recipe critique please!

Oh oracle of all beer knowledge...
Finally have time to brew a batch of devil water this weekend (young baby in the house definitely eats up the time...). I have some ingredients lying around since last autumn that I want to use before they get old. How does this recipe sound? No particular style per-se, I'm basically aiming for a moderately bitter (non-sweet) lager that would be slightly stronger than a session beer.

400g Caramalt
400g Vienna malt

Steep grains in 2 gallons of water for 1 hour, approx. 65-68 C.
Remove grains after an hour, top back up to water to 2 gallons, bring to boil.

After hot break:
Add 2kg of Muntons light DME and 15g Northern Brewery hops.
At 15 minutes, add 5g of Hallertau.
At 30 minutes, add 5g of Nothern Brewery
At 45 minutes add 5g of Hallertau.
At 55 minutes, add 5g of Saaz
End of boil, chill ASAP (ice bath in sink)

Add one packet Saflager S-23 yeast
Top up water to 4 gallons. Stir like crazy. Done.

My questions:

* I am pretty sure I read somewhere that Vienna malts need to be mashed, not steeped...is that correct? Will steeping the Vienna malts be a waste of time?

* I have four 500g bags of Muntons DME. Two bags are hopped light DME, two are unhopped. What difference will this have?

* Last time I brewed, my OG was higher than I had expected, so I added a bit more water and it got my OG down to what I was shooting for. Anything wrong with this approach? Will it dilute the entire beer?

* I'm using Beer Tools, but it seems like a lot of the ingredients I buy aren't in the database - and it's hard to find accurate data on line to manually enter the information by hand. Muntons, for example, doesn't have much info on its home page.

* Anyone have a better DME to recommend, or is Muntons fine?

* I've been using Cooper's carbonation drops - these are great! But this time I'll be using glass 500ml bottles (Grolsch type). Using only onetype. The drops call for 1 drop per 350ml or so - would using two drops in a 500ml glass run the risk of exploding bottles?

Txs all in advance!

You _might_ consider switching your units to US's ones. The board's folks are mainly americans, so it would be easier for them (us) to check out. As you are the one asking, it might be more appreciated this way!

Erythro73 said:

You _might_ consider switching your units to US's ones. The board's folks are mainly americans, so it would be easier for them (us) to check out. As you are the one asking, it might be more appreciated this way!

Click to expand...

Ha! I'm from the US myself, but living in London. As you can imagine it causes all sorts of problems (as you can see by my going back and forth between gallons and grams etc...)

Let's see:

0.88lb Caramalt
0.88lb Vienna malt

Steep grains in 2 gallons of water for 1 hour, approx. 155 F.
Remove grains after an hour, top back up to water to 2 gallons, bring to boil.

After hot break:
Add 4.4lbs of Muntons light DME and 0.5oz Northern Brewery hops.
At 15 minutes, add 0.2oz of Hallertau.
At 30 minutes, add 0.2oz of Nothern Brewery
At 45 minutes add 0.2oz of Hallertau.
At 55 minutes, add 0.2oz of Saaz
End of boil, chill ASAP (ice bath in sink)

400g Caramalt
400g Vienna malt

Steep grains in 2 gallons of water for 1 hour, approx. 65-68 C.
You should obtain conversion at that temp. You're pretty much mashing.
Remove grains after an hour, top back up to water to 2 gallons, bring to boil.

After hot break:
Add 2kg of Muntons light DME and 15g Northern Brewery hops.
I add my extract at the end of the boil. AKA Late extract addition.
At 15 minutes, add 5g of Hallertau.
At 30 minutes, add 5g of Nothern Brewery
At 45 minutes add 5g of Hallertau.
At 55 minutes, add 5g of Saaz
End of boil, chill ASAP (ice bath in sink)

Add one packet Saflager S-23 yeast
Top up water to 4 gallons. Stir like crazy. Done.

