Now The Fun Begins!

[RobH]

Moving on from kits/partials to AG has really set my imagination running, with ideas like I can now determine differences between hop varieties by brewing the same beer, but with different flavour & aroma hops (i.e.: so I can taste first hand the differences)

On this quest I have decided to use PoR as the bittering hop so that I can adjust it to keep bitterness levels similar from brew to brew, and 4kg JW Ale malt for the base, and only malt.

What I am going to call it, I am not sure yet, as I am usng an ale malt, but Saf S-23 Lager yeast (as it has now become to cold for me to use ale yeast)... anyways, to kick it off I brewed this on Sunday... (side note: adjusted "Brewhouse Efficiency" in Brewmate to 75% so it would match the OG that I ended up with ... I am yet to fully understand what the "Brewhouse Efficiency" factor is)

Aussie Pale Ale #1 (Cascade)

Recipe Specs
----------------
Batch Size (L): 20.0
Total Grain (kg): 4.000
Total Hops (g): 65.00
Original Gravity (OG): 1.048 (P): 11.9
Final Gravity (FG): 1.012 (P): 3.1
Alcohol by Volume (ABV): 4.72 %
Colour (SRM): 4.7 (EBC): 9.3
Bitterness (IBU): 33.1 (Average)
Brewhouse Efficiency (%): 75
Boil Time (Minutes): 60

Grain Bill
----------------
4.000 kg JW Ale Malt (100%)

Hop Bill
----------------
20.0 g Pride of Ringwood Pellet (8.3% Alpha) @ 60 Minutes (Boil) (1 g/L)
15.0 g Cascade Pellet (7.8% Alpha) @ 10 Minutes (Boil) (0.8 g/L)
15.0 g Cascade Pellet (7.8% Alpha) @ 5 Minutes (Boil) (0.8 g/L)
15.0 g Cascade Pellet (7.8% Alpha) @ 1 Minutes (Boil) (0.8 g/L)

Misc Bill
----------------
10.0 g Irish Moss @ 10 Minutes (Boil)

Single step Infusion at 66C for 60 Minutes.
Fermented at 12C with Saflager S-23

Recipe Generated with BrewMate

 

[bignath]

I am usng an ale malt, but Saf S-23 Lager yeast (as it has now become to cold for me to use ale yeast)...

G'day Rob,

Have you tried taking measurements of the temp in various rooms in your house?

Where i live (south east corner of SA / 15km's from VIC border) it's really bloody cold here in winter. Temps of -2 overnight are not altogether uncommon. When it's like this, i find that my fermenting fridge is greatly influenced by ambient temps and often struggles to keep any warmth in. Reckon i need to look at replacing a seal or two soon. So what i do instead on these really cold snaps is bring my fermenters inside to a room that i know holds 17/18deg consistently and ferment indoors instead.

Works a charm.

Dont know your area (other than NSW) but surely you've got a room that with the house heating on, you could ferment inside and get all the benefits of ale fermentation - faster ferments, lagering/conditioning not necessarily required etc....

 

[Wolfy]

POR can be quite distinctive even when used for bittering, if you are going to explore changes in hops, what about using a cleaner or more neutral bittering hop?

 

[Mayor of Mildura]

Sorry Wolfy i disagree. I have found POR to be a good bittering hop when making hoppy beers. The recipe looks good however i'd drop the 5 and 1 minute additions. up the 10 minute addition and add a dry hop.

 

[RobH]

G'day Rob,

Have you tried taking measurements of the temp in various rooms in your house?

<snip>

Yes, however the room with the most stable temperature still isn't stable enough for my liking ... with ranges from 16 - 20 degrees depending on usage (computers etc...).

POR can be quite distinctive even when used for bittering, if you are going to explore changes in hops, what about using a cleaner or more neutral bittering hop?

What are some other good alternatives?

Sorry Wolfy i disagree. I have found POR to be a good bittering hop when making hoppy beers. The recipe looks good however i'd drop the 5 and 1 minute additions. up the 10 minute addition and add a dry hop.

Thanks, I'll certainly keep that in mind ... got plenty of Cascade pellets left still, so a dry hopping version is on the books!

Dry hopping might be good for hops like Cascade, but how about some of the others that I am going to try ... EK Goldings, Fuggles, Halleteau, etc...

 

[goomboogo]

What are some other good alternatives?

Magnum or German Northern Brewer. Clean, smooth and reasonably neutral.

 

[Mayor of Mildura]

Dry hopping might be good for hops like Cascade, but how about some of the others that I am going to try ... EK Goldings, Fuggles, Halleteau, etc...

If your intention is to get a feel for the character of each hop then then no worries dry hop away. If you are bottling why not bottle half and dry hop the remainder for a few days. This will give you the best of both worlds.

 

[Lord Raja Goomba I]

Your other option is either smaller batches (like the 9L batches using stovetop BIAB method) or fullsize batches as SMaSH (Single malt and single hop).

My first SMaSH using Citra is here.

That way you have a real good grip on what each hop feels like, as there is nothing in the way of other hops confusing the taste.

Replace with your base malt and use beermate to adjust the quantity of hops (but not the timing) to hit the IBU you'd prefer. This recipe is specifically timed to get the maximum amount of benefit from each stage.

Goomba

 

[JulieRush]

(side note: adjusted "Brewhouse Efficiency" in Brewmate to 75% so it would match the OG that I ended up with ... I am yet to fully understand what the "Brewhouse Efficiency" factor is)

it's basically a way to compare how much awesome you actually get out of your grain versus how much awesome you should ideally be able to get out. if your grain bill is 4kg of grain with a total potential of ten awesomes, and you measure at the end that you've got eight awesomes, your efficiency is 80%

each grain type has a maximum potential amount of malty sugary goodness you can extract. So the more efficient you can be, the less grain you actually need.

at 100% efficiency you extract everything you possibly can out of the grain. but this isn't realistic, so we add an efficiency factor to the mix and basically add more grain to the grain bill to make up for not getting all the sugar out.

so if I'm aiming for an OG of 1040 in a 20 litre batch I might need say 4Kg of grain, but I'm only around 75% efficient, so my brew software bumps up my grain bill to tell me how much grain I'll need to get that 1040 in 20 litres.

just before pitching my yeast I measure my OG gravity and volume and I can then calculate my actual efficiency for the whole process. Do a few batches to get a handle on your actual efficiency and use this revised figure in your calcs.

I don't htink I've really explained that well though.

I wouldn't get too hung up on efficiency though. There are different schools of thought about that whole thing. Some people prefer to get more out of less grain, others are happy to work with more grain but less efficiency. there are so many subtleties brought into the finished product by all these little tiny steps it's almost impossible to know what's best for you.

work it out for a few brews so you know what to put in your brew software, that means you get the grain bill and your OG sort of in the right ballpark. but it's no drama if you're out by a few points really.

 

[RobH]

Actually that did make sense ... and made me laugh at the same time (awesomeness). So basically once I have the process down pat I can start to determine my Brewhouse Efficiency and use that to determine my grain bill for the desired OG.

 

[RobH]

Sitting at an ambient temp of 10c this brew has dropped from 1048 to 1024 in 6 days to Saturday, and now a couple of days later down to 1018. This is quite educational for me, as with an ale at a higher temp (15 - 18c) I would have expected the gravity reading to be lower by now & pretty much finished... but the gravity still dropping shows me that it is still actively fermenting despite any visual changes over the past 4 days or so. It is like everyone says, Lagers & low temp ferments take longer