Recipe Construction

Hello. Before anyone hazes me I'd like to say that this is my first recipe construction and I'm looking for a gentle nudge in the correct direction. i have the following items in my inventory and planned on picking up a 50lb sack of 2-row this weekend. Please give me some insight as to what direction to head.

I tried just putting all of the ingredients in and it looks like it would turn out tar colored and probably taste a little like asphalt too.

I have no preference as to the style or anything. I basically want to brew some beer and use up some ingredients that I've had for a little while in order to get them off the shelf and get some new stuff in. I'm thinking possibl a porter using the S-04 yeast cakes.

Crystal 20L - 8 oz.
Crystal 80L - 8 oz.
Crystal 120L - 8 oz.
Chocolate Malt - 4 oz.
Roasted Barley - 4 oz.
Liberty Hops (4.30%) - 1 oz.
Willamette Hops (5.50%) - 3 oz.
Wyeast 1084 - 2 Jars (Washed)
Safale S-04 - 2 Jars (Washed)

Again, any help would be appreciated and it's not that I want everyone else to do the work for me but I would like some helpful suggestions.

I don't think you have enough Chocolate malt for a porter, but I see I nice American brown.

You could do Brown, or maybe an Irish Red, an APA would be a good choice too.

I'd probably go for the Irish Red, and use your 1084 yeast. Maybe use all the 80 and 120, and a couple oz's of Willamette.

What if you used the chocolate malt, roasted barley, and crystal 120 for a porter? Why wouldn't this work?

I think Conroe's right, not enough Chocolate for the porter. And not enough roast barley for a stout. Definitely a brown or scottish, though. I prefer the brow with the hops you have, but that's just me. A gentle dose of Willamette for the scottish would be just fine.

jschaf said:

What if you used the chocolate malt, roasted barley, and crystal 120 for a porter? Why wouldn't this work?

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Perhaps if it you had black patent instead of roasted you could make a robust porter. If you had twice that much chocolate malt you could make a brown porter. What you have would be more of a stout, but a stout is usually 10% dark grains. To keep it close to that you could only use about five pounds base malt and the OG would be about 1.030.

You have enough crystal for about anything, but not enough dark malts for anything darker than a Brown ale. You could make a wonderful American amber with all your crystal, all your hops and a few oz of you dark grains (or a brown with all the chocolate malt.) I'd use half the Liberty as a FWH, 2 oz Willamette at 60 and the rest of the hops in the last few minutes shooting for a OG of 1.055-60.

Let's see. I think you've got the fixin's for a fine American Amber Ale (AAA)/Irish Red.

Both of your yeasts are relatively under-attenuative. They'll leave you with a relatively high finishing gravity, in other words. So be careful with how much Crystal you use.

I'd do:

Crystal 20L - 8 oz.
Crystal 80L - 4 oz.
Crystal 120L - 4 oz.
Roasted Barley - 2 oz.

The Crystals will blend together, giving you a broad spectrum of flavors without being overpoweringly sweet in the finish. The Roasted Barley will bring the color into line - a nice, deep amber (~15 SRM) - without adding flavor. You could use more Crystal to get the color, but that will take the flavor and body way out of whack.

Add enough 2-row to get you an OG of ~1.052, and you're there.

An ounce of your Willamette boiled for 60 minutes will get you ~27 IBU, on the high side for Irish Red and on the low end for AAA. If you're going for AAA, add another half-ounce; that should get you to ~40 IBU. Add a half-ounce of Willamette with 10 minutes left if Irish Red; add an ounce of Willamette at flameout and dry-hop with the Liberty if AAA.

Yeast: Stop using cakes. Properly harvesting and pitching proper amounts of yeast is easy. If you're going to select a yeast for certain properties - presumably that's why you select a particular yeast - why throw those properties out the window? That's what you do when you knock out onto a cake, because 99.9% of the time, it's overpitching by orders of magnitude. (That's not a good thing.) Search HBT for threads discussing yeast management.

