newbie Q? - modifying grain bill?

[richl025]

For my first "non-kit" brew I followed the recipe in Palmer's book for his ESB, since I always loved Red Hook's version (I used to live not far away from their Wa brewery...).

Well, after a horrible error (allowing my pipeline to dry up and drinking only store-bought brews) I finally cracked open the first few of my extract-based ESBs the other day and was VERY pleasantly surprised (espesically after my Caribou Slobber turned out so horrible....) I absolutely love this brew!

There _is_ the slightest of.... off flavor to it - I'm wondering if it isn't the "extract twang" I've heard of. It's subtle, and does not detract from my enjoyment of the beer, but definitely there...

I have a 10 gal kettle and turkey fryer insert arriving in a few days, and would love to try a BIAB all grain recipe- I really want to repeat this ESB recipe but with all-grain to see if that's the source of the "twang"...

One thing I haven't been able to find by reading around here is - do you need to scale the grain bills? I see many people boast of impressive efficiencies, but would you use the same grain bill someone who is mashing seperately, etc is?

 

[deepcdan99]

I have scaled for 5 to 10 gal batches by just doubling the grain and hop bills and from 10 to 5 by dividing by two. Basically, yes you scale the grain bill to batch size. I have successfully scaled a 7bbl batch (200+ gallons) down to 10gal the same way. If you are just talking about making the same batch size, replace the DME or LME with 2-row. Off hand I am not sure what the equivalent is pound for pound, but you could google or search here for that. The specialty grains can remain the same.

 

[RM-MN]

You could scale the recipe to your brewhouse efficiency but you won't know what that is until you brew a batch or 2. If you are getting the grains milled by someone else, assume that your efficiency will be about 70 to 75% and go with that. Better efficiencies that we brag about comes from milling the grains finer and unless you have the grains double milled or mill them yourself you won't be getting that high efficiency. If you do, dang, you'll just have to deal with a brew with more alcohol in it but the rest of the grains will have that same extraction efficiency so your brew won't taste much different.

 

[deepcdan99]

You could scale the recipe to your brewhouse efficiency but you won't know what that is until you brew a batch or 2. If you are getting the grains milled by someone else, assume that your efficiency will be about 70 to 75% and go with that. Better efficiencies that we brag about comes from milling the grains finer and unless you have the grains double milled or mill them yourself you won't be getting that high efficiency. If you do, dang, you'll just have to deal with a brew with more alcohol in it but the rest of the grains will have that same extraction efficiency so your brew won't taste much different.

I disagree that efficiency comes from the crush alone, not that you were insinuating that. Though that can definitely play a big roll however. There are numerous factors, sprage, mash consistency, etc.. that can also effect efficiency. In fact, if the grains are milled too much, your lautering can be effected and efficiency can decrease.