Experimental all DME recipe, opinions?

Experimental all DME recipe, opinions?

I had some miscellaneous ingredients left over from some previous batches, and had been wanting to try and all DME batch, so I threw one together using what I had.

3lbs Briess Light DME
1lb Muntons Sparkling Amber DME
1lb 50-60 Crystal Malt
1oz Kent Goldings (4.6% AA)
1oz Fuggles (4.5% AA)
14oz Coopers Gold dry ale yeast

Since I only had 4lbs total DME, and almost every recipe I have seen calls for at least 6.6lbs LME (converts to 5.8lbs DME), I cut back on water volume to 4 gallons total. Here is the recipe and procedures:

Steeped specialty grain at 150ish for 30 minutes in 3.5 gallons water, added 4lbs DME and brought to rolling boil, 20 minutes in to boil added 1oz Kent Goldings, since it is an experimental batch, I decided to try using a “tea ball” for the hop pellets, it seemed to work pretty well, no gunk in wort, and it seemed that the hops steeped well. At 1 hour in to boil, added Fuggles for 5 minutes for finishing (used a regular nylon bag for the finishing hops). Chilled to 75 degrees and added ½ gallon more water, and pitched 15oz rehydrated Coopers dry yeast. Was in full Krausen in just over 12 hours. OG was 1.062.
The OG was much higher than I expected, I’m wondering now if I shouldn’t have just gone the full 5 gallons? Wonder if I made some super strong stuff? Any thoughts? I’m not a homebrew scientist like some of you, so I don’t have the IBU’s and potential fermentables and expected OG and color chart stuff, maybe someone smarter than me out there can crunch the numbers and tell me what to expect. Thanks in advance!

machbrit said:

Steeped specialty grain at 150ish for 30 minutes in 3.5 gallons water, added 4lbs DME and brought to rolling boil

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You probably lost quite a bit to evaporation, if you added half a gallon of water at the end, you probably ended up with a lot less than 4 gallons total! Did you measure your final volume/can you tell from your fermenter? That would explain the strength. Sounds like it'll be pretty nice anyway, let us know how it turns out.

So I entered all of this into Beersmith and came up with these values:

OG: 1.051
FG: 1.012
IBU: 16.9
SRM: 11.9

The calculated OG was significantly lower than your measured one - could either be bad calc by software, or you forgot to take the temp into account. Either way, your IBUs are pretty low, so expect a very malty brew.

I like the sounds of a "very malty brew", thanks for calculating it all up. I need to try beersmith again, tried it a while back and it was over my head. I don't have the gallon points marked on my carboy, but I poured 3 gallons in to my second carboy which is about an inch smaller in circ, and by my estimation, you are right, I am under 3.5 gallons, probably 3.25 total. I guess it's too late to add more water? I would never have guessed that so much would have evaporated, wow. I did in fact forget to compensate for temp, it was 1.062 @ 70 degrees, so actually it was 1.063.

That probably explains it - if you beersmith 3 gallons or 3.25 gallons you'll probably get that gravity out of it. I don't know of a reason you couldn't add water now, although I'd probably boil it first for the sake of sanitation, but if I were you I wouldn't tinker and just see what comes out the other end. I like malty so I reckon it'll be pretty nice.