Pale Ale Question (5 to 15 gallon)

[TommyB]

I recently brewed my first all-grain batch using the following recipe from my local home brew shop:

5 gallon batch (US-05 yeast)
8.50 lbs Pale malt (2-row)
0.50 lbs 40L Crystal malt
0.50 lbs 60L Crystal malt
0.25 lbs Car-pils/dextrine

1 oz Fuggles (15 min) - EDITED FROM ORIGINAL POST
1 oz Northern Brewer (60 min) - EDITED FROM ORIGINAL POST
1 oz Cascade Dry hop (2ndary for 7 days)

I want to triple this recipe because I have a 20 gallon pot now. Based on what I have read, my mash tun (10 gallon igloo cooler) will hold 25lbs of grains so I plan to use close to that amount for mashing and then adding 6 lbs of pale malt extract to the boil. Thru my beer smith software I got the following recipe. (I rounded up on the some of the numbers for measurement purposes

19.00 lbs Pale malt (2-row)
1.50 lbs 40L Crystal malt
1.50 lbs 60L Crystal malt
0.75 lbs Car-pils/dextrine

BOIL
3 oz Fuggles (60 min)
3 oz Northern Brewer (15 min)
3 oz Cascade Dry hop
6.0 lbs Pale Malt extract

I have the ability to ferment it all in one 20 gallon container (preferred) or I have three 6.5 gallon buckets.

If I ferment all in one, do I need 3 dry/liquid yeast packs? OR make a starter with 2 liquid packs? And is temperature an huge issue with 15 gallons fermenting in one container?

For any of you more experienced all-grainers, does the triple recipe work to achieve roughly the same beer as the 5 gallon recipe as far as ingredients and hops? Any recommendation or changes that you would suggest?

Thanks in advance

 

[TopherM]

You are only going to need one liquid yeast pack, but you are going to need to do like a 1 gallon starter for like 18 hours. Check out:

http://www.mrmalty.com/pitching.php#s1

 

[bigbeergeek]

You could mash all the entire 29.25 lb grainbill in a 10 gallon tun at a ratio of 1 qt strike water per pound -- barely. That's a pretty stiff mash but it's doable.

I don't know what tropher is talking about. He might have missed the fact that this is a 15 gallon batch. If you hit 75% efficiency of your mash your OG will be around 1.052. If you use one package of liquid yeast and shake the starter every time you walk by it, you'll need to make a 12 liter starter. If you do the "intermittent shaking" technique and start with two vials of liquid yeast you'll need to make a 4.75 liter starter. If I were you I would simply rehydrate and pitch three packets of dry yeast, maybe one packet of Nottingham and two packets of US05. Since you're making an American pale ale, dry neutral ale yeasts like US05 or Nottingham are perfectly suited for the task.

You want pay close attention to fermentation temperatures with every batch of beer, but 15 gallons fermenting in a single large fermentor is capable of rising 10 degrees above the ambient air surrounding the fermentor. If you have a temperature controlled fermenting environment (like a spare fridge with a temperature controller on it) use it. Otherwise I'd freeze about 20 water bottles, sink the fermentor in a large tub filled with water and swap out half the bottles every day between the water bath and the freezer.

 

[TommyB]

Maybe ill ferment in the separate buckets for temp control, and then mix the 3 buckets together in the 20 gallon bucket for secondary and dry hopping.

Is 3oz too much for dry hopping 15 gallons? I used 1 oz for 5 gallons...

 

[bigbeergeek]

I think the hop schedule is a little odd on this beer. Fuggles for bittering? If it were my beer, I'd bitter with northern brewer and use cascade at 15 and for the dry hop (well, I'd probably use cascade at 10, 5, 0 and dry hop, but that's another story). I like to dry hop my American pale ales at a rate of about 2 oz per five gallons. I think anything under 2 oz is a waste of hops. 3 oz in 15 gallons is equivalent to 1 oz in 5 gallons. In my IPAs I like 4 oz dry hops but again -- that's another story.

 

[tcory77]

i have to agree with bigbeergeek on the dry hops. i have dry hopped a 5 gallon batch with 1 oz. of cascades and it is a waste of time. Go big or go home. I am moving on to at least 2 oz. of cascade dry hops next time, for an APA......probably 2.5 to 3 oz. to be honest.

 

[TommyB]

I decided to try out some things and used up some leftover stuff I had in the fridge. Probably not gonna be within the guidelines of an APA, but oh well, I think it should turn out pretty tasty. I started to go towards an orange citrus hoppy ale type beer.....

So I went with this :

GRAIN BILL
20.00 lbs Pale malt (2-row)
1.50 lbs 40L Crystal malt
1.50 lbs 20L Crystal malt
0.75 lbs Car-pils/dextrine
MASHED at 150 for 60 min

BOIL
1 oz Willamette (15 Min) - Left over I just threw in
3 oz Cascade (15 min)
3 oz Northern Brewer (60 min)
6.0 lbs Pale Malt extract

MISC BOIL (15 min)
1 oz coriander - left over from a wit recipe
1 oz bitter orange peel - left over from a wit recipe
32 oz (2 JARs) Orange Marmalade - I made an american wheat with 1 jar of this a while back (5gallon) and really like the subtle orange flavor in gave the beer. SO I added 2 to this 15 gallon batch

SG = 1.060
FG = ?????

