Recipes

[marca85]

Hi ALL,

Im new to brewing and have only brewed with the kits so far but am looking to add a couple more ingredients like a little bit of grains and/or some hops. Had a look through the recipes on AHB but a lot of them dont give a detailed method.

Was wondering if anyone out there has had some success with some recipes that they might want to share? (with methods) I prefer ales but am open to anything.

Cheers

Marca

 

[Pennywise]

A simple improvement on the standard k&k would be to add a few hundred grams of specialty malt like crystal malts or the likes, a bit of finishing hops and a dcent yeast. For a Pale Ale, I'd grab the tin of goo & something like BE2 or 1kg light dry malt, say 2-300g Pale Crystal Malt, and 1g/L of finishing hops thrown in the fermentor after a few days fermenting (for a Pale Ale I'd go for something like Cascade as a start) & Safale US-05 yeast.
The grain is pretty easy to prepare, get the hbs to crack it for you, steep it in some hot (65-75c) water for 20-30 mins, strain and add the liquid to the boil pot & boil it for 15 mins to kill the nasties along with your other sugars. Rest is the same, you can throw the hops into the boil if you want to for a few mins, or straight into the fermentor, the later will give you more aroma.

 

[marca85]

A simple improvement on the standard k&k would be to add a few hundred grams of specialty malt like crystal malts or the likes, a bit of finishing hops and a dcent yeast. For a Pale Ale, I'd grab the tin of goo & something like BE2 or 1kg light dry malt, say 2-300g Pale Crystal Malt, and 1g/L of finishing hops thrown in the fermentor after a few days fermenting (for a Pale Ale I'd go for something like Cascade as a start) & Safale US-05 yeast.
The grain is pretty easy to prepare, get the hbs to crack it for you, steep it in some hot (65-75c) water for 20-30 mins, strain and add the liquid to the boil pot & boil it for 15 mins to kill the nasties along with your other sugars. Rest is the same, you can throw the hops into the boil if you want to for a few mins, or straight into the fermentor, the later will give you more aroma.

Thanks.

Ok so i dont need to boil for 1 hr? Or is that only if you were adding bittering hops?

Marca

 

[Lord Raja Goomba I]

Kits are pre bittered, so unlikely to need bittering hops.

If you like APA, then you might consider American hops added for flavour (generally 15-30 minutes). Just cracking open the first bottle on an APA, and the earliest hop addition was 30 minutes, and then from 30 to flame out. Yummy too.

Goomba

 

[domix]

I use the Kit and Extract Spreadsheet developed by ianh.
Thread here

it's got a very useful 'brewday' tab which helps with methods and calculations like how much extract to add to boil volume to help with hop utilization.
the spreadsheet also gives a nice graph to see if your recipe is falling within a desired style

 

[Pennywise]

Thanks.

Ok so i dont need to boil for 1 hr? Or is that only if you were adding bittering hops?

Marca

Nope, for kit recipes, like already said, you have a pre-bittered kit so there's no need to. A short boil (15-20 mins) to kill any bugs that were living on the grain will suffice.

 

[marca85]

Nope, for kit recipes, like already said, you have a pre-bittered kit so there's no need to. A short boil (15-20 mins) to kill any bugs that were living on the grain will suffice.

So if i wasnt to use any grain and just DME i could still boil for around 15 to 20 mins, add some hops for flavour/aroma and then at flame out add the pre bittered kit?

cheers

 

[going down a hill]

Yeah, you should use 100g of DME to a litre of water to get a gravity of around 1040 which is ideal for extracting the right flavour from the hops, if you use water alone it is too bitter and too sweet a hop boil and it wont be efficient.

 

[marca85]

uhhh cool.. thanks for that

marca

 

[Pennywise]

So if i wasnt to use any grain and just DME i could still boil for around 15 to 20 mins, add some hops for flavour/aroma and then at flame out add the pre bittered kit?

cheers

Most certainly, And yeah 100g/L will give youth a good gravity for extracting and locking in the bitterness. But generally when I do kits I don't bother with what the gravity is, I just boil all the dme in 10L for every recipe and add the kit after, this is because I'm not after more bitterness, so I'm not cconcerned about it's efficiency

 

[dcx3]

Try doc's golden ale he gives instruction for both all grain and cans.