Review Of Procedures Please (lcba)

Australia & New Zealand Homebrewing Forum

Help Support Australia & New Zealand Homebrewing Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

sparkycameron

Member
Joined
3/1/10
Messages
16
Reaction score
0
Hey all,

I'm a long time reader, first time poster..
i've made about half a dozen brews now and figured I'd put up my recipe / procedure and let you fine people pick holes in it in order for me to learn.....

here goes:

recipe
Little Creatures Bright ale Clone - Brewcraft

Black rock IPA 1.5L
Black Rock Light LME 1.5L
150g Wheat Malt
250g Carapils grain (crushed apparently)
15g Saaz Hops
15g Amarillo Hops
US-05 Safale yeast

Procedure:

cleaned and sterilised with Pink Stain Remover (rinsed after)
brought 1.8L water to boil and then turned off heat waited a few minutes and added Carapils via muslin bag, Steeped for 20mins
towards the end I turned the heat on (minimal amount) to keep the heat
removed Carapils and added hops - turned heat on high for 1 minute
removed from heat and let hops and carapils tea sit for 20mins
dissolved both cans in ~1 - 2L near boiling water in my brew boiler mixing well
added carapils and hop tea (minus hop bags) and mixed well
added whole thing to fermenter
added wheat malt (forgot to add before)
mixed really well (wheat malt went a little clumpy)
added 10L water, Mixed well
added rest (21L batch) and mixed
put fermenter in a sink of ice water and waited till the fermenter didn't feel warm
added rehydrated yeast (30 mins prior in a cup of sterile cool water) - NOT SURE IF I SHOULD DO THIS??????
put in fridge


Any help / advise / abuse welcome
 
A few things. It is worth your while to get a thermometer so you can mash, steep and pitch yeast more precisely in the future. You might of steeped your grain at too high a temperature. You should of had a 'rolling' boil for the carapils\hop tea to get rid of any possible infection from the grain. Also you will get hop aroma from the process you did (but it seems overly long) on the other hand if your intention was to get hop flavour you should of boiled the hops for 20/30 minutes.
 
Thanks... Makes sense.. I think the hops were just for aroma.I read on here somewhere that carapils shouldn't be boiled, but steeped, but I'm unsure of that. Thoughts?
 
As rina says, get a thermometer, even just a stick on the side of your fermenter one will do.

Also how are you controlling temp in the fridge, what temp is it at?



As for your grains, you cant boil the grain, but you need to boil the liquid after steeping, you will get better results steeping your grain, then boiling for 20 minutes,
throw your hops in for the last 10 minutes, let it cool(in the sink) and then add to your fermenter.

Keep reading and asking questions, there is plenty to learn but its good fun learning.
 
As rina says, get a thermometer, even just a stick on the side of your fermenter one will do.

Also how are you controlling temp in the fridge, what temp is it at?

have one on the side of the fermenter... current;y 22 degs... (I know it should be 18)
I'm currently using an old mini fridge and using ice blocks / manually turning fridge on / off if temp starts rising... not ideal.

have an stc-1000 on its way :)
 
While that recipe will probably make a fine beer it probably won't have much similarity with the LC Bright Ale that you are trying to clone. I see from the recipe on this site LCBA features Sazz B hops, which is another name for Motueaka hops (a very nice and unique NZ hops derived from crossing Sazz with other NZ varieties), so they are a different hops than Sazz with different flavours and characteristics. Also 15g of each is not very much. If you did an extract version along these lines it would probably give you something much closer to what you are trying to clone.

Let us know how it turns out anyway.

Cheers,
Aidan
 
Well, the beer is kegged and is drinkable. (that's a start)
Is it LCBA? No. Is it great? No. But no bad characteristics and considering it's early (2 weeks) it will go down fine....

@beerandgarden - thanks for the recipes and info. will try the extract brew next.

thanks all.
 
Hey Sparky, where are you located. Try getting to a brewday or a club meeting and you will pick up heaps of info.



cheers
 
Back
Top