Sister Star of the Sun

Ladies & Gents,
I'm planning on making a batch of SSoS for my second brew ever. I have the recipe below. I am just wondering if anyone has made this before. It lists 13 lbs of malt. Most recipes I've come across call for ~6 to 7 lbs of malt. I'm going to be subbing Muntons LME for the Hugh Baird malt the recipe calls for. The question I'm looking to have answered is this...the 13 lbs in the recipe, is this for LME or DME? Does it make a difference?

Muntons cans of LME are ~$15 each where I shop so four cans is a bit pricey for a five gallon batch.

Thanks in advance


Recipe Specifics:
O.G.: 1.060-65
F.G.: 1.012
Ingredients for Five Gallons:
13# Hugh Baird English Pale malted barley
1/4# Hugh Baird 135L crystal malt
1/4# Great Western malted wheat
3 oz Chinook hops (60 minutes)
2 oz East Kent Golding hops (15 minutes)
2 oz imported Fuggle hops (while chilling)
1 tsp. Irish Moss (@30 minute mark)
Wyeast 1028 (London Ale), pint starter

Recipe Link

That's malted barley, not extract. You have an all-grain recipe that needs to be converted to an extract + grains recipe.

That's what I figured. Any suggestions for LME?

Now that would be a really useful tool. Why not an All Grain to Extract calculator. You put in the type of base malt and amount into the calculator and it figures how much and what type of L or DME you would need. Now that's something I'd plop down a couple bucks for!

If you have ProMash or BeerSmith or any of those tools, you can just input the recipe as AG, then delete the 2-row and add enough generic light DME or LME to get back to the original recipe's OG. BeerSmith, I know, will even tell you what to use as a substitution.

Cool thanks!

You have any of those programs Staem? Or would you like someone to calculate for you? (I'd do it now, but I'm at work. I'll do it later if nobody has by then.)

I'd much appreciate it. I'd like to get all the ingredients so I can get this batch fired up on Friday.

I was looking at ProMash ($25 I think) but I wanted to get a little experience before I start buying everything I come across.

Speaking very generally, just use 60% of the base grain's weight if you're using DME or 75-80% of the base grain's weight if you're using LME. Again, just a general rule.

13 x 0.75 = 9.75lbs of LME.

The other grains you would steep.

Also, will you be doing a concentrate boil or full wort boil? If concentrated, increase the bittering hops (60m addition of Chinook) by 15-20% to around 3.5 oz.

Baron von BeeGee said:

Also, will you be doing a concentrate boil or full wort boil? If concentrated, increase the bittering hops (60m addition of Chinook) by 15-20% to around 3.5 oz.

Click to expand...

I'm going to do a concentrate with a three gallon boil & top it up to 5 gallons in the primary. I have 4oz of the Chinooks so I'll bump that up as you mentioned but I'll still need to grab another can of malt.

I'll let you guys know how it goes tomorrow night...thanks for the input!!

Here you go. I ran it through beersmith and came up with some converted recipes. I haven't tried any of these so I can't say anything about how well they'll work.

I would definitely suggest only adding the smaller load of DME at the beginning of the boil and then putting the rest in with 15 or 20 minutes left to keep the color down. It will likely still be a little darker than you are shooting for. I also don't know anything about steeping wheat, I think it really should be mashed.

Edit: The Late addition of the extra malt will help with your hopping efficiency too.

Here are the results:

All-Grain:
http://www.ir.org/Brewery/temp/SSoS-AG.htm

Partial Mash: (If you can, I'd try this one)
http://www.ir.org/Brewery/temp/SSoS-Partial.htm

Extract:
http://www.ir.org/Brewery/temp/SSoS-Extract.htm

Malted wheat is diastatic and will convert itself if mashed (or steeped at 150-155F or so). However, in this recipe at that quantity I'd say it is only included for head retention and it could safely be omitted from an extract recipe.

Staem said:

I was looking at ProMash ($25 I think) but I wanted to get a little experience before I start buying everything I come across.

Click to expand...

Take a look at BeerSmith. It's got a free trial as well, and the interface, I think, is a lot cleaner and easier. BeerToolsPro is a new release that people seem to like a lot, but I havn't seen a demo available so I can't say whether it's any good or not.

I tried each of the programs that had a free demo available. I think there were 3 or 4, I really don't remember now. It came down to BeerSmith and ProMash as being usable. I chose BeerSmith because it was much more intuitive for me.

Thanks for the feedback guys. It's been a few since I've been on. To follow up on the progress, the beer turned out pretty well to this point. It's REAL pungent but I expect it to mellow.

I goofed on the aroma hops. They were sposed to go in while the wort was cooling but I got caught up in the moment & forgot to put them in so I added them to the primary. The prob was that they were pellets & made a mess. I got most of them out when I racked to the secondary but there are still some floaters in there.

I should be bottling this weekend but I don't have enough empties so it may be another week or so until I finish the bottle emptying process. Football helps this time of year.

I have had a few floating pieces even in the bottling bucket, they have always dropped out in the bottle. Relax, don't worry...

I brewed this back in November, it's been in a keg for 8 weeks and I'm really enjoying it.