Recommend me a recipe

[surista]

I'd like to make a small 1-gallon batch this weekend, trying for a lager. Here are the ingredients I have on-hand:

1kg Pilsner malt (crushed)
113g Hallertau
100g Saaz
80g Northern Brew
3.3lb Light DME
Saflager W-34/70
Salfager S-23

I was recommended to try some steeping grains to improve the flavor profile - so I got the Pilsner malt, not realizing it was a base malt, not a steeping malt. Best to skip for a 1-gallon batch? If I were to use it, how would I do it?

Anyone want to recommend a good 1-gallon batch recipe based on the ingredients above?

 

[surista]

OK, I'm going to be brewing two 1-gallon batches in a few hours - so you beermeisters out there have a few hours to save this n00b from any major TEH STUPID. Based on lots of reading (and thanks to DeathBrewer for his great partial mash writeup), here's my warplan


1) 2.5L of water, heat to 75 C.
2) Add 1Kg of crushed pilsner malt. Keep at 65-67 C for 60 mn
3) In meantime, bring 3 L of water to 80 C in separate pot for sparge; sanitize the crap out of 1-gallon carboys, funnels etc. Crack open a home brew (only six remaining from second batch!)
4) After 60 mn, pull up grains and drain, and tea-bag in sparge water for 10mn
5) Add original wort to sparge water pot = should be about 5L. Bring to boil.
6) Start of 60-minute boil: add 600g of light DME and 10g of Northern Brewer leaf hops
7) After 30 minutes, add 5g of Hallertau leaf hops and 5g of Northern Brewer
8) With 5 minutes left, add 5g of Saaz hops
9) End of boil; cool with ice bath in sink to 20 C
10) Take OG reading; according to BeerToolsPro, target OG is 1.050
11) This should end up with about 4L of wort. Pour 2L each into two 1-gallon glass carboys,top both to 4L with approx. 2L each.
12) Add Saflager W-34/70 yeast to one carboy, S-23 to the other
13) Airlock, store in corner of dark corner of pantry
13) Crack open another homebrew and chill.


OK - someone please let me know the (most likely) numerous errors in my ways...

 

[surista]

So I made this recipe last night, pretty much as my instructions above.

1) Get all ingredients out and ready to measure etc. before hand:

2) Partial mash of 1kg of pilsner malt. I didn't have any binder clips, but rubber bands worked pretty well.

3) Keep the mash tempature around 65-67 C

4) After the mash, add everything to the sparge water, bring to boil...

5) ....start adding your hops

The boil was a bit odd: I never really got a hot break. There was LOTS of foaming - mostly continuous, actually - but no hot break, or at least what I thought was a hot break.

Even more interesting (worrying?) was that I ended up with only about 1.5L of wort - when I had expected to end up with around 4 L! Needless to say my wort was thick and syrupy. I couldn't even take a hydrometer reading. I finally just added the yeast, aerated, split the wort into the two separate carboys, and topped up each carboy to about 3.5L each. I then took the hydrometer reading last (does it make a difference if I do this before or after adding the yeast?) - and it came out to my target 1.050 on the nose:

 

[Want2Brew]

I think you got a funny boil because of the high % of sugar in your wort. You must have had a lot of boil off. Looks like a cool experiment, cant wait to hear how it works out. Keep us posted

 

[surista]

It's been about 18-20 hours; no airlock activity but that's probably just due to a slight CO2 leak from the stopper. I have a nice film forming on the top of the wort:

...but a pretty good pile of sludge at the bottom <g>

 

[Want2Brew]

Looks like it's starting to take off. If you are using Lager yeast you may want to cool the fermenter down a little unless you are going fro a hybrid, that temp looks a little high.

 

[surista]

Hmm, you're right, it is a bit high. I think the inside wall of the kitchen is a bit cooler; will (gently) move it in -

 

[surista]

Another update here - just wondering, does that wort color look normal? It's a light brown color - like a coffee with loads of milk addeded. Sorry for the crappy photo quality; took it with my iPhone this morning...