

Kits can have poor fermentability due to generic choice of mash temp at their factory. One solution is to mix the can (as well as the DME/LME/BrewEnhancer) with some or all the brew water (in your 40L pot) and use this for your sixty something degree grain infusion. The enzymatic power in the grain will boost fermentability in the manufactured malts while it conversion rests for 20-45mins. Then you can boil it all and due your aroma/flavour hop additions. This would work even better with a bit of base malt as well as the crystal, since base malt has much better enzyme action.

Also remember to aerate your wort once cooled.

How's fermentation looking?

Garf

 

[Beil]

Hi Garfield, I've got a 19L pot, filling this with 14L took soo long to boil so I'd hate to try and boil 20+L.


Would including the tin and BE/malt with the brain steep, not overload (over saturate?) the water and mean that less sugars were extracted from the grains? Depending on volume of water. (Terminology is probably all to pots there, Thursday night beers)

When I poured the wort into the FV with the existing water, I put the lid on and rocked the **** out of it, so I reckon it's well aerated (although temp would have been between 30-40 I think..

I believe ferment is going good, I couldn't help myself and popped the lid two nights ago to look at the krausen, (I thought I could see black patches when I shone my torch through the lid) I couldn't; was just shadows on the krausen.
Going by the profile view through the side of the FV it's a steady 10mm now.
I've had a water bath with rotating ice packs going with a digital temp stuck in it, the readings have varied between 18-19.5 deg. C since I started it last Sunday night, which I'm lead to believe is spot on for US-05..? Water is up to the 10L mark on the FV, with a 21L fill, wrapped in a towel I've been saturating each morning.
I'm dry hopping some Amarillo's tomorrow so could always snaps a photo for the craic.
Still never seen a bubble through the airlock however, I almost wish I did, like a right of passage or some ****.

I'm tempted to buy a 25L water container from bunnings; so I can rack ready for cold crash in a week (that would aim to be 2 weeks primary, couple days secondary up-to a week (more like a week so I do it on a weekend), before cold crash for a few days (all dependent on what we have in the fridge and if it's at the beginning or end of our veggies) and get another brew on the go (and do a KK+B following a recipe, instead of going off on an uninformed tangent like with this one)

As long as I sterilise and use a tube to exclude splashing, is racking as dodgy a process as I've read?

 

[Beil]

As a little note to myself, I checked up on the IBU of the black rock pilsener is 16 IBU.
I calculated what I added as 44 IBU, so a total of 60 IBU doesn't seem too bad, I have been worrying that the first taste at OG sample was disgustingly bitter ha... maybe it will be still :/

 

[pablo_h]

Bitterness is going to die off. Won't be too bad but you may have to wait many many weeks to be able to drink it.
A few people swear by coopers kit stout toucans which is like 80 IBUs, but you have to wait months...
I don't personally like over bitter beers, I once did an IPA with a toucan coopers draught kit cans, extra hops and dry hopping. I had to wait 6 weeks in the bottle before it was drinkable.
These toucans often use kit yeast, but the good news is personally I find US05 has a sweeter finish as it not only lets hop flavour shine but I think it brings out more malt flavour and sweetness too, so it may be drinkable quicker for you.