My way of cloning Anchor Steam.. right?

So, this is only the second beer I'm brewing. I'm also from Sweden, so my english might not be the best! But I need your opinion on the recipe and the technique I will use

The recipe:
500g Crystal malt (steeping this, might call it a partial mash?)
2,5kg Light malt extract (might want more of this?)
1 package of california lager yeast

28g Northern brewer hops for 60 minutes
14g Northern brewer hops for 15 minutes
14g Northern brewer hops for 1 minute

I want 19 litres of beer (5 gallons)

I would do as follows:
1. Put the crystal malt in a small kettle, put it in the oven for 40 minutes in 70 degrees celsius (158 fahrenheit)
2. Boil 4 litres of water and 0,5kg of the dry malt extract in my big kettle (10 litre)
3. After 40 minutes, pour the crystal malt-liquid through a strainer into the big kettle.
4. Put 28g of Northern brewer into the kettle and let it boil for 45 minutes
5. Then put 14 gram of northern brewern AND the rest of the dry malt extract into the kettle.
6. Then with 1 minute left, put 14 grams of northern brewer into the kettle.
7. Cool it down in the sink.
8. Pour the vort into the fermenting bucket and fill it up with as much water as is necessary.
9. Put the fermenting bucket in a room where it's about 17-18 degrees celsius at day (about 62 fahrenheit) and 13-15 degrees at night (about 57 fahrenheit)
10. After a week, put it in secondary fermentation in a room where its much colder, about 10 degrees celsius at day and maybe 5 at night (41-50 degrees fahrenheit)
11. After two weeks, bottle it and let it stand in the first (warmer) room again to gain carb.
12. After about two more weeks, put it somewhere cold and start drinking it.


Does this sound like a good plan? Is there anything I should change, anything I could do better? I wan't my beer to taste as similar to an Anchor Steam as possible.

I'm thinking about things as hops, yeast, malt - how much should I use?

Very grateful for any answers!
Love you all
Best regards,
Jonathan

I think it looks pretty good, provided that is dry extract and you are using a medium dark-crystal like C-60. If you increase the dry extract you probably don't want to go much over 2.75 kg (and actually that would look pretty much like Yooper's clone in the recipe section). If liquid extract you need more like 3.3-3.4 kg. You may want to plug the numbers into an online calculator with the actual aa% of your hops to be sure your IBU are in line - you want to shoot for around 35-40. As for how much yeast I would look into making a yeast starter. A good healthy fermentation with enough yeast will help attain the relatively clean character that this should have.

I think your process looks okay, I would just be sure you've hit final gravity before cooling it. You are steeping, as there is no base malt and hence no enzymes to constitute a mash.


Edit: Just checking, you are heating your steeping water first then adding grains right? Just putting it cold in the oven won't bring to temp very efficiently. It's fine if you want to put it in there to hold temp, but that is not as critical with a steep as with a mash. 30 min should be plenty.

chickypad said:

1. I think it looks pretty good, provided that is dry extract and you are using a medium dark-crystal like C-60. If you increase the dry extract you probably don't want to go much over 2.75 kg (and actually that would look pretty much like Yooper's clone in the recipe section). If liquid extract you need more like 3.3-3.4 kg. You may want to plug the numbers into an online calculator with the actual aa% of your hops to be sure your IBU are in line - you want to shoot for around 35-40.

2. As for how much yeast I would look into making a yeast starter. A good healthy fermentation with enough yeast will help attain the relatively clean character that this should have.

3. Edit: Just checking, you are heating your steeping water first then adding grains right? Just putting it cold in the oven won't bring to temp very efficiently. It's fine if you want to put it in there to hold temp, but that is not as critical with a steep as with a mash. 30 min should be plenty.

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1. The crystal malt says: "EBC: 120 -140", is that OK?
And yes, it's dry malt extract. I will probably raise it to 2.75 kg then!

2. Is this guide fine for making a yeast starter? http://www.howtobrew.com/section1/chapter6-5.html Never done it before, my first brew was with dry yeast!

3. Yes, that's my thought. :fro:


Huge thanks for quick answer, I really appreciate it! Have a great day!

