Guinness Clone Attempt Question :)

Australia & New Zealand Homebrewing Forum

Help Support Australia & New Zealand Homebrewing Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

jojai

Well-Known Member
Joined
17/3/08
Messages
143
Reaction score
1
Hello all, I'm new around these parts. I'm 19, a Uni student, name is Joe. My girlfriend bought me a Coopers homebrew kit for Christmas, after brewing the lager, a ginger beer and a cascade chocolate mahogany which all turned out awful (but drinkable, to me at least) I decided to do some reading. I now know how to read the hydrometer correctly, I'm writing everything down and I recently started off my first partial mash I believe it's called.

So my method was as such:
Boiled 500g of roasted malted barley for 30 min at a bit below boiling point, I strained the solids and added a can of Thomas Coopers Irish Stout, didn't boil for too long, just until it was nice and runny. In my fermenter I had a kilo of my local brew shops "Dublin Cream Mix", which I think consits of something like:
300g Dextrose
500g Brown Sugar
300g Roasted Malt Extract
400g Multidextrose
(1.5kg total)

I added my runny can contents and about 1.5 litres of hot water to the sugars, mixed it in until all the solids were disolved, filled up to 18 litres (I had to put some ice into the wort to bring the temperature down to 28). Added the yeast and sealed it. Within half an hour my airlock was bubbling every 2 seconds or so, the next day it was going even faster and now on the third day it's almost stopped all together. Here's my brewing card so far:

brewcardub3.jpg


I read that true Imperial English Stouts final gravity should be around 1020-1030 (and intial gravity 1080-1100 :S ), however the HBS I got the Dublin Cream Mix from said it's final gravity should be aorund 1012 (but that's filled up to 22L). I added the extract from 500g roasted malt barley and only filled to 18L so I guess my final gravity should be somewhere inbetween 1012 and 1020.

What I want to know is, have I brewed this too hot and is fermentation nearing completion already?

Not that I want to get pissed real quick, but I really wanted this brew to be accurate to Guinness in alcohol and therefore another component toward an accurate taste, hence why I added more fermentables and under filled it. Even at 22L the Dublin Cream Mix is meant to get a 5.5% alcohol... Hope it's brewing okay :|
 
Jojai

Welcome to the addictive world of home brewing its all down hill from here. 1020 sound a bit high but it does depend on the yeast that you are using putting your brew in to beersmith you get a SG of 1.060 and a FG of 1.015 giving you about 5.8% brew. So with a reading of around 1.024 you are getting close to your FG reading.

What temp was you brew sitting at over the last few day if it was 28deg then your brew will ferment out very quickly but you will get off flavors coming through. For an Ale try to brew at around 16 - 20deg max and you will find that your brew flavors improve a lot. With this batch leave it for a few days and then check you gravity reading again if it stays the same for 2 day then you should be right to bottle

Keep reading up on the process and you will find that you will make better and better beer. In the Wiki section of this sight their is some great reading about starting out and moving through the brewing process but the biggest this to make good beers is you fermenting temps and the yeast that you use.
 
Hey Rusty cheers for the reply. I started my brew at 28*, by the next day it dropped to 23 from there it has kept at around 22 consistently... I've tried moving it into my spare room as it feels a bit cooler there, no change in temp as yet but it seems to hold the heat really well, I live in a tiny flat with not many options for getting it cooler, I need to get some sort of cooling system I suppose :)

Oh and the yeast I used was the included stuff, is that likely poor quality?

The flavour it pretty good really, lacking initial bitterness and obviously lacking mouth-feel in these early stages but the after taste is nearly spot on to pub pulled Guinness. On that topic, is it possible to get the creamy, long lasting head of a Guinness through home brew, without gassing it in a keg? I have PET bottles and carbonation drops, is there any better priming sugar to get the desired result?

