Kit N Bits Recommendations

[pete6]

I have some leftovers to use up before i intend making a move away from kits.... i've been making kits n bits for a while now with recipes from my LHBS, and although these are doing well by me, i like to experiment, and i cant get the extract spreadsheet i downloaded off here to work for me

so i have in the house

Blackrock East India Pale Ale tin
1kg light DME
1kg dextrose
250g powered corn syrup
about 40g Crystal 40
about 40g Amarillo pellets
50f Nels Sauv pellets
about 10g cascade pellets
and a US-05 yeast

I was thinking of putting on a 30 minute boil with a combo of light DME, and dextrose to about 1.25kg (900g light DME and 350 dex) and randomly adding hops to it at 30/15/10/5/0 and dry in some order with some combination of the above hops. i like a big hoppy aromatic and flavoured beer and that what im going for.

Looking for advice and suggestions! Anyone who has played with the kit before have any suggestions, i would very much appreciate it!

Thanks - Pete

 

[pete6]

oops - wrong forum -

please move to kits and extracts

 

[Charst]

I have some leftovers to use up before i intend making a move away from kits.... i've been making kits n bits for a while now with recipes from my LHBS, and although these are doing well by me, i like to experiment, and i cant get the extract spreadsheet i downloaded off here to work for me

so i have in the house

Blackrock East India Pale Ale tin
1kg light DME
1kg dextrose
250g powered corn syrup
about 40g Crystal 40
about 40g Amarillo pellets
50f Nels Sauv pellets
about 10g cascade pellets
and a US-05 yeast

I was thinking of putting on a 30 minute boil with a combo of light DME, and dextrose to about 1.25kg (900g light DME and 350 dex) and randomly adding hops to it at 30/15/10/5/0 and dry in some order with some combination of the above hops. i like a big hoppy aromatic and flavoured beer and that what im going for.

Looking for advice and suggestions! Anyone who has played with the kit before have any suggestions, i would very much appreciate it!

Thanks - Pete

if you use every bit of extract/dme/sugar et you have your looking at around 1055 for 21 litres by my calcs.
You'll need to work out the total IBUS in your Black rock can and divide by your total liquid.
But if I was you id chuck it all in and make a big american IPA.
6.5% Alc by my calc and decide what hops you want.
If you really want to do it properly find a beer recipe calculator spreadsheet that works for you they are around this site.

once you know what IBU you have you can decide how early to start adding hops additions. I assume the hops for an IPA Can would be higher so id start adding hops every 5 minutes from 30 mins but start with lower IBU hops and being all those hops would go together, particularly the amarillo and cascade id be mixing portions of each and ramping the amounts higher with every 5 minutes. you have 100g total of hops and id save 30-40 odd grams for a dry hop if you want to dry hop then split the rest between your additions.

but in reality if your making an American IPA 100g of hops won't be over the top IMO. its all up to you what additions, get a spreadsheet to calc it up.


Edit: Can you tell us what AA% the hops you have are?

 

[iralosavic]

A kilo of dex would ruin an ipa in my opinion. The IBU specified for the can is based on per kilo, so for a 1.7kg can the formula is (IBUx1.7)/Diluted Volume. You may be able to pull off an APA, but I'd leave out the dex. At least your available hops work well together and are suited to an APA too.

 

[iralosavic]

With the spreadsheet, try opening it instead of saving it when downloading, then save it to your HD from excel. The speadsheet will solve your problem.

 

[bum]

A kilo of dex would ruin an ipa in my opinion.

Maybe if there wasn't a kilo of LDME as well. As it stands "ruin" is far too strong a word. No reason dex can't be used in a AIPA.

Oh yeah - dex doesn't belong in beer...I forgot.

 

[iralosavic]

A kilo of dex would lower the FG and thin out the flavour/body you're adding with the DME. It has it's place in dryer styles, but I wouldnt go over 250g in an APA. Personally speaking, of course.

 

[bum]

Was ipa a typo? I'm confused.

Regardless, a beer with 2.7kg of (less fermentable) extract will not be ruined by 1kg of dex. Will it win comps? Probably not but it doesn't sound like that's what pete is trying to do.

I'd bung the lot in, as per Charst's advice, bunging in the lot of the hops (except maybe keeping some NS out) as late as the desired IBU will allow.

 

[Charst]

A kilo of dex would lower the FG and thin out the flavour/body you're adding with the DME. It has it's place in dryer styles, but I wouldnt go over 250g in an APA. Personally speaking, of course.

I agree that the total of 1.25kgs of adjunct is higher than id go but this is the mix he has, you could easy half the adjuncts and make a beer at a 5ish percent with better body.

But adding DEX resulting in a lower FG isn't correct. Adding any ingredients doesn't result in a less of anything. Less in comparison to DME, but not less.

Im not familiar with using dextrose really but i thought it was a long chain sugar used to add body without flavour? in an IPA you want a Light malt flavour don't you?
so as a result you wouldn't want to make one with 100% extract Malt.

@ BUM 50g of cascade and Amarillo aint enough for an AIPA. MAYBE a Pale ale though

 

[pete6]

hops are NS 12.7%, Amarillo 8.2% and Cascades 5.7%
The blackrock kit tells me it used NS hops too.

