You're welcome.
Thanks for the post DeathBrewer, very helpfull.
One question I wonder if anyone can help me with. I was making a really simple pale ale using these steps. After adding grain, my floating therm read 154, after sixty minutes it read 152 so I thought all was well and went on with the brew... But my gravity reading at the end was only 1.034 instead of the 1.044 calculation promash said I should get. Anybody have any ideas why I got so little conversion?
What was the grain bill? What efficiency did you enter in promash?
The grain bill was 8 lbs of 2 row and half a pound of briess caramel 10... Figured I'd start with a pretty simple recipe. I entered 75 percent for efficiency. If my math is correct I only got about 60 percent... Although boy did my kitchen smell great! (well, I thought so, swmbo didn't agree ;-)
t . . . how hard is it to formulate your own recipes? I know I can think of something I would like to brew and know what types of grain and hops I might use, but as far as the amounts... I have no idea.
On the surface this may seem like an easy question. Since hop utilization decreases as wort gravity increases it seems logical that one solution to the dilemma faced by extract brewers who boil concentrated wort is to boil the hops separately. This may sound attractive but one downside to this is that the quality of the bitterness and the extraction of plant substances from the hops are reportedly different when hops are boiled in water compared to boiling in wort, and the differences are not for the better.
I have only done this once (try number 2 this weekend ), but I will try to help. My experience before this was 1 extract beer, so if I can make the switch I think just about anyone can.I'm interested in trying this but still not sure I'm up for it. I collected my thoughts and had a few questions which I don't think were covered here (if so, apologies in advance):
- If you were to try this for the first time, what might be a good style to start with? Off the top of my head I thought a recipe kit with a low grain weight to make it physically easier. But would lighter brews be easier than darker ones?
- Should this only be attempted if you know the numbers or formulas? For example, I read the part about determining the amount of water and I think it was related to calcs found using ProMash. What if you're not using something like that or don't understand all the numbers yet. Should you just stay away for a while? Or can I just go with the approximate values and still be fine?
- This was probably covered but where to the specialty grains fit in the process? I don't remember seeing that and many of the kits I look at include them.
- Any tips on pouring? One physical aspect that has me concerned is transferring a lot of hot liquid to / from other containers. I've seen too many incidents with hot liquids and I have a healthy concern about transfers.
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