*I started at 28 because the can instructions said to start it at the hotter end of the spectrum if it's cooler and since it was 19 room temp at the time I figured I better keep it pretty hot. I've just read another thread about stouts and now realise that the instructions are shit.
 
It is possible to get a head similar to Guiness. I've had recommended to me, and have since used with great success, Liquorice extract. All HBS should stock the stuff, usually in little 30mL bottles, you only need around 10mL per batch.

To use, add to wort and mix in with your sanitized paddle/spoon just before you put the yeast in. Make sure its proper Liquorice extract from a HBS, throwing in a liquorice lolly wont work, there usually around $4, and you'll get about three batches out of one.

Hope it helps improve your next stout

Dave :)
 
your spot on with your last comment just throw the instructions away. 22 is not that bad you are not going to get that many off flavors at that temp. One thing I would say for your next brew is to buy a better yeast it cost around $4.50 for a dried Saf yeast it is a far better yeast then kit yeasts. The next step is to go liquid yeasts but I wouldn't worry about that till you can start to temp control your brew plus IMO you can put your money to better uses when you start out then spending $17 on a liquid yeast.

When I started out I just hunted down a broken fridge (for free) and froze a few 2l bottles of water that just changed them each morning before i went to work it will hold your brew around 18 - 20 deg the other thing that you can get is a 100 can cooler bag and stick your fermenter in that with a few 500ml frozen bottles

The best thing that you can do is just keep reading and ask questions everyone on here is really helpfull.
 
I have some liquorice root that I could steep some extract out of, I assume it's too late to add it?

What's a 100 can cooler bag and where can I get one? Are they expensive? I don't have room for a broken or working fridge for that matter... I barely even have room for my 60 bottles for conditioning, the plan is to finish off my studies here in Adelaide and then go to Tasmania to work as an art teacher and get a house rather than a flat, my families there too. (Hopefully I'll have enough room to make the move from kit to AG).

I have an old style "meat cupboard", thick insulated metal core with wood on the outside, used before fridges, you'd put ice in the top shelf and meat in the bottom I suppose, although I wouldn't eat meat from it, it keeps my bottles nice and cool for lagering. Unfortunately not big enough to put my fermenter in.

Everyone here is very nice and helpful :) Thanks for the tips and thanks for those to come.
 
Do a search on the old 100 can coolers. There's pleanty of info on them. I use the good old storage containers filled with water, and change frozen coke bottles each morning

keeps the brew down to around 17-19'C. does a treat. but i have also heard good reviews about the 100 can coolers
 
Hey if it makes you feel any better I just finished uni last year and became a maths teacher.

Yep don't worry about adding things to it now, hopefully it comes out nice and enjoyable as is. Just take on the advice and make the next one even better. Thats the best things about being new to this hobby, there are generally massive improvements from one beer to the next (I'm still relatively new myself).

Never tried extracting Liquorice extract from a root, if it works I'll be interested to know.

Best of luck, Dave
 
Dam you maths....


Just doing second year maths now (dam you engineering.....) and statistics is the most pointless subject i think ive ever been shown

who wants to learn about std deviation and excel functions


its hardly engineering mathematics



geez i love uni... ;)
 
I'm an excel whiz, I did a short course in IT as part of a multimedia cert IV (web site design, graphics etc) and after using Adobe Flash and actionscript to code in, Excel code seemed like times tables - only had to go to 1/10 classes to get the work done.

Just wondering Dravid, have you got a job out of it? Everyone at Uni and many of my friends and once even my dad have been very cynical about the chances of ending up in the profession that you study at Uni. I love art and like teaching it to my girlfriend and my little cousins and I always liked helping people in class etc. So I figured I couldn't go wrong in teaching, adding to this I also heard that male teachers are sought after, is the grass really that green?

