IPA and Porter recipes: steeping grain

[Mick Chopps]

Done a couple of extract only batches as an introduction to brewing with some dry hop additions and looking try steeping some grain into the next batch of brews.

After advice or recipe suggestions for an IPA and a Porter.

For the IPA I was looking at the following
1.7kg Black Rock Pale Ale can
1.7kg Black Rock light malt can
200gm caramalt
200gm Chrystal grain
Hops. Heaps of hops. Haven’t decided what yet, maybe mosaic/cascade/simcoe, totalling ~100-150gm
Mangrove Jacks M44 ale yeast
Brew to 21L

Thoughts on the grain for steeping? If I wanted to boil in some of the hops for bettering, can I do that while steeping the grain? What volume of water am I going to use to steep the grain? Have I missed anything?


As for a Porter.... bit vague on this.
2x Black Rock Dark can
200gm cracked chocolate malt
Would love to steep some coffee malt if there’s a cracked one available???
Hops - Goldings or Fuggles? Volume?
Vanilla extract? Volume?
Yeast? No idea...
Brew to 18L

After a rich vanilla mocha Porter. Same questions apply and if I’m way off and need to scrap the whole thing then don’t be shy with the hard truth!

Thanks in advance!

 

[hoppy2B]

Hi Mick,

What size pot are you using? You can get a 19 litre stainless pot from Big W for about $20. You don't need to fill it all the way if you aren't able to boil that volume, but having a large pot is handy, and you will probably find you need it down the track if you are serious about brewing.

The grain is normally steeped in warm water, not boiling hot. The grain is then removed and the water is boiled. You can boil hops for various lengths of time depending on the kind of flavour you want to get out of them.

I usually recommend boiling all the water you use, although I know directions on Coopers cans say to fill up fermenter from the tap etc. You can use the Coopers Lager can for your recipes. It has a low hop bitterness and will work out cheaper than the Black Rock. You don't need to get a dark can as the spec grains you add to it will give the lager can the colour of a Porter.

There is an online book you can read called 'How to Brew' by a fellow named John Palmer. It is free, and I suggest you read it to get a good knowledge of brewing.

For your porter, steep 100 grams of dark crystal with your 200 grams of chocolate malt and you should be right. Maybe 50 grams of roast barley would be good too.

 

[Mick Chopps]

Thanks for the response hoppy2B!

Further to your advice and just for clarification, I would only boil the wort for the purposes of hop bittering in this instance? If I was to dispense with the bittering I wouldn’t need to boil the wort once the grains had been steeped?

My biggest pot is 9.5L, would that suffice in this instance? My intention was to steep the grains in about 7-9L, based on the experimental data contained in How To Brew I estimated this would be sufficient for the mass of grain I’m steeping. And would them just top up the volume with cold water in the fermenter.

Also, is the lager can going to give then me “fullness” I’m looking for in the Porter? I really do want this to be quite a rich brew, will the steeped grains be sufficient?

Thanks again!

 

[Mick Chopps]

Was also thinking of adding 100gm of carapils to the IPA for head retention.

 

[kalbarluke]

After a rich vanilla mocha Porter. Same questions apply and if I’m way off and need to scrap the whole thing then don’t be shy with the hard truth!

Thanks in advance!

You could scrape the insides of a vanilla bean into a shot of vodka and add it to the fermenter. That’s a better solution than adding vanilla extract IMHO. You can buy vanilla beans from the spices section of your supermarket and the vodka just helps sterilization.
I used to find that a little bit of lactose (about 100g) went well in a porter. It makes it a bit sweeter and smoother, but don’t over do it otherwise it gets a slimy mouthfeel. Less is more.

 

[Mick Chopps]

Finally got to brewing these yesterday, about a month after I'd hoped! Used a couple of recipes I found over in the recipe forum and tweaked a little bit.

West Coast IPA:
1.7kg Black Rock Pale Ale
2kg Generic Light DME
500gm Caramalt/100gm Carapils steeped for 35mins at 65-70c.
Hops ~12.5gm each of Galaxy/Cascade/Simcoe at 30min and 15min.
Will dry malt with 25gm of each of the above at Day 6 fermentation.
US-05 yeast pitched at ~25c.

Robust Porter:
1.7kg Tooheys Lager
1.7kg Black Rock Light LME
500gm Generic Dark DME
200gm Chocalate Malt/100gm Coffee Malt/100gm Dark Chrystal/100gm Roasted Barley - steeped for 35min at 65-70c
Hops ~12.5gm each of Fuggles and Goldings at 15min and flame out.
100gm maple syrup
M42 New World Strong Ale yeast, pitched at ~25c.


I'd love for anyone with a bit more knowledge of the bittering calculations to give me a rough idea of the IBU's on the IPA. The recipe I based it off had IBU of 60, but I don't expect it to be that high with this brew... I've tried to work it out using the calcs described in howtobrew but it's all a bit much for me just at the minute and I'll need to have a much more in depth read of it.

 

[kalbarluke]

To check IBU calculations, download (the excellent) Ian’s spreadsheet if you haven’t already and plug your recipe into that.

 

[Mick Chopps]

Where can I find it exactly?

 

[burrster]

On this forum, under kits and extracts. It's a sticky thread, so is right up the top if the list, and the latest version is linked in the first post I believe. It's an excellent tool.

 

[Mick Chopps]

cheers

 

[Mick Chopps]

Bottled out yesterday. Fantastic straight from the keg, can’t wait to try in a month or so!

 

[hoppy2B]

Thanks for the response hoppy2B!

Further to your advice and just for clarification, I would only boil the wort for the purposes of hop bittering in this instance? If I was to dispense with the bittering I wouldn’t need to boil the wort once the grains had been steeped?

Also, is the lager can going to give then me “fullness” I’m looking for in the Porter? I really do want this to be quite a rich brew, will the steeped grains be sufficient?

Thanks again!

Yes, the water that you use for steeping the grains is boiled to kill any microbial life that might otherwise infect your brew. In practice, heating the brew to 80 degrees is probably enough.

You should get some fullness from the steeped grains. You could always use a lower attenuating yeast if you don't get enough body this time around.

Both your recipes look pretty good, well done.

 

[SwiftyS]

Hey mate I'm just ahead of you in doing AG and Partial Ex my one pierce of advice at this stage is download the beersmith app on your phone. This site has recipes information and best of all you can save them and they give you the presise times to add this or that you can also do your own recipes and change our tweek anything. You set your profiles and it will give you matching recipes. Great fun to use and a great tool for beginning your journey. Cheers Sean