First beer brew, 3gal size, dark, hoppy..What is it?

Hey Ive been making apple wine but i decided to do a beer to take to vegas in 2 weeks. Heres the recipe I made:

1.5gal water boiled for 60min

4# Briess Dark DME

1.75oz Columbus full boil

.25oz Columbus @ 50min

Added 1.25gal cold water after boil

WYEAST Irish Ale yeast




SO what is this called? A stout?

Thanks,
Dan


P.S. after 7hrs the airlock is quite active

It would be very difficult to say exactly what it is because nobody knows what specialty grains they used when making the dark DME. Could be a stout, porter, mild or many others. They way I look at it is if it is good then it doesn't matter what it is.

I am trying to figure out if your posted recipe is actually accurate or whether there are any typos.

You only used 2.75 gallons of water, but ended up with 3 gallons in the fermenter? Is that right?

I don't know if I would say it is a "hoppy" beer. It probably won't have much in the way of hop flavor or aroma, but you sure have a very bitter beer there. ProMash calculates 191 IBUs.... about twice as much as your taste buds can actually register. (It will literally be the most bitter thing you have ever tasted... or ever will taste.)

This beer defies any style given the IBUs and gravity (too many IBUs for most things, and not enough gravity to be a barley wine).

I'm interesting in hearing what you think of it when it's done.

Good reply, thats how I feel too. I guess I was just wondering if it has strong hops or anything.

It's been fermenting 7 hours and you want to drink it in vegas in 2 weeks? Sorry. not gonna happen. You'll need 2-3 weeks in the bottle to carbonate.

I did some quick calculations. With only a 1.5 gallon boil, it won't be all that bitter. Using an average of 12.2 AAUs, and that boil size, I come up with 58 IBUs. Oh, that's still plenty bitter but not so bad it'll peel your tastebuds off of your tongue.

It's not a stout, since you didn't add any roasted malts. It just looks like a bitter dark alcoholic beverage with about 6% ABV. I wouldn't say that it's any particular style of beer. There won't be any hop flavor or aroma, so it won't be hoppy at all.

It'll be done in about 4-5 weeks. Let us know then how it comes out!

YooperBrew said:

I did some quick calculations. With only a 1.5 gallon boil, it won't be all that bitter. Using an average of 12.2 AAUs, and that boil size, I come up with 58 IBUs. Oh, that's still plenty bitter but not so bad it'll peel your tastebuds off of your tongue.

It's not a stout, since you didn't add any roasted malts. It just looks like a bitter dark alcoholic beverage with about 6% ABV. I wouldn't say that it's any particular style of beer. There won't be any hop flavor or aroma, so it won't be hoppy at all.

It'll be done in about 4-5 weeks. Let us know then how it comes out!

Click to expand...

Hmmm... how are you getting such low IBUs, Yoop?

Granted, I used the default IBU for Columbus in ProMash which is 15%, but if I drop the boil size to 1.5 (giving a gravity of 1.120 in the kettle), 1.75oz of that columbus takes it close to 300 IBUs.

Obviously the IBUs would dilute with the cold water added later, but it won't drop down to 60 by any means.

Well I guess we'll just have to see how it tastes then. I have a feeling if the fermentation goes anything like the apple wine does then it will be ready for vegas.

Oh well, it might be just shy of 3gal, you gotta think the DME takes up some volume too ya know.

Oh and I love how my local brew shop said theres no way it will reach 100 IBU (which is what i was shooting for, I love that bitterness) yet the calculator I used, and you guys think it will. Dunno, must not be a very exact science?

12lbchevelle said:

Well I guess we'll just have to see how it tastes then. I have a feeling if the fermentation goes anything like the apple wine does then it will be ready for vegas.

Click to expand...

Oh, it will definitely be done fermenting before you go to vegas, it just won't be carbonated yet. Fermentation will probably be done in 5 days or so, but it takes a couple weeks to get the stuff carbonated in a bottle.

12lbchevelle said:

Oh well, it might be just shy of 3gal, you gotta think the DME takes up some volume too ya know.

Click to expand...

Yes, the DME takes up some space, but there would have also been a bunch of water boil off in an hour.

If you say it's 3 gallons, I believe you. I was just trying to make sure there wasn't a typo that was going to throw off anyone trying to formulate an opinion on the recipe.

12lbchevelle said:

Oh and I love how my local brew shop said theres no way it will reach 100 IBU (which is what i was shooting for, I love that bitterness) yet the calculator I used, and you guys think it will. Dunno, must not be a very exact science?

Click to expand...

No, it's not an exact science, but columbus is a powerful bittering hop, and you had 1.75 oz of it in there for the full time of the boil in a small batch.

If I put 1.75oz of columbus in a 5 gallon APA recipe for 60 minutes, I would have over 100 IBUs.