Back to home brew. I think next time I might do a toucan, either that or use more extracts, definitely going to get the liquorice extract. Has anyone ever used maple syrup? The real stuff, damn expensive, but it makes me salivate at the thought of it in beer. Maybe some cacao (chocolate plant), my brother's friend works at an organic fruit store and they get in top quality fresh cacao flesh, which is powdery and pretty much like high percentage dark chocolate in taste, I reckon it would be a good addition if used subtly. Hopefully this current batch is at least drinkable :) Cheers for the tips again.
 
NB: :icon_offtopic:

one of the main reasons im doing engineering, apart from the fact that i want to make a beer dispensing robot (good old mechatronics engineering), is that there are heaps of jobs available once finished. i know there are a lot of courses at uni which you can struggle through, and then struggle to find a job at the end of it all, but then there are some which want as many newbies coming through as possible

i guess its just all up to what you're interested in and what the demand for that job is...
 
At the risk of being dangerously off topic, I hear what your saying sponge and agree, my first year was in a physics degree and spent a lot of time with engineers.(unfortunately not at the uni bar :( ) I and associated mathematicians hated stats as well.

Yeah I got a job, I was on a scholarship where they had to give me one. Though that was easy for them since not so many people like teaching maths in Campbelltown area.

Back on topic, if your bottling your stouts, it is usually recommended that you only partially prime, about 2 thirds to 3 quarters of the usual amount. So if you've been using carb drops you might want to leave them alone and use a priming scoop/teaspoon for this brew. But thats up to you.
 
Dam you maths....


Just doing second year maths now (dam you engineering.....) and statistics is the most pointless subject i think ive ever been shown

who wants to learn about std deviation and excel functions


its hardly engineering mathematics

geez i love uni... ;)

Ahh .... Engineering isn't all about designing cool stuff. A lot of it is about making sure that the production line is producing 76 million widgets all to spec ... stats are very, very, very important here. They'll also help when some of your 76 million cool widgets start not working properly and you need to tell the PHB if he should recall them or not.

Back onto beer ... stats can help in brewing too ... trends in temps, etc All sorts of stuff.

Cheers!
 
Ahh .... Engineering isn't all about designing cool stuff. A lot of it is about making sure that the production line is producing 76 million widgets all to spec ...


And to think that i thought the only bad side to being an engineer was not having any women in your course...



Back to brewing/drinking beer :chug:
 
Not a problem, I'll buy some dextrose and read the bulk prime instructions. I am so thirsty for my stouts, I put down a cascade choc mahogany before this Guinness attempt, I put coffee in with in, while it was fermenting it tasted like cold coffee, but last night I opened a bottle that looked too pressured (either I over filled it or accidentally put in double carb drops :S), anyway, the bitterness from conditioning is starting to take effect and although not a beer I could drink all day, it's getting pretty interesting.

I saw some Coopers premium aged ale or something like that in the bottle shop today, I've never seen it before. Does anyone know what I'm talking about and if so is it worth $4.00 for a stubbie?
 
...I need a second fermentation tank to bulk prime don't I? That sucks, I guess my next batch will be much better though, since I was aiming to have another fermentation tank soon, just not this week.
 
So my gravity finalised at 1022. Not as low as I wanted, but if the alcohol ends up around 5.3-5.5% after secondary fermentation then that's still pretty high. The flavour is really rich and bitter, not something I could stick to all night. I really need to brew an easy drinking session beer next.

A question about the liquorice extract, does it taste somewhat like gravel with an intensely sweet liquorice burst afterward? If so, then it is possible to make extract from the root. I boiled up ground liquorice root for about 15 minutes, filtered it through a fine cheese cloth and had a pretty dark liquid of strong taste intensity, as I described above. Not sure if it's as concentrated as the bought extract or if it serves the same purposes, but I put a tablespoon of it in with the priming sugar and I have my fingers crossed that it doesn't screw up the entire batch. (I highly doubt it'll do anything bad, considering how strong the stout flavour is, it'll ultimately overpower a mere tablespoon, but if the chemical effects work to make the head nice and creamy, then hoo-ray, I win.)
 
Back
Top