First batch on Tues! Recipe review?

[daphatgrant]

Hey HBT, this will be my first batch of beer. I'm kind of going a little overboard for my first batch but a friend of mine who has been brewing insanely awesome home brew for ever now is going to be on site to guide me through it. I'm going to be making a Union Jack IPA clone. I think I've got everything I need ingredient wise. Would any of you fine HBT'rs mind looking over this recipe for me? I'm sure it's 100% fine but I wouldn't mine hearing it anyways.

Thanks.


I'm super psyched!

Recipe:
http://beersmithrecipes.com/viewrecipe/8756/union-jack-ipa-by-firestone-walker-clone

Pics!

 

[Griffin495]

Can't help you much with the recipe, but I'm impressed that for your first batch of beer you are stepping right into AG and doing a 10G batch no less!! Good luck.

One thing I am concerned about is that in your recipe, you don't list how much yeast you are using and in your picture I only see one vial. Not sure that is going to cut it for a 10G and OG 1.081 batch...

The other thing is most people will probably tell you to skip the secondary...

 

[Redlantern]

your grain does not look milled

 

[SlitheryDee]

your grain does not look milled

Yeah hopefully you got a grain mill or your friend is bringing one.

 

[daphatgrant]

Can't help you much with the recipe, but I'm impressed that for your first batch of beer you are stepping right into AG and doing a 10G batch no less!! Good luck. .

Thanks, I'm super excited!

One thing I am concerned about is that in your recipe, you don't list how much yeast you are using and in your picture I only see one vial. Not sure that is going to cut it for a 10G and OG 1.081 batch....

Hmm... I has planned on making a yeast starter and splitting it, I'll grab another vial.

Yeah hopefully you got a grain mill or your friend is bringing one.

I do have a mill

I klepto'd the design from a couple builds I found on here.

 

[JonM]

Yep, Brewers Friend estimates you'll need 550 billion-plus yeast cells to ferment that batch. Plenty of time to do a starter before Tuesday!

And definitely skip the secondary.

 

[SlitheryDee]

Boy you really dove in lol. Wish I had started out with all those cool toys.

 

[billl]

re: secondary. Everyone has their own opinion, but if you've got an experienced brewer willing to walk you through the process in person, just follow their advice for you first batch. You'll have plenty of time to try out suggestions you find on the internet.

And speaking of internet suggestions .... I know you are excited, but I'd plan on 5 gallon batches while you are getting started. It's pretty common for the first batches to be so-so. Also, the way you learn is by brewing more beer. Twice the batch size means half the brew days to learn from.

 

[daphatgrant]

Boy you really dove in lol. Wish I had started out with all those cool toys.

I've been slowly buying stuff for just shy of 2 years now, lol. I've always wanted to make beer but <excuse> never had the room </excuse>. I was in a studio for 7yrs and finally moved into a house so it was on! I've made cider a few times and it came out good and I've helped friends brew a bunch and really enjoyed it.

 

[Griffin495]

If you are making a starter, forget what I said about the one yeast pack. I guess I didn't think that a beginner on their first batch would be making a starter. Assumption on my part and you know what happens when people assume...

 

[Chrispy92]

Uh recipe looks like it will make a delicious beer, but... You have several 0min additions of cascade and centennial after the 30min. Are these supposed to be at different times before 0?? Like 20/10/5min??

 

[SlitheryDee]

Uh recipe looks like it will make a delicious beer, but... You have several 0min additions of cascade and centennial after the 30min. Are these supposed to be at different times before 0?? Like 20/10/5min??

That doesn't seem necessarily atypical for certain kinds of IPAs. What caught my attention was that he has his Irish moss addition set to boil for 60 minutes. My impression was that Irish moss loses its effect if you boil it too long, which is why most people put it in sometime in the final 10-15 minutes of the boil.

 

[daphatgrant]

Well I had some issues, nothing insane but I'm very glad I had an experienced brewer with me.

1. I picked up a 2nd yeast pack and grabbed the wrong one... California instead of English ale yeast.
2. My mash tun (10gal round cooler) was too small so I used my 15 gal spare/grant kettle as a mash tun with the false bottom for the cooler.
3. The sparge got stuck so I moved it to my boil kettle which has a false bottom and that worked great.
4. I was a little light on the post boil amount of wort and didn't realize until I filled the first fermenter and saw that I only had 3.5 gal left. I topped the 2nd ferementer up to 4 gal with filtered water and called it good.
5. I threw them in the fermentation chamber and forgot to use all 4 clamps on the fermenter with 4 gals. I couldn't figure out why it wasn't bubbling (face palm). When I noticed I fully clamped and it started bubbling within an hr. I starsanned the heck out of the lids so I have hopes that it'll turn out ok.

So, every issue was addressable which is nice and the help/guidance made it a fun day. I cleaned up as I went so when the boil was over all I had to do was clean the boil kettle and a couple hoses.

