Help - First Fresh All Grain Wort Kit Centennial Cascade Sauvin Brew

[beto]

Hi,

Need some advice on a new brew I am looking to do in next few days.
I bought a 17 litre ESB All Grain Cluster Pale Ale fresh wort with Safale US-05 yeast.
Bought 12g of Cascade, 12g Centennial and 12g Nelson Sauvin hops.

Looking to do the following with any advice from you guys would be great.

Letting 12g Centennial hops steep.

Adding the steeped Centenial hops to the wort with the rehydrated yeast + 4 litres of water.

When fermentation is complete will do the following dry hopping:

Put 17 litres of the wort for a secondary fermentation with 4g of Nelson Sauvin for 7 days.

With the remainding 5 litres in the original fermentation container with yeast still in I will add 4g of Nelson Sauvin and 4g of Cascade and leave this for 7 days as well.

Then bottle both with carbonation drops.

Please let me know if I am doing anything wrong or any advice on changing the above process of dry hopping for the secondary fermentation and bottling with the carbonation drops.

Any help grateful.

Thanks

 

[beto]

After reading some nochilling methods. Decided to change the above and do the following.

Place fresh wort overnight in fridge.
Boil 3 litres of wort and add 12g cascade at flameout.
Combine the cold wort with the boiled wort in fermenter and pitch yeast.
After 4 days dry hop 8g of nelso sauvin and 8g of cetennial in the fermentor.

Any problems with this? Should I look at doing anything else?

 

[luggy]

I hope someone with more knowledge answers your question but no one has so far, I'm not sure why you're boiling wort separate to your main boil, you shouldn't need to do that. You should be able to do a boil with your hop schedule and dry hop in the fermenter, or cube , allowing for no chill of course.
I'd be wary of doing a smaller boil and adding it to my fermenter after id pitched my yeast.
Hope that helped, I have had a few today

 

[carniebrew]

Beto, what are you trying to achieve? Do you want to add IBU's to the FWK, or simply add some more hop aroma? It all sounds a bit complicated to me. From your first post, I would have said that 4 grams of Nelson in 17 litres of beer would do stuff all. Now you're suggesting re-boiling some of the wort, but it's already been through a full boil, so I don't think it's worth it to be honest.

Why don't you just add 4 litres of boiled then cooled water to the 17 litres of FWK, ferment it out, and at the end of fermentation, dry hop the entire 21 litres with all 36 grams of your hops? That's roughly 1.5 grams per litre, which should work nicely enough for this style.

If you're really keen, make a hop tea with some of your hops and boiling water, use french pressing or something like that?

 

[beto]

Thanks for the replies. Just read from a post about late hopping by argon here http://aussiehomebrewer.com/topic/55801-late-hopping-and-no-chilling-guide/ where he boils up some wort for late hopping.

I just want to add some hop aroma as read that the FWK hops need a little kick as they will have been lost. Think will keep it simple
and do as you recommend and just dry hop after fermentation maybe with a hop tea.

Would the full 12g nelson sauvin be a bit too strong for the brew. I have read that it can be quite overwhelming.

Thanks

 

[luggy]

Keep it simple mate, you do don't want to be doing too many things at once, especially if you're new to brewing. I'll leave it to others here to say what you should do re: no chill, but I think that someone else will chime in on that account.
All the best mate
Happy brewing

 

[philmud]

Thanks for the replies. Just read from a post about late hopping by argon here http://aussiehomebrewer.com/topic/55801-late-hopping-and-no-chilling-guide/ where he boils up some wort for late hopping.

I just want to add some hop aroma as read that the FWK hops need a little kick as they will have been lost. Think will keep it simple
and do as you recommend and just dry hop after fermentation maybe with a hop tea.

Would the full 12g nelson sauvin be a bit too strong for the brew. I have read that it can be quite overwhelming.

Thanks

The Argon Method is only warranted if you're starting with hot wort. The principle is that adding hops late in your boil doesn't have the desired effect (flavour, aroma) if you no chill, because the heat continues to destroy the relevant hop oils. The argon method recommends boiling a small portion of wort and simulating these late additions because it's easier to cool 3L of wort than a full batch. Your fresh wort kit was most likely chilled, so this flavour/aroma should be present.

In terms of the amount of NS, are you familiar with this hop? It seems to be one that some brewers dislike, but if it suits your palate, 12g doesn't sound excessive. The first couple of dry hopped beers I did I was too light on and I may as well have not bothered. My honest advice would have been to ferment the FWK as is the first time around. That way, when you do add dry hops you'll get a better sense of what they bring.

That said, the kettle is round and the game is long - you'll have plenty of opportunity to experiment!

Edit: minor correction