Recipe tips

[Adam's Apples]

I've just been gathering ingredients for my next brew. I have just kegged a stout, which involved a lot of steeping grains and this is something I would like to do for all future brews, whatever the style, if possible.

Right now I am trying to develop a house bitter or pale ale that could be a regular brew. I visited my LHBS and picked up a few supplies and it seems the hop shortage has at last hit me - as 100g / 3oz of most hope varieties were priced at £6.00 ($12.00)!! I will hold off on the IPA brews for now. Below are the ingredients I have by me now:

10lbs light DME
12.5oz Crystal Malt (50L I think)
9oz Chocolate Malt
2oz Northern Brewer
3oz Target

I have heard quite a few people mention victory malt as a nice steeping grain to add character to pale ales / bitters, but I have never used this. I could check the availability with my LHBS as I really would like to use a few steeping grains each brew to add character. What do you guys think?

Also, I think that both of the hops I have are primarily used for bittering as are both quite high AA, especially target. Could I use either for decent aroma, or would I need another? Alternatively I could use the target for bittering and use no aroma and make this a less aromatic and hoppy bitter, which I have no problem with as I like malty bitters also. I will be doing a late addition, haven't planned exactly how, but I wasconsidering 10% of the DME at start and remainder at last 45 mins of boil, which will help keep costs down also. Somebody on here mentioned you have to use enough malt for the hops to bind to initially. I'm not sure what the formula is for finding this, but every beer tool I have used shows higher IBU achieved with a lower gravity boil, although I have heard it's not a good idea to boil the hops in water only and add all the malt at the end. What kind of portions do you guys use for % of malt at start of boil and % at end, for those who use the late addition method?

I realise I have raised quite a few points here, but, as usual, any help with recipe ideas or any other points mentioned will be much appreciated.

Cheers

 

[Bob]

Right now I am trying to develop a house bitter or pale ale that could be a regular brew. I visited my LHBS and picked up a few supplies and it seems the hop shortage has at last hit me - as 100g / 3oz of most hope varieties were priced at £6.00 ($12.00)!! I will hold off on the IPA brews for now. Below are the ingredients I have by me now:

10lbs light DME
12.5oz Crystal Malt (50L I think)
9oz Chocolate Malt
2oz Northern Brewer
3oz Target

I have heard quite a few people mention victory malt as a nice steeping grain to add character to pale ales / bitters, but I have never used this. I could check the availability with my LHBS as I really would like to use a few steeping grains each brew to add character. What do you guys think?

Also, I think that both of the hops I have are primarily used for bittering as are both quite high AA, especially target. Could I use either for decent aroma, or would I need another? Alternatively I could use the target for bittering and use no aroma and make this a less aromatic and hoppy bitter, which I have no problem with as I like malty bitters also. I will be doing a late addition, haven't planned exactly how, but I wasconsidering 10% of the DME at start and remainder at last 45 mins of boil, which will help keep costs down also. Somebody on here mentioned you have to use enough malt for the hops to bind to initially. I'm not sure what the formula is for finding this, but every beer tool I have used shows higher IBU achieved with a lower gravity boil, although I have heard it's not a good idea to boil the hops in water only and add all the malt at the end. What kind of portions do you guys use for % of malt at start of boil and % at end, for those who use the late addition method?

I realise I have raised quite a few points here, but, as usual, any help with recipe ideas or any other points mentioned will be much appreciated.

Sounds as if you're on to something. There have been more than a couple of threads lately involving how lots of us are going after session beers. Personally, I'd rather have three pints of good draught bitter than half a bottle of IPA, so I'm happy.

Let me see if I can help a bit.

How big of a batch are you planning? 10 lbs is quite a lot of dry malt extract. If you're planning 5 gallons, five pounds of DME is plenty for bitter. In fact, you've enough ingredients for two 5-gallon (US) batches of rather good bitter. I'd split the DME and crystal, and use half in each batch. That way, you can experiment with the hops!

