A First Recipe - Thoughts?

I've been messing around with Beersmith, and I've put this together on paper. It's a 5 gallon batch (because I have a 5 gallon set up), and I'm not getting fancy with the water - just bottled spring water.

What would you add, take away, or generally do differently?

2 lbs Cara-Pils/Dextrine (2.0 SRM)
2 lbs Caramel/Crystal Malt - 10L (10.0 SRM)
6 lbs Dark Liquid Extract (17.5 SRM)
2 lbs Amber Liquid Extract (12.5 SRM)
0.50 oz Centennial [10.00 %] - Boil 60.0 min
0.50 oz Centennial [10.00 %] - Boil 30.0 min
0.50 oz Cascade [5.50 %] - Boil 20.0 min
0.50 oz Cascade [5.50 %] - Boil 10.0 min
1.0 pkg Nottingham (Danstar #-) [23.66 ml] -

Maybe im way off, but it seems like you could limit to 1 extract instead of a dark and an amber. Maybe do 8lbs amber extract and change the rest of the body of the beer with your steeping grains. Maybe axe crystal 10 and add crystal 60 or something to get the affect of the original dark extract. Im assuming your steeping? or is this partial mash? At the end of the day though, experiment with it, see how it turns out.

MTimonin said:

I've been messing around with Beersmith, and I've put this together on paper. It's a 5 gallon batch (because I have a 5 gallon set up), and I'm not getting fancy with the water - just bottled spring water.

What would you add, take away, or generally do differently?

2 lbs Cara-Pils/Dextrine (2.0 SRM)
2 lbs Caramel/Crystal Malt - 10L (10.0 SRM)
6 lbs Dark Liquid Extract (17.5 SRM)
2 lbs Amber Liquid Extract (12.5 SRM)
0.50 oz Centennial [10.00 %] - Boil 60.0 min
0.50 oz Centennial [10.00 %] - Boil 30.0 min
0.50 oz Cascade [5.50 %] - Boil 20.0 min
0.50 oz Cascade [5.50 %] - Boil 10.0 min
1.0 pkg Nottingham (Danstar #-) [23.66 ml] -

Click to expand...

Is there a particular style you're going for? Two pounds each of carapils and crystal is a TON, especially the carapils. Also, this is just my preference, I've always preferred using light or extra light extract and using specialty grains for my color and flavors. This gives you more control over your beer since you don't really know what malts are in the extracts. Plus, if you eventually go all grain this makes converting your recipes easier since you can replace the extract with base malts

That seems like a lot of caramel malt to me. 15% of your grain bill is usually the upper recommended limit, and even then I'd expect it to be very sweet. Check out the wiki if you're curious: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/wiki/index.php/Caramel_malt

Personally I tend to use Light LME and steeping the dark roasts I want for color and flavor instead of using Dark LME. This gives me the ability to control and understand the flavors I'm getting.

This looks like an OG of 1.078, Nottingham should be tolerant enough to eat through that, but you'll want to at very least rehydrate, or better yet, make a starter the night before.

At an estimated FG of 1.020 you might want to pump up the bitterness a bit more to have a good balanced beer, I'm worried that even if you cut back on the crystal significantly you'll still have a very sweet finished product.

What kind of recipes have you brewed before? What was your experience with them? What kind of beer are you trying to brew? Seems like you're headed in the right direction, just need a few pointers on ingredient characteristics.

Simplify. The amber extract already will have character that you expect the caparils and crystal to impart. I'd go for just amber or amber and pale extract.

So, two batches ago, I made (an extract version of) Biermuncher's Centennial ale. (just opened bottles yesterday, turned out great!) I bought more grain than I needed, due to some confusion between the Beersmith shopping list and my brain. So I have two large ziplocks of grain in my freezer, and so that was my starting point for the recipe. And then, a friend said that he had a bunch of vacuum sealed hops from a failed local farm. But the hops (nicely pelletized) were in 1 and 2 lb bags, so I've got two open bags of hops in my freezer too. So I started with that, and added extract to the recipe until I got a colour, IBU, and ABV that I was happy with. Beersmith estimates the OG at 1.056 and the ABV as 5.5, a pleasing reddish amber, and IBUs between 20 and 40. I'm steeping the grains, I'm not set up for any sort of mashing. ETA: I've mostly been making Brewer's Best kits - the Biermuncher Centennial Ale was my first non-kit recipe.