First All Grain suggestion?

I don't quite yet have the equipment to do a big batch, but I was going to attempt a 2-3 gallon AG recipe here soon.

I'm just wondering what a good recipe would be for a first batch? I like wheat beers and IPAs mostly. Any suggestions?

This is exactly how I started and still do to today. Small batches are great - you can dial in your process all while experimenting with smaller batches. That means you can brew more often and get lots of practice and not get overwhelmed by having 5 gallons every batch.

That said, you can brew just about anything you like! While you're learning how your setup works, though, you might want to steer clear of things that use lots of Maris Otter or flaky adjuncts and those can lead to stuck sparges. Anyway, happy brewing!

Oh, and I've had great success with Northern Brewer's Dead Ringer IPA. It's 90% 2-row and 10% caramel malt, which makes for a good flow out of the mash tun and, with lots of Centennial hops, it's a really solid IPA.

Maybe a smash IPA or something like that would be good for a first AG batch. That way you could learn the AG process but not have to worry about messing with specialty grains and stuff, that will make it a lot easier to isolate any potential problems/off flavors you notice (if you do, and I hope you don't!). That's my 2 cents

Thanks for the input.

I found the recipe for Northern Brewer's Dead Ringer IPA (http://www.northernbrewer.com/documentation/allgrain/AG-DeadRingerIPA.pdf) but that is for a 5 gallon batch. Is there an easy way to re-size recipes so that I can find out what I need for a 2 gallon batch?

bbbblaine said:

Thanks for the input.

I found the recipe for Northern Brewer's Dead Ringer IPA (http://www.northernbrewer.com/documentation/allgrain/AG-DeadRingerIPA.pdf) but that is for a 5 gallon batch. Is there an easy way to re-size recipes so that I can find out what I need for a 2 gallon batch?

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Use 40% of everything.

Small batches suck. When they turn out great, you run out way too soon.:rockin:

I still do them since they work so well brewing on my kitchen stove and it gives me a chance to experiment with lots of beers but once I learned that I could make a beer that I really liked I started doing 5 gallon batches. When I found that I could boil 6 1/2 gallons on my kitchen stove, WOOHOO! Small batches just won't happen much.

bbbblaine said:

Thanks for the input.

I found the recipe for Northern Brewer's Dead Ringer IPA (http://www.northernbrewer.com/documentation/allgrain/AG-DeadRingerIPA.pdf) but that is for a 5 gallon batch. Is there an easy way to re-size recipes so that I can find out what I need for a 2 gallon batch?

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I use BeerSmith to scale recipes down to 3 gallon batches. If you don't want to invest the money into BeerSmith, you could check out Brewtarget.

One thing that I have learned doing these small batches is that you NEED brewing software to scale recipes down for you. It's also great for tweeking/creating recipes, moving hop additions or types of hops around and keeping IBU's, calculating SRM, estimated gravity, adjusting for your brew house efficiency, etc.

dantheman13 said:

I use BeerSmith to scale recipes down to 3 gallon batches. If you don't want to invest the money into BeerSmith, you could check out Brewtarget.

One thing that I have learned doing these small batches is that you NEED brewing software to scale recipes down for you. It's also great for tweeking/creating recipes, moving hop additions or types of hops around and keeping IBU's, calculating SRM, estimated gravity, adjusting for your brew house efficiency, etc.

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Software is really helpful for scaling recipes, but not totally necessary. 5 gallons to 3? Use 60% of everything in the original recipe. Reducing a 5.5 gal recipe to a 3 gal? Use 54.5% of everything.

JonM said:

Software is really helpful for scaling recipes, but not totally necessary. 5 gallons to 3? Use 60% of everything in the original recipe. Reducing a 5.5 gal recipe to a 3 gal? Use 54.5% of everything.

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True. The math isn't hard... but love my BeerSmith, lol!

dantheman13 said:

True. The math isn't hard... but love my BeerSmith, lol!

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Same here!

I'd skip the 2/3 gallon batch and do a 5 gallon partial mash instead. For the mash part, you use 1/2 of the overall fermentables. Pick a beer thats moderate to moderate high in gravity. If your mash conversion is low, your malted extract can still bail you with decent beer.

It's very easy to convert an all grain recipe to partial mash. Just take half the grain, and substitute an appropriate amount of DME (or LME for that matter) for the other half. I've been meaning to try the Dead Ringer IPA (Two Hearted). It's on my to do list for this winter.

I saw this link earlier. Useful for converting lbs of grain/DME/LME.

http://www.jessenewcomer.com/blog/archives/38

As far as just taking 40% of all the ingredients for converting from a 5 gallon batch to a 2 gallon, I thought that it affected the bitterness because you are boiling a different amount of water with the hops or something.

I will definitely try this, though. I will attempt 2 gallons of Dead Ringer IPA tomorrow.

bbbblaine said:

As far as just taking 40% of all the ingredients for converting from a 5 gallon batch to a 2 gallon, I thought that it affected the bitterness because you are boiling a different amount of water with the hops or something.

I will definitely try this, though. I will attempt 2 gallons of Dead Ringer IPA tomorrow.

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Nope, everything scales. If you were doing a partial boil, it might affect the hop utilization, but if you're just scaling everything down, the utilization stays the same.

Same rule holds if you were using 40% of the malt and 40% of the hops or 100%, 200%, 1,000%, etc. Good luck!

Most recipes are geared toward 5 gal batches. If ur doing 2.5gal, just cut the ingriedients in half. I've actually had Midwest bag the grains seperately so I could weigh them evenly. Works great.

Thanks for all the help, guys!

I just brewed a 2 gallon batch of Dead Ringer IPA yesterday by just scaling all ingredients down to 40% and everything went very smoothly. If I calculated correctly, I actually got almost 70% efficiency, which is more than I was expecting.

Can't wait to try it when it's done!

bbbblaine said:

Thanks for all the help, guys!

Can't wait to try it when it's done!

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I wouldn't wait until it is done. Brew again as soon as you can. It's good practice and will keep your mind off the beer in the fermeter long enough for the yeast to get done.

Brew went great! Attached a pic of the finished product. This is now my favorite IPA

Congratulations, it looks great.

Sooo, How many beers do you have fermenting now?

Right now I just have an ESB that I started last week. I plan on brewing a Stout and a Nut Brown Ale here in the next couple weeks too. I think I will be doing all of my brews with All Grain recipes now because that Dead Ringer really did turn out awesome. The quality just seems to beat the hell out of extract brewing all around.

CONGRATS! looks good. I agree, AG and full boils really turn the corner to making better beer. And the water. Cheers