Thats the mix of fermentables i have - so suggestions around that would are really appreciated - I'm still a newbie so also appreciate the comments around fermentables - i dont need to use them all, i just don't have the brewing experience to know what combination i can use that will give me a better beer

The kit tells me its an IPA, im not too worried about what style it ends up as so long as i can turn it into a nice hoppy beer - I will start worrying about styles as i progress to all extracts...,

thanks - Pete

 

[bum]

@ BUM 50g of cascade and Amarillo aint enough for an AIPA. MAYBE a Pale ale though

Gah! I read the crystal as hops. Wasn't meaning to leave out the NS entirely either. Sorry for the confusion though, pete.

 

[Charst]

ok Im a few pots in now but heres my recipe. According to my extract Speadsheet Backrock East india pale ale only has 14 IBU as its bitterness (hence the Galaxy Addtion in my recipe) I bloody doubt it! but my doubt justifies the LOW Total IBU's. if its more bitter it won't be the end of the world.

So the end result is a VERY hoppy APA. but having said that i added over 300g of Cascade to a EPIC pale ale clone and it was the best beer I've made so...
Its only one recipe and I'm only one opinion in the end its your beer you decide mate good luck.

 

[pete6]

Thanks for the advice & the recipe Charst what spreadsheet are you using for that?


I ended up getting the kit extract beer designer sheet to work at least somewhat, although i still cant save recipes and i still get debug errors and script errors, oh well!.. After reading all the above and looking at the recipe posted, with what i have to hand, i came up with something along the lines of this



Blackrock ESB kit

1.7kg LDME

40g Crystal steeped

100g dextrose



5g NS @60mins

10g Amarillo@20 mins

10g Cascade @ 20 mins

5g NS @10mins

10g Amarillo @10mins


10g NS @5mins

15g Amarillo @1min

15g cascade @1min



21 L w/ US-05

Appears to all come out in the range of a APA hopefully with a good hoppy aroma and taste

Will see how it turns out and either dry hop the lot, or separate a couple of 1 gallon batches out and dry hop with what i have leftover

cheers!

 

[yum beer]

I find it very interesting that a can of East India Pale Ale turned into a can of ESB.

What happened, did you have the can around the wrong way... ........

No wonder you want to move away from kits, so would I with those sort of issues.

EDIT: just adding an extra smartarse comment..

 

[pete6]

Doh! - wheres the forehead slapping icon when you need it!!

im drinking an ESB stout brewed for St Paddys day..... and its late, and many have been imbibed

Its still a Blackrock IPA on the cards for tomorrow - at least it was last time i checked

 

[iralosavic]

Black Rock East India Pale Ale - per L
EBC 96
IBU 256

Formula (again) = (256*1.7)/23 (I'll assume a fermenter volume of 23L for the purpose of demonstration) = 19IBU

By most standards, this is a very mild level of bitterness. I think I'd be fairly disappointed if I just threw this can in as a k&k, as you'd expect at least 30IBU for most IPAs. Perhaps they did it differently in the "East"!

 

[Lord Raja Goomba I]

Black Rock East India Pale Ale - per L
EBC 96
IBU 256

Formula (again) = (256*1.7)/23 (I'll assume a fermenter volume of 23L for the purpose of demonstration) = 19IBU

By most standards, this is a very mild level of bitterness. I think I'd be fairly disappointed if I just threw this can in as a k&k, as you'd expect at least 30IBU for most IPAs. Perhaps they did it differently in the "East"!

It would be East India - named after the British East India Company, which is what precipitated the creation of IPA as a variety of beer. Not where in India, but the fact that it was to survive from England to India for the commercial vessels.

By the time my forebears made it there, England had done away with the facade of a "company" "leasing" land from the Indians.

Goomba

 

[pete6]

Thanks for all the input! - I put this one on yesterday... it went down like this:

1 x 1.5kg can of Blackrock East IPA
1.7kg Light DME
75g Crystal 40, steeped.

5g NS @20mins
5g Cascade@20mins
5g Amarillo @20mins
10g NS @10mins
10g Amarillo @10mins
10g NS @5mins
10g Cascade@5mins
10g Amarillo @5mins
5g NS @2mins
5g Cascade@2mins
5g Amarillo @2mins
10g Cascade @0mins
10g Amarillo @0mins

Bit of an unforeseen temperature drop at 5 mins with the addition of the kit and remainder of the LDME, so brought it back to boil for 2 mins before turning off, so an extra 5 mins on the heat it will likely end up a little more bitter than planned for. Ho Hum

5L boil / rest topped up to 21L with cooled boiled water
US-05 yeast pitched @22C
OG 1.052

Bubbling away like crazy after 24hrs.. Aroma from the airlock is heavenly

 

[iralosavic]

My wife hates the smell of hops - she clearly has issues. Your hop combination smells delicious - especially fresh in the hand before you throw them in. I currently have a cascade/chinook/amarillo APA conditioning and mmm that smells good too. Hope the bitterness turns out to your taste, mate. Good luck.

 

[yum beer]

the extra boil wont make too much difference with your hoping schedule.

In future dont add your tin to the boil, mix it as normal in the fv and use your cooled boil water for some of your brew water.