Recent content by thedevilandgod

You could, but amylase break long chain sugars to short chain. You’d lose body and malt sweetness that is looked for in Belgians.

A) don’t worry it’ll be totally fine! B) take the temperature when you use your hydrometer. There are calculators online that will adjust the hydrometer for you, most are based for 20 degrees Celsius, even .5 degrees off can give you a much different reading.

Unless you want to spend the time, roasting the oats is unnecessary. The oats are for body (mouthfeel), and just steeping them will do the job. Adding the hops at the beginning of the boil is how the instructions seem to suggest the use, although the instructions are pretty vague. Stouts are...

Hot liquor back. Basically the hot water you use to mash/sparse.

I believe The Homebrewer’s Almanac talked about it. If I recall correctly using it as a sixty minute addition brings out cherry and vanilla.

Juniper is the HLB tends to be the safer bet, since you can sort of control the amount of flavor you’d like and pull them out. Elderflower could also go in to the HLB too, or I’d use it as a whirlpool addition as it is more delicate than the ginger and juniper.

I made a dandelion ale about a year ago. You can use whole dandelions (root and all!), but it’s best for the sixty minute addition. That’s how I did it, and it definitely added more complexity (earthy) than it would have been without.

I believe the original post was for three to five hours, so I’m don’t think that the beta-amylase would effect enough of the mash to throw it off too much. Someone else recommended just mashing a bit higher, just to be sure, which sounds like a solid plan. Really what I wanted to get at is that...

Norwegian brewers before modern day home-brewing practices would mash for up to a day. Latvian brewers would roast their mash in an oven over five hundred degrees for hours. There are a million different ways to mash. Just because it isn’t what modern home-brewers do doesn’t mean it won’t work...

Give the fermentor a little rouse, then possibly add some brown sugar to get it unstuck. If you use cane or brown sugar for priming it should work, but it’s probably best to try to get the yeast to finish up.

Make a smash with them to figure out how you’d like to use them all!

Use it with the hothead! Traditional Norwegian Ale uses rye (and roasted rye). Might as well add some in. It’d work in a black ipa, but if you’d want to use citrus/fruity hops to balance out the roast and the spice of the rye.

Reduce the bitterness to around 20 with the second hop addition at thirty minutes instead. The chocolate malt is bitter, so less hops needed.

Add some brown sugar into the malt bill. The simple sugars will help the yeast propagate. Without it, there’s too much maltose and maltotriose that’ll inhibit yeast growth.

The recipe looks great! I’d definitely stick to the 90 minute boil to make sure any DMS precursors are boiled out, especially with that amount of Pilsner and lagering.