I believe 120-140 EBC is about 50 lovibond so I think that would be okay. You could throw in a couple ounces of dark roasted malt for color if you wanted. I would read the article here on Jamil's site about yeast starters. You can use the calcultator there under yeast tools to see how big you actually need.

chickypad said:

I believe 120-140 EBC is about 50 lovibond so I think that would be okay. You could throw in a couple ounces of dark roasted malt for color if you wanted. I would read the article here on Jamil's site about yeast starters. You can use the calcultator there under yeast tools to see how big you actually need.

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I would really like that amber color, but I believe it would cost me too much to order a small quantity of malt now. Guess I'll have to skip it!

I calculated the IBU, and this calculator says that I need 45 grams at 60 minutes, 25 at 15 minutes and 20 at 1 minute. Does that sound about right? Or do I use less hops when I "late addition extract"?

I'm not good at all with the IBU calculations for partial boils, and I don't know which calculators are accurate for that. I do seem to see a lot of recipes that up the bittering addition significantly for partial boil. Hopefully someone else can chime in.

chickypad said:

I'm not good at all with the IBU calculations for partial boils, and I don't know which calculators are accurate for that. I do seem to see a lot of recipes that up the bittering addition significantly for partial boil. Hopefully someone else can chime in.

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About the yeast guide, it's extremely much information to dig into on a sunday. Are there possibly any "simple math" that can show me what kind of starter (how big, how much, how long) for this brew?

It's chaos inside of my head, so much info.

You are looking for a yeast pitching rate calculator like this one on Jamil's site: http://www.mrmalty.com/calc/calc.html

tooldudetool said:

You are looking for a yeast pitching rate calculator like this one on Jamil's site: http://www.mrmalty.com/calc/calc.html

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"Liters of starter needed: 2.86". How much dried malt extract would I need for 2.86 liters of vort?

So I brew a mini-vort of dry malt extract which becomes about 2.86 liters of wort, I put the yeast in there some days before I brew, and then I just pour everything into the real wort at my brew day?

1g DME for every 10ml wort, so 286g.

chickypad said:

1g DME for every 10ml wort, so 286g.

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Would you hop this? Or just boil it for 10 minutes or something and put it with the yeast?

No hops needed. I like to let it finish completely (24-30hrs) then stick it in the fridge for 24 hr or so and decant before pitching. Others pitch the whole thing.

chickypad said:

No hops needed. I like to let it finish completely (24-30hrs) then stick it in the fridge for 24 hr or so and decant before pitching. Others pitch the whole thing.

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Thanks man, very helpful!

So, I brewed the beer today. Some things went wrong or surprised me:

1. My yeast starter had only been fermenting for 24 hours, but I had to use it today. I guess that's a bit early.

2. I probably used too much hops, but it was also the very first time I used hops so I'm learning.

3. My original gravity ended up somewhere about 1.060, which is higher than california common should be. What might have caused this, and how will it affect the outcome of my beer?

In general I just hope that I've been clean enough and everything so my beer doesn't become infected. I'm curious of this!

24hrs should be enough time for the yeast starter to finish, it's just not enough time to crash it and decant. I assume you pitched the whole thing. That's fine, I just personally don't like to pitch that big of a volume. If you ever do decant, taste the starter beer sometime - it can be kinda gross.

If your gravity was significantly over on an extract batch it's generally due to one of two things: 1) your volume was off, 2) you measured after topping off with water, which likely lead to a false reading because it's really hard to get the top off water completely mixed in evenly.

chickypad said:

24hrs should be enough time for the yeast starter to finish, it's just not enough time to crash it and decant. I assume you pitched the whole thing. That's fine, I just personally don't like to pitch that big of a volume. If you ever do decant, taste the starter beer sometime - it can be kinda gross.

If your gravity was significantly over on an extract batch it's generally due to one of two things: 1) your volume was off, 2) you measured after topping off with water, which likely lead to a false reading because it's really hard to get the top off water completely mixed in evenly.

Click to expand...

I left it in the primary fermentation for 7 days, and then brought it up to 70 degrees fahrenheit for about 40 hours for a diacetyl rest. Today I moved it to the secondary (at temperatures about 40-55 degrees fahrenheit) and I will let it rest there for about two weeks before I bottle it. Then, should I keep the bottles warm or cold for the carbonation process?

I of course tasted it today, and it was great! I felt a little bit proud, I'm really looking forward to taste the final result!

keep the bottles at around 70 F for a couple of weeks to carbonate, then test one or two after a couple of days in the fridge. Once carbonated, store the rest cool.