Amarillo SMaSH recipe critique

[BongoYodeler]

I'm planning on brewing an Amarillo SMaSH in a few weeks and since I'm still pretty green at this I'm looking for impressions, suggestions, and critiques. Here's a recipe I've found and I put it into Beersmith, scaled for my equipment.

BIAB All grain 15 gal. Spike kettle
Total water needed 9.0 gal
60 minute boil
5 1/2 gallons bottled
Est OG 1.060
Est FG 1.016
ABV 5.78%

11.5 lbs. Maris Otter
.75 oz. Amarillo @ 60 mins.
1.0 oz. Amarillo @ 30 mins.
Whirlfloc @ 10 mins.
Yeast nutrient @ 10 mins.
1.25 oz Amarillo @ 5 mins.
1.2 pks. Safale US-05 (re-hydrate)
3.0 oz. Amarillo Dry @ Hop 14 days for 5-7 days.
Ferment at 68°F 21 days

Total hops and addition times look ok?
Would MO pair well with Amarillo, or is there something else generally preferred?
Water volume look in range? I usually boil off 1.3 to 1.5 gal/hr.

Thanks...

 

[doug293cz]

Should be pretty tasty. Personally I'd use 1.5 oz Amarillo at 60 min and 1.5 oz at 5 min, unless you are using the 30 min addition to tweak the projected IBU's.

Shouldn't take 21 days to ferment, but you should use stable FG measurements to determine completion, not time. With a beer that is focusing on the hop flavors, you want to get it packaged and cold as soon as you can (and minimize oxygen exposure once fermentation has started, as O2 is the arch enemy of hop flavors.)

Brew on

 

[BongoYodeler]

Thank you doug293cz, I'll change up the hop schedule, and pay closer attention to the fermentation timeline.

 

[Morrey]

I make a beer similar to yours with great results although I focus the bulk of my hop additions late in the boil, flameout and whirlpool....dry hopped too of course. Follow Doug's advice and figure two weeks is probably about all you need in the fermenter. I keg (do you bottle?) so be mindful of FG if bottling. Kegging is not quite as much of a biggie, but still make FG a process priority. From experience, I'd expect your FG to be closer to 1.010 than you are expecting at 1.016.

MO should be fine as would probably Golden Promise. I use either Pilsner or 2 row malts depending on my inventory. MO will be a shade darker, and if color is important to you, consider that.

3 Floyds Brewing makes a beer called Gumball Head using all Amarillo hops. You can google Great Fermentations website and look up Amarillo Face which is a clone, and I add that it is a great clone. You can see the recipe online, compare it to your recipe, then make any adjustments as need be.

Depending on how well you drain or squeeze your BIAB bag, you may be a shade over with your strike water volume. Your boil off is close to mine, and I typically go 7.5G full volume strike water. YMMV so you will obviously know your losses better than anyone.

 

[BongoYodeler]

Thanks Morrey!! I've heard of Gumball Head but never tried it. I'll take a look at the recipe on the Fermentations website. Cheers.

 

[BongoYodeler]

Brewed this on 1/28 and bottled this evening. Sorry didn't think to take a pic. Smelled of pineapples. Gravity sample tasted quite good. I undershot the packaged amount, ending up with 39 12oz bottles. Calculated the priming sugar for 48 bottles so it'll be a bit more carbed than I wanted. Hopefully not too much. I'll crack one in two weeks to see how it's progressing.

 

[jturman35]

I’m somewhat new myself to brewing but 9 gals seems like more than you need to start with. Are you hitting your numbers ?

 

[BongoYodeler]

I’m somewhat new myself to brewing but 9 gals seems like more than you need to start with. Are you hitting your numbers ?

Thanks for asking jturman35. This was only my 3rd biab ag beer with my new equipment, and I'm still working to dial in my equipment/process. 9 gallons, as advised by Beersmith seems to be too much, I agree. Morrey, above made much the same comment.

My previous batch, Yooper's Oatmeal Stout, while tasting really good, came in with lower than expected abv, and a bit thinner mouthfeel than I expected, (too much strike water perhaps?). Beersmith recommended 8.91 gallons of strike water for that one.

So, with all that I went with ~7.75 gallons for this beer. Per Beersmith I ended up with a mash efficiency of 80.3% Expected OG was 1.065, I got 1.066. Estimated FG was 1.016, I got 1.015.

My main issue was the amount of trub I left behind in the fermenter as well as in the bottling bucket. This led me to miss my estimated bottling volume by quite a bit.

So, I'm guessing since I pretty much hit my efficiency and gravity numbers I need to scale the entire recipe up including an additional 1.5 gallons to account for the amount of trub I'm seeing. I touched on it in another thread in the biab section -https://www.homebrewtalk.com/forum/threads/cold-crashing-with-a-speidel-fermenter.645026/

 

[jturman35]

I missed the part about loosing to kettle trub. I assumed you were loosing somewhere in the brewing process but now I see you are talking about fermentation trub. Are you able to whirlpool at the end of your boil? I usually loose about half a gallon in my 6 gal carboy.

 

[BongoYodeler]

To be honest I've never tried to whirlpool. I've got a 15 gallon Spike kettle with a single coupler where I attach a 2-piece ball valve. So no way to do it via a pump, as far as I know. So I guess I'm not even sure how I would do it. My thought for next time is to transfer from kettle to fermenter with an auto-siphon instead of using the ball valve. Hopefully this way I can be a bit more selective, leaving most of the trub behind. And then use the auto-siphon once again to transfer from fermenter to bottling bucket, instead of the Speidel's spigot.

 

[jturman35]

Whirlpooling also helps cool the wort faster if you are using a immersion chiller. You could make your own whirlpool arm. I’m sure it would help some it cutting down on trub.

 

[BongoYodeler]

Update - Friday morning (13 days after bottling) I stuck one bottle in the fridge. Today (15 days after bottling) I tried one. Upon opening, the smell was fantastic, sweet apple, pineapple. I poured a little too aggressively, as the pic shows. First sip followed the smell, though maybe not quite as intense, with an additional alcohol smack and just a bit of bitterness. It is my strongest beer brewed to date at around 6.7% abv, but hopefully the alcohol heat mellows a bit. I thought it tasted quite good.
Because I used more priming sugar than I should have, based on the final packaged volume, I conditioned at a lower temp - between 63° and 65° in attempt to limit the chances of bottle bombs. And I've now put all bottles into the fridge to help slow, or stop, any additional carbonation. All in all I'd consider this a success as it's a beer that I think should get better over the next month or so.

 

[jturman35]

Looks tasty!

 

[mj1angier]

the extra alc. smack maybe from the yeast eating the extra priming sugar. But not much. Give it a could of weeks to mellow and think you will be fine.

You can do pump whirlpool if you have a pump, but can also get a bladed unit to use with a drill.