First Partial / Adding Grain + Hops To Kit

[Bjornwiser]

Ok I've brewed a bunch of kits over a couple of years and really need to take it to another level. I was going to go AG but the LHBS guy suggested a partial (fair enough).

I've gone through as many threads as I can handle figuring out what to do and have come up with this for a CPA.

Ingredients

1.7kg Coopers Australian Pale Ale kit
500g Crystal Grain
500g Malt Plus Booster (brewcraft)
15g Cascade Finishing Hops (5.7%)
11.5g Safale US-05

Proceedure

1. Add Coopers gloop to fermenter.

2. Add Malt plus Booster to fermenter.

3. Make yeast starter.

4. Add Crystal Grain to 4Lt of hot water (60 - 70 degrees) Does the grain have to be in a bag? LHBS guy said I only sparge ??? Looks like I need a bag to do this though.

5. 30 mins of grain in the water at 60 - 70.

6. Add malt juice to fermenter, straining out the grain.

7. Add extra water to top up fermenter to final volume (Can sparge grain here with the water ???) Think I have the right terminology :blink: Rinse water through grain.

8. Add hops tea bag to fermenter.

9. Add yeast.

10. Seal up and cross fingers.

Only other thing I will do that I haven't done before is siphon fermenter 1 into fermenter 2 when I get a build up of gunk on the bottom of the fermenter.



Now am I on the right track? Terminology aside . All I'm trying to do is add flavour to the CPA and I just want to try a baby step towards AG, not adding lots of different ingredience just yet, keeping it simple.

Any suggestions would be very much appreciated.

Cheers :beerbang:

 

[Steve@PMF82]

OK il just write out how i would approach things.

Sit the Coopers tin in a saucepan of hot water.

Steep your grains, they can be strained with a fine mesh strainer, then boil the resulting liquid for 10 mins.

Add this to your santised fermenter, then add your tin and brew malt , mix well with long sanitised spoon, if it does not dissolve easy add some more hot water that has been boiled (kettle)

top up with cool water, hopefully gets you around the 20c mark

You do not need to make a starter with dry yeast.
IMO it is better to rehydrate, but unless you feel you can follow the manufacturers specific method for that yeast, you should just sprinkle it evenly over the wort.

ferment at 18C

Add the hops around day 5 - 6 of ferment, leave for 4- 5 days

Cold condition for a week then bottle or keg

 

[Bjornwiser]

Cool thanks Beer4U. Simple, clear and easy to understand.

I'll be getting this started tomorrow.

Thanks for your help.

 

[bum]

Did your LHBS attendant use the word partial or are those words words above?

500g of crystal seems like way too much for that brew to me. Given the rest of your recipe I'd be thinking maybe 150g?

 

[bullfrog]

Yeah, I'd be pulling back the crystal to about 200g or below, myself.

What you're doing with this grain is steeping it. Mashing is a bit different (similar but different) in which you have base malt (not spec malt, which Crystal is) held in water at a set temperature for at least an hour. That draws some fermentable sugars from the grain. Steeping spec grain isn't really extracting any fermentable sugars, just getting some flavour from the grain.

A partial is a mixture of mashed base malt and malt extract making up the whole brew's fermentables. If you do a couple of these brews with spec grains, you'll learn how to keep grain steady at certain temps and how you can move into brewing partials and AG.

 

[Bjornwiser]

No he didn't really use those words. I've just been trying to find what category to put it in. I'm guessing it's a k&k with a few more steps to get extra flavour.

I was wondering about the measurements of grain, malt etc. Thanks for the info bum.

 

[felten]

kits and bits init

 

[yum beer]

I think you'llbe fine, you only steeped the grain.

you may find you will need to let your bottles age a little longer to counteract the strong grain taste...if you get it.



you cant do much when your LHBS give you the advice.
hope it works out fine.

good brewing.. :beer:

 

[Bjornwiser]

Yeah should be all good. The LHBS guy was talking a fair bit and some of it went over my head, I figured I'd end up with better suggestions from here.

Just wondering does the amount of Malt (Malt Plus Booster) seem right?

 

[yum beer]

I think you will end up with a slightly lower ABV than you might want.

IMO probably somewhere around 3.5 - 4.0 %.

 

[glaab]

everyone will give you a different answer, you will need to work it out for yourself after a few trial runs. I dunno what brewcraft malt plus booster is but I assume it's DME. What I would do is steep the grain [about 250g of it] and put that in a pot and top it up to about 4L, add 250g of DME to get the boil gravity to 1040 ish, get it boiling then add the hops and boil it for 20 mins. then I'd pour everything into the fermenter with further 500g of DME, you can get the coopers DME from the supermarket. a couple of kilo's of ice will bring it down to 20C. If you can manage that you should be able to do an extract next. The reason I'd boil the hops is because the CPA can has very low bitterness, especially when using all DME and some crystal malt, cheers

 

[mwd]

I would up the Brew enhancer to 1kg and drop the crystal to 250g then follow the instructions as per. Brew4U
Need to boil the steeped liquor to avoid nasties from the grain. You need 1litre of water per 100g grain for the steep.

 

[Bjornwiser]

Thanks for the input guys.

glaab, the Brewcraft Malt Plus Booster is DME... 50% malt extract, 25% maltodextrin and 25% dextrose (don't know if that makes any difference).

So 750g to 1kg of DME is the way to go.

It looks like I'm refining my process before I've even done my first batch..haha

Cheers

 

[keifer33]

The Brew enhancer isn't all DME (dry malt extract) and contains other sugars. For this brew I would definitely be adding the whole 1kg if you have it to ensure your have a higher starting gravity (OG).

If you are using 500g of the enhancer with the can and say 200g of crystal your OG will be around 1033 which is quite low where as if you use the whole 1kg it will be around 1041/42.

 

[Schober]

G'day,

Try plugging your ingredients into the Kit Extract Beer Designer excel sheet from this site. There is a procedure that is generated from the ingredients you enter. I've tried using it too, and it works a treat. I've designed an american standard lager that I'm drinking right now (beautiful),\. I'm not sure which thread it is on, but a search will help.

Cheers,

 

[Bjornwiser]

Schober, The Kit Extract Beer Designer is excellent. Didn't take long to get the hang of it and hey presto, looks like I'm brewing today