First AG tonight. Your thoughts on my recipe?

This will be about a 3 gallon batch. The recipe is from Brewtopia Easy All-Grain Homebrewing Recipes
They add a gallon or so of water to top off the carboy but I'm going to try to boil using my 4 gallon and 3 gallon pots, on my stove, and see what I come out with so I don't have to top off w/ water.

How many gallons should I somewhat be shooting for with eight pounds of grain?

7 1/2 lbs. 2 row pale malt
1 lb. crystal malt (40-80 L)
1/2 oz. Crystal hops (5% aa) - boil 60 mins.
1/2 oz. Crystal hops - boil last 15 mins.
1/2 oz. Crystal hops - dry hop after 4 days in the primary fermenter.
safale US 05 Yeast


I also have some Fuggles and Northern Brewer hops, if you think those would work I could throw them in somewhere too.

Also, should I pitch two packs of yeast?

thanks!

Sounds like a nice beer!

If you've never done a beer with all crystal hops, I'd go ahead and go with what you posted.

I'd cut the crystal 40 in half - a pound is a lot (especially in a 3 gallon batch) with only 7.5 lbs of 2-row

it's actually crystal 80L, if that makes any difference. what do those number mean anyways?

anyways, it's too late. I'm mashing as we speak(type).

pnj said:

it's actually crystal 80L, if that makes any difference. what do those number mean anyways?

anyways, it's too late. I'm mashing as we speak(type).

Click to expand...

80L (Lovibond) is the color.

That's a fair amout of of grain for a 3 gallon batch! You should end up with a fairly high OG. That means that your beer might be underhopped, especially with a full pound of crystal. If you can, add more hops at the beginning of the boil- move at least 1 ounce to 60 minutes. Otherwise, you'll have an OG of around 1.070 and IBUs of only about 16. It'll be cloyingly sweet without enough bittering.

What volume should I shoot for with that amount of grain? I'd like an OG of around 1.05 or so. I have a 4 gallon pot and maybe a 3 or 2.5 gallon pot. I was going to boil the wort in both of those and hope I end up w/ more then 3 gallons.

Also, I do have more hops, as I mentioned in the first post. I could always add more..?

You'd have to guess at your efficiency, since it's the first AG. But I think to guess at 68% would be pretty safe. That means that if this is a three gallon batch, you'll end up with 1.069. A four gallon batch would give you 1.052

I know you're mashing now- how much water did you mash with, and how much are you going to sparge with?

After you decide on your boil volume, I'll help you with the hopping. I'd definitely plan on moving the dryhops to the bittering hops, because you need it. You can buy more hops in two weeks for the dryhopping!

well, for the amount of water I found that many people use 1.25 quarts of water to a pound of grain.

What I did was measure out a pound of grain and add 1.25 quarts to see what the ratio looked like. Then I poured in a bunch of water to the rest of my grains and stirred it up so it had the same consistency as my test sample..

I am doing the mash in my oven. It holds steady at 150 on the Low setting. So my grains are in two large pots. However, I just discovered that with that much grain, the oven holds steady at 140. So.... I just turned the heat up a bit. I'm doing the iodine starch test and when I no longer see black, I'll be mashing.

I'll be mashing using Deathbrewers stove top method. So I'll soak the grains in hot water for 10-15 minutes. So I won't know my final wart amount until I'm done...

Yoop, would you recomend that I don't use additional hops? (northern brewer or fuggles?)

pnj said:

well, for the amount of water I found that many people use 1.25 quarts of water to a pound of grain.

What I did was measure out a pound of grain and add 1.25 quarts to see what the ratio looked like. Then I poured in a bunch of water to the rest of my grains and stirred it up so it had the same consistency as my test sample..

I am doing the mash in my oven. It holds steady at 150 on the Low setting. So my grains are in two large pots. However, I just discovered that with that much grain, the oven holds steady at 140. So.... I just turned the heat up a bit. I'm doing the iodine starch test and when I no longer see black, I'll be mashing.

I'll be mashing using Deathbrewers stove top method. So I'll soak the grains in hot water for 10-15 minutes. So I won't know my final wart amount until I'm done...

Yoop, would you recomend that I don't use additional hops? (northern brewer or fuggles?)

Click to expand...

This is hard, because it's hard to come up with the correct IBUs without knowing the probable OG. I'd just use 1 ounce of crystal for bittering, and keep the second addition where it is, and then buy more hops for dryhopping.

It's easier to plan out your water additions, both the mash and the sparge additions, instead of eyeballing it. You may have some conversion problems as a result.

Next time, weigh your grain and add 1.25 quarts of water per pound. No eyeballing- get a pitcher and measure it! The same with the sparge water- just use a pitcher and measure it out. You'll have far more dependable results.

well, next time I'll definitly be doing things differently.