My questions:

* I am pretty sure I read somewhere that Vienna malts need to be mashed, not steeped...is that correct? Will steeping the Vienna malts be a waste of time?
See previous comment about mashing.
* I have four 500g bags of Muntons DME. Two bags are hopped light DME, two are unhopped. What difference will this have?
I've never come across hopped DME. I remeber Muntons(?) in a red and black can that was pre-hopped LME. I haven't seen that in years.
* Last time I brewed, my OG was higher than I had expected, so I added a bit more water and it got my OG down to what I was shooting for. Anything wrong with this approach? Will it dilute the entire beer?
That's fine.
* I'm using Beer Tools, but it seems like a lot of the ingredients I buy aren't in the database - and it's hard to find accurate data on line to manually enter the information by hand. Muntons, for example, doesn't have much info on its home page. I just sub in a malt with the same data. It's usually some type of crystal malt that I'll just choose "crystal XX" and make a note what it actually was.

* Anyone have a better DME to recommend, or is Muntons fine?
Muntons seems to have the market outside of the US. In the States we'll see Briess a lot of times.

* I've been using Cooper's carbonation drops - these are great! But this time I'll be using glass 500ml bottles (Grolsch type). Using only onetype. The drops call for 1 drop per 350ml or so - would using two drops in a 500ml glass run the risk of exploding bottles?
I'd roll with one drop. Check with Coopers because I believe they give a volume range for their drops. One drop may carb 250-350 and 2 drops for 350-500, something like that.

surista said:

I've been using Cooper's carbonation drops - these are great! But this time I'll be using glass 500ml bottles (Grolsch type). Using only onetype. The drops call for 1 drop per 350ml or so - would using two drops in a 500ml glass run the risk of exploding bottles?

Click to expand...

I've used those in the past, and they were pretty great. But 2 drops is exactly what they recommend in their starter kit for a 750ml bottle. 2 drops in a 500ml bottle would probably be pushing it, and I'd hate to see you take that risk.

Honestly, 1.5 drops would probably be right, but unless you're much more patient than I am you won't want to sit there cutting them in half with a heated knife ...

If you can get Muntons DME, you may want to check your supplier for Muntons carbonation tabs. They are smaller and call for 4 tablets per 375ml/12oz bottle, so you could easily scale that up for your 500ml bottles, and save your Coopers for the next time you have some different size bottles.

Thanks guys for your replies. I had time yesterday to brew, so I went ahead with my recipe as stated - anyone want to take a guess as to what it will taste like?

Two questions: To steep the grains, I got the temperature of the 2 gallons up to about 170 F (76-77 C) before putting in the grain, thinking that the 1.76lb (800g) of grains would bring the temperature down. However, it didn't bring it down that much, so the temperature was closer to 160-162 F (70-72 C) for the first 20-30mn. Will this have any impact?

Second, I forgot to pick up hop bags - so I basically just chucked the grains in the water, then used a strainer to pick (most of) the grains out. If I had a second big pot I would have used that, but didn't. While I got the vast majority of the grain, I'm sure there were some grains left when I started the boil. Will this result in a bunch of tannin in the beer?

Bumpity - someone care to take a stab at my last two questions (quoted below)?

Two questions: To steep the grains, I got the temperature of the 2 gallons of water to about 170 F (76-77 C) before putting in the grain, thinking that the 1.76lb (800g) of grains would bring the temperature down. However, it didn't bring it down that much, so the temperature was closer to 160-162 F (70-72 C) for the first 20-30mn. Will this have any impact?

Second, I forgot to pick up hop bags - so I basically just chucked the grains in the water, then used a strainer to pick (most of) the grains out. If I had a second big pot I would have used that, but didn't. While I got the vast majority of the grain, I'm sure there were some grains left when I started the boil. Will this result in a bunch of tannin in the beer?

Two questions: To steep the grains, I got the temperature of the 2 gallons of water to about 170 F (76-77 C) before putting in the grain, thinking that the 1.76lb (800g) of grains would bring the temperature down. However, it didn't bring it down that much, so the temperature was closer to 160-162 F (70-72 C) for the first 20-30mn. Will this have any impact?
You created a wort that will finish higher than originally planned.

Second, I forgot to pick up hop bags - so I basically just chucked the grains in the water, then used a strainer to pick (most of) the grains out. If I had a second big pot I would have used that, but didn't. While I got the vast majority of the grain, I'm sure there were some grains left when I started the boil. Will this result in a bunch of tannin in the beer?

Been there and have the shirt, don't fret it.