Recipe And A Bit Of Help

[thanme]

So I have all the bits in I need and I'm ready to go. Picked up my tempmate today and I love it! I have it running in my empty chest freezer with a heat belt just to give it a test run, and it's going great.

Anyway. I had an idea of what I wanted to make in mind, went to get my kit from LHBS today and told him what I was going to do. Basically I said I was planning on making a beer using Amarillo hops (kind of like the JSGA clone in the db), and with the ingredients he suggested, I've come up with this:

1kg Malthouse dry "Beer Ultra" pack (contains 500g Light Malt, 250g Dextrose, 250g Corn Syrup)
1.7 kg ESB Pale Ale kit
Safale US-05 Yeast

And I plan on doing the following with my hops:
15g Amarillo @ 20mins
15g Amarillo @ 5mins
15g Amarillo @ 0mins

How does that sound?

My problem is, I've prepared for getting a liquid malt kit, and was going to boil 500g of that with 5L of water, and I left the shop with a dry kit. Can anyone give me an idea or pointers on the best way to get a boil going with my dry extract?? Mainly quantities, and if I need to do anything special, or just pour it in the water and stir. I have a 20L pot for boiling in.

Also, I seem to remember the ideal temp for US-05 being 18 - 20 degrees. Can anyone recommend the best setting for a tempmate? Currently I have it set at 18 with 0.5C tolerance.

Tomorrow is the big day and if you couldn't tell, I'm pretty excited

 

[manticle]

There shouldn't be too much difference with boiling liquid or dry. Just make sure it doesn't stick (can happen with either variety). 100g: 1L usually gives a gravity of around 1040 which is a good medium.

I don't use tempmates so I'm not sure but that sounds ok to me. Maybe up it to 19 so the range is between 18.5 and 19.5?

 

[Bribie G]

Good yeast. Just be aware that US-05 can take a while to clear out after fermentation and you might want to use gelatine finings, and 'cold crash' the beer for a week and finally use some Polyclar VT to remove any 'chill haze'.

The basic kit will provide bittering and you are adding the Amarillo at the correct times for flavouring and aroma, so it looks like you have got it all locked down.

Some brewers might sneer at using a 'brew enhancer' such as the LDME/DEX/Maltodextrin mix you are using (which is similar or the same as the Coopers BE2 pack) but it will give you far better results than a kilo of sugar or plain DEX.

:icon_cheers:

 

[bum]

Looks like a half decent K&B GA-ish beer to me. Should be nice. Good luck with it!

 

[thanme]

Good to know about the US-05. Better than learning by doing


Thanks guys Guess I'm all set then!