I've just finished kegging my second partial extract brew.
I did a 6 litre boil with some crystal and a couple of hop varieties. Also 2 tins of coopers LME
I was a couple of points short of BG but ended up a couple of point slower on FG so fermintation using US05 was very good.
My style target was Irish Red and I used the kit spreadsheet to formulate the recipe.
I'm really very happy with the result and it's a very good beer.... BUT if I had to be critical I would say it's a little on the sweet side.
I'm a bit unsure about what adjustments to make.
I don't understand the difference between more hops quantity with the same boil times or just keeping hops quantities the same but increasing the boil time.
I understand that increasing bitterness can be achieved by longer boils but what does just more hops achieve with regard to the finish of a beer.
I notice there is a hop concentrator factor in the spreadsheet wchich I havn't yet used, if selected this changes the bitterness result by quite a degree...
So should I:
A - Switch on the HCF on the spread sheet
B - Add more hops and keep the boil times the same
C - Increase the boil times on the hops I have in the recipe
I can say that if using Coopers LME with this spreadsheet that the beer colour predicted is very acurate and the results are generally very good. It's a great way to learn and a big thanks to Ian the writter of this brilliant aid! Just to fine tune the flavours now and then think about partial mash brewing (with base malt) as my next step...
I did a 6 litre boil with some crystal and a couple of hop varieties. Also 2 tins of coopers LME
I was a couple of points short of BG but ended up a couple of point slower on FG so fermintation using US05 was very good.
My style target was Irish Red and I used the kit spreadsheet to formulate the recipe.
I'm really very happy with the result and it's a very good beer.... BUT if I had to be critical I would say it's a little on the sweet side.
I'm a bit unsure about what adjustments to make.
I don't understand the difference between more hops quantity with the same boil times or just keeping hops quantities the same but increasing the boil time.
I understand that increasing bitterness can be achieved by longer boils but what does just more hops achieve with regard to the finish of a beer.
I notice there is a hop concentrator factor in the spreadsheet wchich I havn't yet used, if selected this changes the bitterness result by quite a degree...
So should I:
A - Switch on the HCF on the spread sheet
B - Add more hops and keep the boil times the same
C - Increase the boil times on the hops I have in the recipe
I can say that if using Coopers LME with this spreadsheet that the beer colour predicted is very acurate and the results are generally very good. It's a great way to learn and a big thanks to Ian the writter of this brilliant aid! Just to fine tune the flavours now and then think about partial mash brewing (with base malt) as my next step...