I'd do one batch with an ounce of Target to bitter, with a half-ounce to an ounce of Northern Brewer at flameout. For the second, reverse. Might be an interesting twist!

Since Target is a cross between Northern Brewer and Kent Goldings, it is reported to have decent aroma qualities. (I'd disagree, but that's my personal experience. My senses aren't yours.) Northern Brewer is widely used in all three areas - bittering, flavor, and aroma. So you can rest assured that using NB as flavor/aroma hops will turn out all right.

For specialty grains, adding a half-pound or so of Victory or a quarter-pound of Special Roast can add a very interesting malt character to a bitter. I try to keep my bitter as simple as possible, though, and stick with base malt and British crystal malt at 50-60L. If I want more malt character, I either go whole hog and mash or at least partial mash some Maris Otter with the crystal. But if you're not going to partial or full mash, and want some interesting malt character, feel free to add a portion of Victory.

[Edited to add:] Almost forgot about late extract addition. I typically only do late addition when I'm using extract syrup or am going for the lightest beer. Since you're using DME, and you're not making a pilsner, you don't really need to do that unless you really want to. Me, I'd just add all the DME and let it rip. But if I were going to do a late addition, I'd add 1 or 1.5 lbs initially, and add up the rest (making 5 lbs total) with 15 minutes to go. If you've got brewing software, it's pretty easy to estimate the IBU by varying the amount of extract in the boil given a standard boil volume.

You're going to end up with quite a bit of good beer. Let us know how it turns out!

Cheers, mate!

Bob

 

[Adam's Apples]

Thanks Bob.

Glad I should be able to do something with those hops alone as buying anymore wasn't a great prospect price wise at the moment.

I'm on my 8/9th batch, so am just trying to do the basics right at the moment. I started on kits, then got a feel for what ingredients go with what style of beer and started trying to compile my own recipes, but feel sure I will take things further when I am making consistently good beers.

I will probably go for a 4% ish beer, using the target to bitter and the NB for aroma as suggested. May pick up some victory or other special roast to see what that adds. I'm still getting a feel for the hop thing, but use the chart on BYO as it describes the character and uses of hops. Still a bit unsure as to what hops are used for aroma only, seems to be the low AA ones, which is why I was wondering whether Target could be used for aroma or not.

I thought the late addition would be handy as it should help me scale down on the hops, which is more cost effective, but I will play around with the brewing software to see what the figures say either way.

Cheers

 

[Bob]

Essentially, there are no hard and fast rules as to what hops are suitable for flavor/aroma, except your tastes. For example, I don't particularly care for the high-alpha varieties in that role, in comparison to the traditional varieties; I find the aromas imparted by the high-alphas coarse. But others really enjoy them. You'll have to experiment and figure it out for your own tastes.

I shouldn't worry too much about cutting back on the hops. In the first place, you've got some pretty alpha-intensive hops already, which is a boon. In the second, you don't really gain much. This is a hobby - make the most of it!

 

[Adam's Apples]

Essentially, there are no hard and fast rules as to what hops are suitable for flavor/aroma, except your tastes. For example, I don't particularly care for the high-alpha varieties in that role, in comparison to the traditional varieties; I find the aromas imparted by the high-alphas coarse. But others really enjoy them. You'll have to experiment and figure it out for your own tastes.

I shouldn't worry too much about cutting back on the hops. In the first place, you've got some pretty alpha-intensive hops already, which is a boon. In the second, you don't really gain much. This is a hobby - make the most of it!

Yeah, the great thing with this hobby is that you can be as experimental as you want. My plan was to brew some traditional ish styles and then play around with adding different falavours.

I went back to my LHBS today. They don't have victory malt on hand, but said they can get biscuit malt. I think this brew will just be the base DME, a good amount of crystal and the hops. I did pick up a bag of carapils / caramel malt, do you thing this would add any flavour or simply body?

Cheers