Cheers!

Bob

NQ3X said:

Yeast: Stop using cakes. Properly harvesting and pitching proper amounts of yeast is easy. If you're going to select a yeast for certain properties - presumably that's why you select a particular yeast - why throw those properties out the window? That's what you do when you knock out onto a cake, because 99.9% of the time, it's overpitching by orders of magnitude. (That's not a good thing.) Search HBT for threads discussing yeast management.

Cheers!

Bob

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I apologize, I guess cakes wasn't the correct term here. These have been harvested from two batches that I did back in April. They were washed per the Yeast Washing Sticky and have been kept in the fridge since then. I've edited my original post.

I like the recipe that you've put in because I could basically make two full batches without having to buy anything except 2-Row (maybe I'll use the Crystal 40 in the second batch instead of the 20) which I wanted to do anyways.

I think I'll try this recipe with the 1084 yeast. Thanks for everyone's input.

NQ3X said:

Let's see. I think you've got the fixin's for a fine American Amber Ale (AAA)/Irish Red.

Both of your yeasts are relatively under-attenuative. They'll leave you with a relatively high finishing gravity, in other words. So be careful with how much Crystal you use.

I'd do:

Crystal 20L - 8 oz.
Crystal 80L - 4 oz.
Crystal 120L - 4 oz.
Roasted Barley - 2 oz.

The Crystals will blend together, giving you a broad spectrum of flavors without being overpoweringly sweet in the finish. The Roasted Barley will bring the color into line - a nice, deep amber (~15 SRM) - without adding flavor. You could use more Crystal to get the color, but that will take the flavor and body way out of whack.

Add enough 2-row to get you an OG of ~1.052, and you're there.

An ounce of your Willamette boiled for 60 minutes will get you ~27 IBU, on the high side for Irish Red and on the low end for AAA. If you're going for AAA, add another half-ounce; that should get you to ~40 IBU. Add a half-ounce of Willamette with 10 minutes left if Irish Red; add an ounce of Willamette at flameout and dry-hop with the Liberty if AAA.

Cheers!

Bob

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FTW! nice recipe Bob - may have found my next beer

Wow! Glad I could help!

I may have to brew this up myself. I've a pound or so of Willamette pellets....

Hmmmmm



Bob

NQ3X said:

Wow! Glad I could help!

I may have to brew this up myself. I've a pound or so of Willamette pellets....

Hmmmmm



Bob

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Bob - I think of you as the king of browns on this site - I'm working on a recipe I want to run by you soon, and get your thoughts!

"King of Browns"...that's pretty neat.

Run it by me anytime. My attendance here at HBT has been hit or miss lately; if you post a thread and I miss it, PM or email me the link. I'll make it a point to stop by.

Bob

NQ3X said:

"King of Browns"...that's pretty neat.

Run it by me anytime. My attendance here at HBT has been hit or miss lately; if you post a thread and I miss it, PM or email me the link. I'll make it a point to stop by.

Bob

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will do - but it's coming tomorrow probably as AHS has their 50 state sale for AZ tomorrow and I want to take advantage of the 10% off....

I'm basically morphing my 2 favorite brown recipes - but I can't decide on the hop schedule or the amount of chocolate and black patent.

heck, here's what I have so far:

9 lbs 2-row
1 lb Munich
1.5 lb Crystal 60L
1/4 lb biscuit
1/4 lb carapils
1/4 lb chocolate malt
1/8 lb black patent

Mash @ 155*F for 60 minutes

Hop Schedule

1 oz. EKG @ 60
1 oz Liberty @ 30
1 tsp. Irish Moss @ 15
1 cup brown sugar @ 5
1 oz. Willamette @ 5

Wyeast 1318

I'm interested in the addition of the brown sugar. What will that do for it? I mean that in a strictly inquisitive sense and not in a critical sense. Hope it turns out well.