Walker said:

No, it's not an exact science, but columbus is a powerful bittering hop, and you had 1.75 oz of it in there for the full time of the boil in a small batch.

If I put 1.75oz of columbus in a 5 gallon APA recipe for 60 minutes, I would have over 100 IBUs.

Click to expand...

I'm not expert in brewing software, but I put 1.75 ounces of 12.2% AAU columbus into a 1.5 gallon boil with 4 pounds of DME. That gives over 100 IBUs (approx 107). Then you add water to top up to 3 gallons, which would "dilute" it to about 60 IBUs. Remember that only a certain amount of hops oils would be readily soluble in that high of a SG wort.

The .25 ounce at 50 minutes (why 50 instead of at 60? I dunno) gives an additional 7 IBUs.

YooperBrew said:

I'm not expert in brewing software, but I put 1.75 ounces of 12.2% AAU columbus into a 1.5 gallon boil with 4 pounds of DME. That gives over 100 IBUs (approx 107). Then you add water to top up to 3 gallons, which would "dilute" it to about 60 IBUs. Remember that only a certain amount of hops oils would be readily soluble in that high of a SG wort.

The .25 ounce at 50 minutes (why 50 instead of at 60? I dunno) gives an additional 7 IBUs.

Click to expand...

Interesting. When I put 1.75 oz of 12.2% and 4lbs of DME into 1.5 gallon boil, I get 260 IBUs in ProMash. That's a hell of a difference!

edit: ProMash does take into account the boil gravity to adjust hop utilization, but apaprently there is a huge discrepancy here.

Also, I think when he says "50 minutes" for the small hop addition he means 50 minutes after the boil started. In other words, that was a "10 minute" hop addition using standard lingo.

The beer recipator is giving me numbers around 70 IBUs using Tinseth. I was also counting the small addition as 50 minutes after the boil started. I wonder where the difference is coming from.

beercalculus gives about 73 IBUs.

I'm glad all of this software is consistent.

heh about the software. Yes the extra hops were only in for 10 min.

Does it really take weeks to carbonate? It seems like 5 days to ferment all that stuff, then weeks to ferment just a pinch of sugar?

12lbchevelle said:

heh about the software. Yes the extra hops were only in for 10 min.

Does it really take weeks to carbonate? It seems like 5 days to ferment all that stuff, then weeks to ferment just a pinch of sugar?

Click to expand...

Yup. It takes a couple of weeks to carbonate.

It might be "mostly" carbonated in 1 week, but won't get all the way there for a couple weeks.

12lbchevelle said:

heh about the software. Yes the extra hops were only in for 10 min.

Does it really take weeks to carbonate? It seems like 5 days to ferment all that stuff, then weeks to ferment just a pinch of sugar?

Click to expand...

It can take 2-3 weeks to carbonate. If you make sure it's at 70 degrees or higher during that time, it will likely be carbonated in 2 weeks.

I will say this, though. I would NEVER bottle a beer that's 5 days old. Never.

Sure, it might be about finished fermenting. But did you ever see any stuff at the bottom of the fermenter, like in your apple wine? If you don't give the beer enough time to finish up and have some of that stuff fall out in the fermenter, it'll fall out in your bottles. It'll be cloudy and yeasty with a ton of sediment and other floaters in it. I don't think it'll be a beer you'd be proud to take and share. It might be carbonated, but it won't taste good at all. The recipe is already, well how should I say this?, lacking.

You're going to have a sediment ridden, cloudy, bitter, yeasty beverage, with floaters, in two weeks.

If you let it sit in a fermenter for 2-3 weeks, then let it sit in bottles for 2-3 weeks, you may have a very bitter beer. But it won't be cloudy and yeasty with floating debris.

Hey I aint lookin for perfection lol, Im no purist. Niether are my friends and they wont expect much from my very first beer.

12lbchevelle said:

Hey I aint lookin for perfection lol, Im no purist. Niether are my friends and they wont expect much from my very first beer.

Click to expand...

But wouldn't you want to share something respectable with your friends as your first brew? Something you put a little thought into?

Not trying to be a jerk, but there's no way it's going to taste good at all. The recipe itself makes no sense plus you're trying to cram a minimum 5-6 week process into 2 weeks. Because of that, if you start brewing beer that actually tastes good your friends will likely have already formed the opinion that your homebrew is gross.

Thanks for the tip. By friends i mean my girlfriend, her friend, and her friend's boyfriend. The girls will be drinking the apple wine which is respectable enough to share. It'll probably come down to just me drinking the beer so i may just bottle half of it a day after fermentation to bring, then bottle the rest right before i leave and let it sit while Im gone. I guess I know now that there was too much hops in the full boil but oh well theres a first time for everything,.