My first AG brew

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Vicat

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Hi everyone,
I am new to the forum and love what I have read so far. It seems likes there is a lot of knowledge on this site. So, I am about to embark on my first all grain brew. I am brewing a Black IPA, mainly because it is my wife's favorite beer. I have a recipe from a friend of mine, who owns a commercial brewery. My concern is that he brews at 14 feet above sea level and I will be brewing at 8500 feet above sea level. I have researched both BeerSmith and Brewers Friend and can't decide on which to use, so any thoughts from members would be appreciated. I'm curious of anyone's experience with altitude brewing when it comes to boil times and hop additions that different from a normal 60 min boil. I am looking to brew a 5 gal batch. I have a 10 gal Igloo mash tun, a 8 gal Blichmann boil kettle, and a 6 gal glass carboy. I will be fermenting in a 5 cu ft chest freezer with an Inkbird temp controller. Any advice is greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Troy
 
Hey , welcome to the forum and hobby!
Different altitudes have different boiling temps . You can Google your boiling temp for your elevation. As for hops , 60 min boil @ 14ft is a 60 min boil @ 5kft .
 
What Jag said. I looked at beersmith and brewers friend as well. Ultimately settled on brewfather. You can setup equipment profile in app and I believe there is an elevation section
 
As for hops , 60 min boil @ 14ft is a 60 min boil @ 5kft .

In my best Jamil voice, "Weeeeeeelllllll..."

Hop utilization is affected by wort temperature. And since wort boils at 203F at 5K feet, there will theoretically be lower utilization. Mark G. Malowicki studied this, and I incorporated my interpretation of his data into BrewCipher. Based on my model of his data, I'd expect utilization at 203F to be about 77% of utilization at 212F.

And OP is talking about a whopping 8500 ft., where water boils at 196F. BrewCipher (interpreting Malowicki data) estimates about 64% as much utilization as at 212F.

IIRC, Palmer once wrote a paper positing even larger differences.
 
In my best Jamil voice, "Weeeeeeelllllll..."

Hop utilization is affected by wort temperature. And since wort boils at 203F at 5K feet, there will theoretically be lower utilization. Mark G. Malowicki studied this, and I incorporated my interpretation of his data into BrewCipher. Based on my model of his data, I'd expect utilization at 203F to be about 77% of utilization at 212F.

And OP is talking about a whopping 8500 ft., where water boils at 196F. BrewCipher (interpreting Malowicki data) estimates about 64% as much utilization as at 212F.

IIRC, Palmer once wrote a paper positing even larger differences.

Whoa , good info there . Learn something new everyday !
 
In my best Jamil voice, "Weeeeeeelllllll..."

Hop utilization is affected by wort temperature. And since wort boils at 203F at 5K feet, there will theoretically be lower utilization. Mark G. Malowicki studied this, and I incorporated my interpretation of his data into BrewCipher. Based on my model of his data, I'd expect utilization at 203F to be about 77% of utilization at 212F.

And OP is talking about a whopping 8500 ft., where water boils at 196F. BrewCipher (interpreting Malowicki data) estimates about 64% as much utilization as at 212F.

IIRC, Palmer once wrote a paper positing even larger differences.
So, I take it you are saying that I can use the same hop schedule even if I increase my boil to 90 minutes, but use more hops for utilization.
 
What Jag said. I looked at beersmith and brewers friend as well. Ultimately settled on brewfather. You can setup equipment profile in app and I believe there is an elevation section
I have looked at Brewfather as well. Just trying to decide on which to spend my money. I think they all have an altitude adjustment setting. I'm leaning towards brewers friend, since it is optioned on this forum under software.
 
So, I take it you are saying that I can use the same hop schedule even if I increase my boil to 90 minutes, but use more hops for utilization.

Yes, I'm saying use more hops. BTW, are you in Central/South America somewhere?
 
I’ve only ever used Brewers Friend so can’t help you there but with the altitude I never seen it make much of a difference other than maybe boil temp
here where I’m at in NM water starts to boil at 208 , I did add the altitude to my Brewers Friend equipment profile but again it didn’t really make a difference...
 
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