Brewing questions!

Hello everyone!

I have a couple questions here regarding beer recipe formulation. I have been brewing for about 5 years now and want to take the next step. I want to start formulating my own recipes from scratch and start doing different things. I need to know how to measure the general amount of sugar needed for a 5 gallon brew. I also need to know the transfer rates of sugars from my malts. I want to brew without having to use a malt extract and was hoping for information on how to do this. Also looking to make a apple cider and need to know the right amount of sugars I need for that too or the amount of sugars needed to successfully make about a medium gravity cider.

P.s. I am looking for someone to mentor me and give me the knowledge I need to make great beers. I eventually want to open up my own brewery and need all the knowledge I can get! If any of you are up for a challenge I would love to learn all about the whole process so I can better myself and help achieve my goals! Send me a private message if you want and we can talk more there! Thanks for your time and help its greatly appreciated! If you also have time go to Facebook and look up Hubbard Brewing Co. Feel free to like it and also give tips there! Have a great day!

I would recommend you get the book Designing Great Beers http://www.amazon.com/dp/0937381500/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20. Some of it is a little dated as it was published in 1998 but the part on sugars is all there.

But back to the question, how much sugar needed is dependent on what you are making and what your target is. Here is a chart with the potential for comment beer ingredients. http://hbd.org/uchima/tech/extract.html. You then determine your volume you are to brew and what fermentables you want and use the potential to determine your amount. For example if I want 5 gal of beer with a OG of 1.050 I know I need 250 points extract (50 points from my OG of 1.050 X 5 gal = 250). If I am just using base 2 row malt I see from the chart it has 37 potential points per lb. So if all was well in the world and the gods smiled I would need 250/37 = 6.8 lb of malt. But I know my mash efficiency is closer to 75% so I really need (250/37)/.75 = 9 lbs more or less.

But if I wanted thin beer I might decided to add sugar to get to my gravity and only use the 6.8 lb of malt. So I would calculate the contribution of the 6.8 lb by multilying by potential and then by efficiency: 6.8X37X.75 = 189. Since I need 250 I would be short 250 - 189 = 61 points. So to add cane sugar to make up the difference I go to the chart and see it gives 41 points per gallon per lb. And we don't mash it so there is no mash efficiency factor. So 61 needed points divided by 41 points per lb gives about 1.5 lb sugar to be added. [note: I don't recommend doing this to your beer, it will not be good. Example for illustration only.]

Cider you have to measure the gravity of your apple juice as it will vary greatly depending on apple variety and ripeness. Once you have the points in the juice you can adjust from there is you want to.

+1....on getting some books on brewing. It is all explained and they do a better job than most of us can do. My favorite "technical books" are How to Brew by Palmer and already mentioned Designing Great Beers by Daniels. If you are looking for a mentor the best thing you can do is join your local homebrew club.

I stated with Palmer's - How to Brew. That is a great book to get me into all grain.

Then I bought Designing Great Beers... but I really didn't get that into it.

Then I got BCS (Brewing Classic Styles) and it was really what I was looking for. I knew How to Brew, I was looking for "What to Brew".

Reading every recipe in BCS a dozen times and then brewing quite a few, really helped me learn how to write a recipe. I also picked up BeerSmith2 and was logging my versions of the recipes I brewed from BCS.

I think that was a great way to learn to write my own recipes, while making good beer to drink along the way.

Thanks all this information had helped out a lot. The chart of conversion helped out tons! Another question is why can only some grains be steeped and others cant transfer sugars. Like a pale 6 row. But books are on order along with other thats that I have been reading. You guys have helped a lot any other reading or website would be awesome. I love all this new gained knowledge!

Jhubbard9 said:

Thanks all this information had helped out a lot. The chart of conversion helped out tons! Another question is why can only some grains be steeped and others cant transfer sugars. Like a pale 6 row. But books are on order along with other thats that I have been reading. You guys have helped a lot any other reading or website would be awesome. I love all this new gained knowledge!

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I think the best place as far as links are all the stickied threads on this site. Go to the area of interest, extract brewing, all grain, mead...) in the forum and the first threads shown are stickied. They are very informative.

All grains can be steeped. All that is happening is that the water is "rinsing" out flavor when you steep. You are not converting the starches to sugars.

But only some grains can mash, or at least mash by themselves. To mash several things are needed. One is starch which most grains have but it needs to be freed from its protein matrix. That is one of the things malting does, breaks down that matrix making the starch accessible. The other thing needed are the enzymes to convert the starches to sugars. The amount of enzymes present is known as the diastatic power. Some grains like pale malt have enough diastatic power to convert themselves as well as a other grain which may be mixed with it, assuming enough pale malt is present. But for roasted grain or even highly kilned grains like Crystal the heat has destroyed the enzymes so their diastatic power is zero. So if they are mashed alone there are no enzymes to convert the starches to sugars.

The dated version of john palmers how to brew is online for free reading.
You can learn volumes Of info from reading it.

http://www.howtobrew.com/intro.html

It will help you get a grasp of the process as that doesn't change. Once you have your process down you can always get the newer edition to refine your brewing as you go.

I also started out watching and listening to basic brewing radio and video in addition to reading here on this site and there is still an infinite amount of knowledge to learn.


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Ya I am currently reading John Palmers how to brew online right now and am learning a lot! Just like you said there is always something to Learn! I just want to brew the best beer that I can! I love learning about this stuff and am super passionate about this subject.I have been brewing since I was 16 and am now 21 but have always just added sugars hops and steeped grain and made mediocre beer. Any additional information on all grain brewing would be awesome! Like definitions of rests needed and conversion rates for starches sugars and enzymzes.

The BJCP style guidelines are a great reference as well as it will provide general gravity ranges, typical malts and other ingredients used by style.

I find cross referencing this plus the other books mentioned generally will give you a good outline to start producing a given recipe


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