I ended up with about seven gallons of wort. my gravity from the wort is 1.034. Not sure if it's good or bad...

the kitchen is a disaster..

what was the temp of your wort when you took the OG sample?

hang in there ...the next time will be better!

the temp is now room temp (around 60 I'd guess) and the reading is now at 1.040

I'm guessing it will go up as I boil the water out?

wait, you haven't boiled yet? Im confused - I'm sorry I can't help more....but, keep this thread alive, let us know how it turns out, and if it's a disaster, we can help for the next batch!

I am still boiling.. this must be a record for the smallest batch taking the longest time...

I took a hydro reading before I started the boil, just to see what it was.

I threw in about a quarter ounce of Kent Goldings for the last 10 minutes in one of my pots. I had three pots going, now I'm down to one.

ok, six or so hours later.....

I ended up with about 3.5 gallons of wort. I am using a five gallon carboy so I'm just guessing on how full it is. I had two pots of wort and I poured the first one in using a large funnel. then I poured the yeast packet into the funnel and dumped the second pot of wort in, washing the yeast into the carboy.

my OG ended up right at 1.050, so I guess that's not too bad.

My temp is about 79 or so. It's probably a bit high but eh. I'll re-pitch if I have to.

all in all, I had fun, learned a bunch and.. da Da da DumpTaDum, MY FIRST BATCH OF ALL GRAIN!

you should be okay - if your room temp is ~60, the temp should be down by now....

I need to re-read this whole thread though, as I'm still a little confused.

Yea, I'm a little confused as well. Did you boil off 3.5 gallons? It says that you ended up with about 7 gallons of wort (which Im guessing was pre-boil) and now have 3.5 gallons post boil. Was your boil an hour long?

I can only guess the amount of liquid that I ended up with because I had to use three seperate pots. One of those pots is four gallons, the other two are just basic stock pots.

I only have a five gallon carboy (my six gallon bucket has beer in it) so I had to boil my liquid down to at least four gallons. I did this on the stove and one of the pots I could not get to a full boil, so as the pots I could get to a full boil boiled their liquid out, I added liquid from the non-boiling pot..

This made my entire boil time much longer then one hour.

My girlfriend said I should just pour some of the wort out, so I ended up wit the amount I needed, but that didn't seem right to just dump that hard earned wort down the drain.

The temp is at 76 in the carboy even though it's 60 something in the room. the wort is also violently swirling all around and the bubbler is bubbling away.

BEER! I made BEER!!

still not sure if I have enough hops in it or not though...

try and get the temp down if you can -- put the carboy in a bigger container filled with cool water and some bottles full of frozen ice. you can get some off flavors if you ferment that high - it can taste "hot" or sometimes worse...

keep us posted and good luck.....

can you re-hash your hop schedule? I'm not sure what happens if you only add hops to one boil but then add wort from a couple other pots.

the yeast (safale 05) says to ferment at up to 75 so I'm not too far off. I was able to put the carboy into my large pot with some cold water. but there isn't much room for water.... I did wrap the top of the carboy with cold, wet towels too. Hope that helps.

as for my hops. I boiled in two pots and each pot had a hop bag in each pot. Then both pots got poured into the carboy.

2 ounces of Crystal hops at 60 minutes. and I threw in about 1/4 ounce of Kent Goldings for the last ten minutes of the boil.

sounds like your on the right track -- I'll be interested to see how this turns out -- you're gonna make beer!!

Well.....

I put the beer into a secondary today. I probably should have done it sooner but life kinda got in the way.

I tasted the beer, it tastes really sweet. but my hydrometer reading says. (wait, I need help with this)
my reading looks like this picture.
http://www.fourthavenuebrew.com/images/12709hydrometer.jpg

It started at 1.050 so I'm not real sure how to calculate what my alchohol percent is.

So, it tastes sweet but it clearly has fermented. Maybe the sweetness I'm tasting is really tannins or something else.

also, I should have added more hops.

Looks like you're at 1.011 or so.....basically you're attenuated if you started out at 1.050. (I'm assuming that your hydrometer is at or close to its calibration temperature, usually 60°F.)

1.050->1.011 should put you around 5.2% ABV

You're going to have some residual sweetness from using a full pound of Crystal 80l in a 3.5g batch.

Should I try to dry hop to offset the sweetness or will it get better on it's own, with age/time?

I bottled this on 6/7/09 and cracked one open yesterday. The beer is VERY pretty looking. Nice and clear, kind of a darker amber color.

However, the aftertaste is... not so good. I'm guessing it's tanins from me squeezing the bags of grains when I made the beer? I gave a sample to two friends and one noticed it a lot and the other didn't notice it at all. I could notice the odd after taste too.

Will this disapear over time at all or is it there to stay?