My first build a brew

I wanted to try my hand at building a recipe. The base comes from Cheezydemon3, but I wanted to add a little something to it. Something light and sessionable.

3 lbs x-dark DME
3.3 lbs amber LME
1 lb roasted barley
1/2 lb carpils
1 lb cyrstal 60 (or 40?)
1 lb brown sugar (30 minutes)

1 oz Fuggles 45 minutes
1/2 oz perle 30 minutes
1/2 oz perle 15 minutes
1/2 oz simcoe 5 minutes

Steeping @ 150-155
sparge @ 170

US-05 cause its a forgivable yeast

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

I haven't done many extract brews but when I did I'd try to use the lightest extract I could and let the steeping grains give me my color. As I recall, the lighter extracts are more fermentable so you don't run the risk of a fermentation stuck at 1.020. If you want to go dark add some chocolate or black patent.

I've never tried simcoe in anything other than a pale ale/IPA so I'm not sure how that will go.

What was your thought behind the brown sugar? It will boost your alcohol but won't have a big impact on taste if that's what you were looking for.

Ravenshead said:

I haven't done many extract brews but when I did I'd try to use the lightest extract I could and let the steeping grains give me my color. As I recall, the lighter extracts are more fermentable so you don't run the risk of a fermentation stuck at 1.020. If you want to go dark add some chocolate or black patent.

I've never tried simcoe in anything other than a pale ale/IPA so I'm not sure how that will go.

What was your thought behind the brown sugar? It will boost your alcohol but won't have a big impact on taste if that's what you were looking for.

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I thought the closer to flame out the more flavor of the sugar will come through.

The brown sugar taste/flavor is lost during the heat of fermentation. Some have added it after 5 days. I have not tried that. There may be a steep grain that will impart the molasses taste you are expecting from brown sugar.

Others have used a slight addition of molasses but I read you have to be carefull. I added 1 oz to a 2.5g recipe of Jamaican Mon, it was good

*Simcoe hops are best for IPA PA. Fuggles is great for darks mostly used for aroma and flavor
Perle is for German Ale Wheat Pils.

Might consider Northern?

Of course its your beer Sometimes good to go for it


* I use this link to learn about hops, best resource I have found. I spend 'hours' reading this
http://beerlegends.com/hops-varieties

I had a dark Oatmeal Stout all extract get stuck at FG 1.022. I bottles anyway, turned out great.
I do like dark porter and stouts. Might suggest as 'steve' said and change out the amber LME for a light LME and try another dark steep grain.

*I am not an expert on steeping just moving to that method.

RR

steviesteve31 said:

I wanted to try my hand at building a recipe. The base comes from Cheezydemon3, but I wanted to add a little something to it. Something light and sessionable.

3 lbs x-dark DME
3.3 lbs amber LME
1 lb brown sugar (30 minutes)

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over 7 lbs of fermentables
over 6lbs of amber/dark

nothing about this says light or session beer.

thats why im asking what can i do to make it better

steviesteve31 said:

thats why im asking what can i do to make it better

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Well, what style are you going for? Hard to give advice without knowing what you're after. You say light and sessionable but your ingredients aren't gonna give you anything close to that.

A nice light APA would be something like this:

6lb Light DME
1/2 lb Crystal 40

1/2 Perle @ 60
1/2 Perle @ 10


No offense but the recipe you posted up looks nothing like what you're after.

steviesteve31 said:

thats why im asking what can i do to make it better

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you almost have a stout as is.

its going to be roasty, black as obsidian and most likely hit the 1.020 curse.

getting away from stoutish
no roasted
75% of the crystal, 20L-40L
no brown sugar
maybe keep the same amount of extract but light/x-light (maybe some amber at a top but very little)
carapils is a personal taste thing
the hop schedule is a personal taste thing

thats what i am looking for thank you. So if I add LME and sugar with the steeping grains it would end up being a big sweet beer?

I plugged the recipe you have in to BeerCalculus (at work, don't have access to my BeerSmith!) and came up with the following:

OG 1.059
FG 1.016
ABV: 5.7%

IBUs: 42.8 (Rager)
SRM: 94

According to this, you have a nearly 6% BLACK beer with quite a bit of roasty malt character and hop character from the boil. If you're looking session, use the APA recipe above.

You wouldn't necessarily end up with sweet beer if you add sugar at different times. Remember that if you use a fermentable sugar in the primary, you will more likely end up with a higher ABV rather than sweetness.

I really appreciate it i down loaded BEERSMITH and it helped me out a lot. Maybe with a little more tweaking I can make a Black IPA. Thanks everyone for the help.

Believe it or not, sugar brown or otherwise doesn't add sweetness to beer. Because it is so fermentable, it actually has the opposite affect. The yeast like it so much you can get a few points lower at FG than you should have with a comparable amount of malt. I'd stay away from sugar until you have a few more recipes under your belt unless you just need to do a dry belgian right out of the gate.

Also, as I said before, keep your extract as light as possible and get you color/malt flavor from your steeping grains. A beer made with pure light DME and a 1/2 lb of black patent will come out black as night. I don't recommend that BTW.