YEAST
2 - 1056 American Ale
1 - WLP001 California Ale
20 gallon fermentor (using cooling fans on the outside to help leep temps down) currently 68 degrees in the basement

DRY HOP PLAN
4 oz Cascade leaf
2 oz Citra leaf

 

[Goaltender66]

It's very hard to scale up recipes. Main issue I see here is with the hops. It's not as simple as multiplying by three, because your hop utilization doesn't follow a linear schedule. You'll get different utilization depending on the volume of boil, so a utilization rate at 5 gallons will be different (most likely less) than the rate at 15 gallons. You may actually be overhopped here....that is, overhopped from what you intended.

Specialty malts may also be an issue and I think it's one of the most challenging parts of scaling recipes. It's very difficult to forecast what flavor and color you're going to get from the specialties, and again it's not a linear formula. A proportion that may work at 5 gallons will likely be very off at 15 gallons.

All this said, it's not that you won't get a good beer...you will...it will probably have a very different character than the 5 gallon version.

 

[AiredAle]

TommyB,

At first glance, your 15 gallon recipe seems over hopped to me, assuming the
Northern Brewer is boiled for 60 minutes, and not put in after 60 minutes boiling. The reason I suggest this is because NB typically is a 8-10% AA hop and Fuggles is typically 4-5 % AA. so you are going from 1 oz of 5% AA to 3 oz of twice that much AA. Is that what you intend, to double the bitterness?

Since you are adding spices and orange flavoring, you might want to consider reducing the bittering and the flavoring hops somewhat from your original recipe so that these other flavors aren't overwhelmed.

Second, while scaling up from homebrew scale brewing to craft brewing sizes definitely is non linear, particularly in hop utilization and hop flavoring, I doubt very much that you will see much difference in your 5 to 15 gallon scale up. And, I don't think the grain bill needs to be adjusted at all.

Goaltender, if you can show us some reference that addresses scaleup issues with grain bills, on the scale we are talking about, I like to see them. I have never had an issue with scale up in my recipes in going from 5 to 10, or 15 or even 20 gallons the few times I have done that. I do routinely use the exact same recipes with doubling everything in going from 5 to 10 gallons, with no dicernable differences in the final beer.

 

[Goaltender66]

AiredAle, I can only offer my observations. For a particular style I've had to increase my proportion of crystal malt (60 degree if I recall correctly) to get approximately the same color and flavor as the 5 gallon version. It has to do with how my system works. If keeping the proportions the same works for you, then that's great!

 

[TommyB]

TommyB,

At first glance, your 15 gallon recipe seems over hopped to me, assuming the
Northern Brewer is boiled for 60 minutes, and not put in after 60 minutes boiling. The reason I suggest this is because NB typically is a 8-10% AA hop and Fuggles is typically 4-5 % AA. so you are going from 1 oz of 5% AA to 3 oz of twice that much AA. Is that what you intend, to double the bitterness?

Since you are adding spices and orange flavoring, you might want to consider reducing the bittering and the flavoring hops somewhat from your original recipe so that these other flavors aren't overwhelmed.

Second, while scaling up from homebrew scale brewing to craft brewing sizes definitely is non linear, particularly in hop utilization and hop flavoring, I doubt very much that you will see much difference in your 5 to 15 gallon scale up. And, I don't think the grain bill needs to be adjusted at all.

Goaltender, if you can show us some reference that addresses scaleup issues with grain bills, on the scale we are talking about, I like to see them. I have never had an issue with scale up in my recipes in going from 5 to 10, or 15 or even 20 gallons the few times I have done that. I do routinely use the exact same recipes with doubling everything in going from 5 to 10 gallons, with no dicernable differences in the final beer.

Thanks for the feedback everyone.

AiredAle,
When I wrote down the original recipe, I think I switched up the NB and fuggles. After talking to the guy at my LHBS who gave me the recipe, Im pretty sure I used the NB for bittering and the fuggles for the aroma. .

 

[TommyB]

So the final recipe / numbers are as follows.

GRAIN BILL
20.00 lbs Pale malt (2-row)
1.50 lbs 40L Crystal malt
1.50 lbs 20L Crystal malt
0.75 lbs Car-pils/dextrine
MASHED at 150 for 60 min

BOIL
1 oz Willamette (15 Min) - Left over I just threw in
3 oz Cascade (15 min)
3 oz Northern Brewer (60 min)
6.0 lbs Pale Malt extract

MISC BOIL (15 min)
1 oz coriander - left over from a wit recipe
1 oz bitter orange peel - left over from a wit recipe
32 oz (2 JARs) Orange Marmalade - I made an american wheat with 1 jar of this a while back (5gallon) and really like the subtle orange flavor in gave the beer. SO I added 2 to this 15 gallon batch

SG = 1.060
FG = 1.006
7% per beersmith

YEAST
2 - 1056 American Ale
1 - WLP001 California Ale
20 gallon fermentor (using cooling fans on the outside to help leep temps down) currently 68 degrees in the basement

DRY HOP PLAN
5 oz Cascade leaf
2 oz Citra leaf

I did a taste test and it turned out pretty good. A little cloudy, not too bitter. Slight hint of orange flavor. Im excited to taste it after dryhopping.