Will these ingredients make a decent beer?

[tvtoms]

I have some ingredients and would like to brew this weekend with no possibility to add or substitute prior to that.

1 lb cara 20L
3 lb. plain amber DME
3.75lb Coopers Real Ale extract
1 oz US Saaz hops
1 oz US Saaz hops
wyeast 1056

I'd searched this up online somewhere as a viable ale with a 60 minute boil and early extract addition. I've never used any of this stuff except liquid extract, so any ticking timebombs in there for me to watch for?

I have the instructions on another computer, but it's something like:
In 3 gallons of water steep at 155, bring to boil, add extracts, then bittering hops and eventually flavor hops. Ice bath down to pitching temp, into fermenter with remaining water, pitch at 68ish, into swamp cooler and pace impatiently for a few weeks.

I should be able to do 6 gallons from this, but should I hold it to 5?
US Saaz is very bitter from what I read (6.8%), should I cut the last addition to .5oz?
I also have on hand 1k of coopers brewing sugar (800g dex, 200g maltodex), if you think I should use that.
Any tips?

 

[JJL]

This looks like a reasonable set of ingredients. If you do 5 gals your ABV will likely be somewhere between 5% and 6%. You'll probably end up with an amber ale of some sort. I don't know that I would necessarily add the sugar unless you want to boost the ABV. The beer will also probably taste drier with the sugar. One suggestion with the hops would be to split your first hop addition. Do .5 oz at 60 min and .5 oz at 20 min. Then add your last 1 oz at 1 min. It will end up a little less bitter and a little more aromatic.

 

[tvtoms]

Cool, thanks for that input. I'll definitely hold off on the extra sugar, and the hop changes make sense to me.

I'm a big Futurama fan by the way. According to some DVD commentary, some of the writers brewed some beer in the office during it's first run. The commentary track for the episode The Route of All Evil, in which the characters brew beer inside Bender of course.

 

[Tinga]

i dont know if i would say saaz is very bitter at 6.8%. it's pretty midrange. i dont think you can go wrong with those ingredients though.

 

[tvtoms]

Ah, thanks Tinga. Sounds good to me! I'm a newbie and had only read that US saaz was quite a bit more bitter than the original Czech saaz. I dont really have a palate developed for comparisons anyway, which is why I wanted to ask the board for help. Thanks again.

 

[tvtoms]

Update!

Yesterday I made this brew and it came out looking great with an OG of 1056 for 5 gallons. I'm excited to try this one, as it was my first non-extract only brew. It was also the first time using my brew pot and such. Turns out my electric stovetop range can get 3 gallons to a rolling boil, but thats it's limit. Which worked out great!

So, for the final recipe I split the bittering hops as suggested, and also split the LME into two additions. One early, and one at 10 minutes. After reading about late extract additions, I thought it would be a good move.

Didn't take too long to ice bath, and with the addition of 2 gallons of very chilled RO water, it was right at pitching temp. By this time the smack pack was inflated fully so I pitched. Got the fermenter in a big tub with ice water with a tshirt pulled over it. It's only just begun to krausen up today and wow the foam is of a different quality than I've seen before. Got a wireless temp probe on it so I can sit here and know when to add ice to the swamp cooler rig.


Bonus brew!
I like to bake breads for toasting. I decided to use some spent grains. I took a basic white bread recipe for bread machines and added 1 cup of the spent brewing grains. It needs adjustments, but damn it tastes amazingly good as simple as that! Newbie friendly. If you have a bread machine, you need to be doing it!