Oh and we nailed the FG

Here are a few pics:

https://youtu.be/a6833b7RVlk (before I noticed the latches on the 2nd fermenter)

 

[chickypad]

Impressive for your first batch! One thing I'd say if you were already at your target I wouldn't have topped off, that second fermenter will be a little watered down now. At least you only topped up to 4 gal though and not the whole way. Hopefully you took good volume measurements so you can adjust your losses and get your Beersmith profile dialed in. You'll want to adjust your efficiency setting too, if you hit your OG but were a 1.5 gal short then your actual efficiency would be lower than what you had set. That is likely due in part to the large grainbill, it should be better with smaller beers.

 

[daphatgrant]

One of the fermenters is still bubbling, very slowly now, about every 7 seconds. I'm kind of surprised it's still going at 2.5 weeks. It was a little slow to start taking about 4 days before bubbling. I'm using a 3' x 1/2" blow off hose in a large mason jar full of starsan.

Is 2.5 weeks of fermentation too long? The 4gallon batch I made stopped bubbling on the 5th and I dry hopped on the 6th.

 

[chickypad]

Has there been a temp increase? It could be just off-gassing. Check to see if the gravity is stable.

 

[daphatgrant]

Has there been a temp increase? It could be just off-gassing. Check to see if the gravity is stable.

There shouldn't be any temp changes, nothing major anyways, it's in a freezer with a heater so it should be sitting right around 66F. I'll test the gravity tonight.

 

[mattdee1]

Well I had some issues, nothing insane but I'm very glad I had an experienced brewer with me.

1. I picked up a 2nd yeast pack and grabbed the wrong one... California instead of English ale yeast.
2. My mash tun (10gal round cooler) was too small so I used my 15 gal spare/grant kettle as a mash tun with the false bottom for the cooler.
3. The sparge got stuck so I moved it to my boil kettle which has a false bottom and that worked great.
4. I was a little light on the post boil amount of wort and didn't realize until I filled the first fermenter and saw that I only had 3.5 gal left. I topped the 2nd ferementer up to 4 gal with filtered water and called it good.
5. I threw them in the fermentation chamber and forgot to use all 4 clamps on the fermenter with 4 gals. I couldn't figure out why it wasn't bubbling (face palm). When I noticed I fully clamped and it started bubbling within an hr. I starsanned the heck out of the lids so I have hopes that it'll turn out ok.

Well I hope you're sure you'll stick with the hobby, otherwise you'll have a lot of equipment to sell off.

I've got a 10gal Igloo mash tun as well, and I find that it kind of gets pushed to its limit if I want to do a 10gal batch with ABV any higher than 5.5% or so. I batch sparge, and I've done 10gals of 7% beer simply by doing multiple sparges.

Regarding the uneven filling of your fermentors on 10gal brew days, I used to have that problem all the time too, now I fill up the fermentors by draining the kettle into a sanitized pitcher and alternating dumping the pitcher into the two fermentors to ensure roughly equal volume in each. During this process I try to splash the wort around as much as possible, which always seems to result in adequate oxygen in the wort without having to shake the buckets or whatever.

 

[daphatgrant]

Well I've had my first true issue, Blue Hawk paint strainer bags from Lowe's do not make good hop bags. I tested the gravity of the 2 fermenters today and while doing a taste test I got some really bad plastic flavors from the 4gal batch I dry hopped. After talking with a friend we initially thought that it might be chlorophenol (I did use a carbon water filter for my brewing water). While getting the 5gal batch ready to be dry hopped today and before I put the hops in the bag I cooled the water I boiled the bag in. I tasted it and got very nasty strong plastic flavor. I haven't dry hopped the 5gal batch yet so I should be able to save that one. Heads up to anyone else out there.

This is what I bought https://www.lowes.com/pd/Blue-Hawk-...trainers-Fits-Container-Size-1-Gallon/1008385

Also my initial gravity reading on the 5gal batch was 1.085, it's now 1.012 so 9%, I'll be drinking this one slowly, lol. It tastes good though .

 

[SlitheryDee]

I wonder if you could boil the plastic flavor out of the bag though. Maybe try boiling it several times, changing out the water in between, and see if it goes away.

 

[daphatgrant]

I wonder if you could boil the plastic flavor out of the bag though. Maybe try boiling it several times, changing out the water in between, and see if it goes away.

It has an elastic band around the opening, maybe that's adding to it. I stopped by my lhbs today and picked up this straining bag. It appears to be of the same material as the paint strainer bag minus the elastic around the opening. I'm pretty leary of using the paint strainer bags again. They are cheap which is nice, $1.25ea maybe if I cut off the elastic off that'd help. I really don't want to mess up another batch trying to figure it out though so I'll be sticking to the LD Carlson bag for this batch.

 

[billl]

Since you seem to love all the stainless.....

The stainless steel dry hoppers have come way down in price. Amazon has them for about $20 now.

 

[daphatgrant]

Since you seem to love all the stainless.....

The stainless steel dry hoppers have come way down in price. Amazon has them for about $20 now.

I'll have to look into them, hadn't really considered that before, thanks!

Couple updated pics, just added the hops. 2oz Cascade, 2oz Centennial and 1oz Amarillo.