New Recipe

OK so i brewed my second batch today...Just made it uo tell me what you think

1.Steeped Briess Victory up to 170*
2.Added 3.3 lbs amber and 3.3 lbs dark LME when boil started
3.Boiled 2 oz centinnel for 50mins
4.boiled .5 oz kent golding last 15 mins
5. boiled .5 oz kent golding last 5 mins
6. OG 1.032
7. Cooled wort to 65* and pitched WYEAST english ale yeast
8. Woke up this morning and alot of activity going on in primary :rockin:

will probably dry hop with 1 oz sazz

Does it sound any good?? What kind of style do you think this could be?

How much volume did you end up with? By my calculations in promash you should end up closer to 1.048 for an OG. How much victory did you use? And what was the AA% on the centennial? Using the presets in promash I'm getting over 92 IBUs which is very bitter for the amount of fermentables you used. Is this your own recipe or did you follow someone else's? It will be a super bitter amber ale.

just made it up my self...AA for the centinnel was 7.7..it was a 5 gallon batch....if it comes out to bitter well then ill be drinking a really bitter beer....i guess thats why i started home brewing kind of fun seeing what u come uop with and learning from your mistakes

Well the 7.7% brings the IBU's down to under 70, but it's still going to be bitter. You've got the hops in the IPA range, but the malt in the "Ordinary Bitter" catagory. Just be prepared for it to be bitter. About half of the amount of centennial would be right for an American Pale Ale. Everything else looks fine. If you want to use the same malt in the future and want to get closer to an english style, use about 1 oz of EK Goldings for the full boil and keep the rest of your hops the same. Then it will be dead on for a "Premium Bitter" style ale.

thanx for the good advice...sounds like a hybrid beer half apa and half ipa...lol

Bitter??? What's wrong with bitter? This doesn't sound like a mistake to be learned from but perhaps a beer to be brewed over and over again!

Victory needs to be mashed, no?

A hoppy amber is a great beer to drink. Can take a higher IBU since it's sweeter and maltier. I actually prefer them to IPA's. I would have boosted the OG, but that's me.

sounds like it might be good .....on the beer-wine website it says victory is a specialty grain to be steeped...now the OG how do u bring the OG up or down? and third of all i brewed fri night and there was alot of activity going on in the airlock...came back from skool todqay and it bubbles about every minute...should i start testing the Sg to see if it stays stable or shoud i wait longer or just rack it already to the seconday for some dry hopping? Also shoud i dry hop with fuggles, saaz, or kent golding?

Increase the OG by adding more extract next time.

Just leave the primary alone for a week. Wait till it stops bubbling before racking.

ive been looking around and i see alot of people using this 123 method is that good enough?

For most beers. Higher gravity ones can go twice the time. Just be patient. You are much more likely to rack too soon than to wait too long. You'd have to give it months for that.

By the way, any of those hops are good for dry hopping. Take a sniff from each package and decide.

i think ill follow that 123 method and rack it on sat

Sounds like a good plan. I only have time to brew on the weekends, so it ends up working out great for the method. Occasionally I have to let an additional week go by, and the beer still turns out great.

thanx alot for the help this forum and the people on this forum are great and very knowledgable thanx

if i want to end up with a five gallon batch how much water should i start with for a full boil....and what amount should i put into the pro mash program?

***bump***

well the airlock stopped bubbling but will still wait till sat to rack to secondary...open the lid a little and it smell great cant wait to taste the sample when i take the SG?

***bump***

miafunk2003 said:

just made it up my self...AA for the centinnel was 7.7..it was a 5 gallon batch....if it comes out to bitter well then ill be drinking a really bitter beer....i guess thats why i started home brewing kind of fun seeing what u come uop with and learning from your mistakes

Click to expand...

It is only a mistake if you don't like it.

Why all the bumps?

FWIW, I my first brew was a 5 gallon batch with 6.6# of amber LME and a pound of crystal, and the OG for that turned out at 35, compared to the predicted OG of about 50. So I had that same issue, and I don't really know the answer. My prevailing theory is that we're not mixing the wort up well enough after we top up to 5 gal, so more of the sugar is sitting on the bottom of the container. Since we typically draw our gravities from the top, we get an artificially low reading. I could be completely wrong, but it's the best I can come up with

the bump put my thread up to the top so people take a look at my question. your explanation for the low OG sound like that could be the reason...but i think i know why it happened to me...first i was only doing a 1.5 gallon wort boil which i would then add to the primary fermenter with 3.5 gallon of cold water in order to reach the 5 gallons...but of course it didnt come out to that it came out to 4.5 gallons due to evaporation so i added another .5 gallons which in total is really 5.5-5.75 gallons of water thus more water less sugar = lower OG....i think thats why i got the low OG

actually evaporation doesn't remove any sugar. If you have 5 gallons of wort at a SG of 1.050, and you let a bunch of it evaporate, you'll wind up with for instance 4.5 gallons of wort at a higher SG, maybe 1.060 (I'm just pulling numbers out of the air here...). As soon as you top it back up to 5 gallons with new water though, the SG will return to 1.050.