Review my procedure/recipe idea

[thrashandburn]

Hi guys, I'm pretty new to brewing beer, I picked up a Mr. Beer a while back, and had two successful brews from kits with it, but I want to move on to better and more original beer creations. My current financial situation wont allow me to go out and buy any new brewing equipment, so my thought is that I can use the Mr. Beer fermenter for a two gallon partial mash recipe. While I don't know much about ingredients, I came up with my own idea for a Classic American Pilsner style recipe based also upon what is available at the local homebrew shop, with the help of http://beercalculus.hopville.com/
I'm trying to keep it really simple, here it is for 2 gallons

1 lb Briess pilsen malt
1 lb Flaked Maize
1 lb Muntons light Malt Extract dry
.5 oz hops boil for an hour (the hops are pellets, don't know what kind though)

my plan is to steep the grain in 2 gallons at 150 or so degrees for an hour, then sparge with another gallon, making 3 gallons at the point of boiling, hoping that the finish will yield about 2 gallons of wort. then into the mr beer keg. I'm thinking Fermentes Saflager S-23 for the yeast.

So i'm looking for any critiques you guys can offer, like suggestions for a better procedure, a tweak to the recipe, or if the whole mr beer thing is a viable option for fermenting this batch. Thanks in advance to anyone who posts.

 

[Homercidal]

Wile I haven't done any partial mash beers, here is what I think should happen:

Figure about 1.5 quarts per lb. for water/grain. Since you are going to be mashing 2 lbs of grain, that equals 3 quarts of water, or roughly 1 gallon.

So I'd crush and mash the grain into 1 gallon of the water, saving the other water for sparging. Heat the water up to a few degrees warmer than the mash temp and use the stove to dial it on. Couple of times during the hour check temp and heat and stir as needed.

Heat water in separate kettle for sparging and after draining the grain bag in the mash kettle, move it to the sparge kettle and stir it around for a few minutes to rinse the sugars off. Then drain over the kettle.

Combine the two kettles' contents and add extract, continue as with extract recipe.

The Mr. Beer thing, as far as I know, is a reasonable system for brewing smaller batches. It doesn't make any difference to the yeast if you use that fermenter or a bucket or carboy, etc.

Just be sure to shake well to aerate before pitching yeast and keep the fermenter at a low temp for the cleanest tasting beer. Check the yeast information online for the proper temps.

 

[thrashandburn]

so in that case, I'll steep in 3 liters or 3/4 gallon, and then sparge with another 2 1/4 gallons to equal the 3 gallons before the boil, to get around 2 gallons of wort after the boil?

 

[jrobidoux]

I usually do batches this size and I'm not too confident that you are going to boil off a whole gallon in 60 minutes. You probably only need to sparge with two gallons at most.

 

[ColoradoHomebrew]

you may want to find out the hops variety and make sure it is enough or not too much. Or even buy new ones. That can make a huge difference based on the stregth.

 

[BrewMU]

I don't want to discourage you, but do you understand the difference between brewing an ale and a lager? You'll need to have a place to refrigerate it, or put it out in the cold in a swamp cooler. Lager fermented at room temp wouldn't turn out so well, unless you maybe use California Lager yeast and make it a California common style beer. Even then, you want to stay low in the ale fermentation range.
Or were you going to put it in the fridge? With a batch that small, I guess you could. If so disregard, and good luck.
Btw, you may not get full conversion of the corn with it being a large part of your grain bill and with no 6-row.

 

[thrashandburn]

I've been researching lager brewing like crazy and I'm aware of most of the concepts. I was planning on using a refrigerator to control the temperature and as far as the corn conversion goes, do you have a suggestion that could help with that, should I use 6 row instead of the pilsen, or perhaps some of both? And yeah, this will be my first lager. I realize it's probably a tough task for a beginner like myself, but I have the drive to really try and get it to turn out right, so I think I'm up for the task.

 

[chickypad]

Btw, you may not get full conversion of the corn with it being a large part of your grain bill and with no 6-row.

Shouldn't the pilsner have enough disastatic power to convert the corn? At any rate, I would up the pilsner to 2 lbs, that should help. In fact, with that small a batch you might as well try to do as an all grain. If my calcs are right it would be 2.5 lb pilsner and no DME.

 

[thrashandburn]

If I did try doing it as an all grain, would the additional pound and a half of pilsner affect the amount of hops during the boil?

 

[chickypad]

Are you referring the the differences in hop utilization with late extract addition vs. adding it at the beginning of the boil (thus changing the boil gravity)? I have read recently on this forum and elsewhere that some folks believe gravity may not have as big of an effect on utilization as had been previously taught. Or at least not as important for our purposes.
Whatever the effect, I do know some brewing software has trouble accurately calculating IBU's with late extract addition. So if anything you would expect a more accurate calculation of IBU's with all grain - just use your program to calculate how much hops to add to get your desired IBU's.

If you don't know what I'm talking about with late addition and just wanted to know if substuting grain for extract in the boil will affect your recipe as far as hops - then disregard the above. The hops would stay the same. You are just substituting the fermentables from the grain for the fermentables in the extract, to get a comparable OG for your beer.

 

[thrashandburn]

alright then, thanks for the advice everyone, I think I now have a clearer idea of what i need to do now. Though I am interested to know if anyone has an idea of how this beer will taste. The grain that I'm considering using was chosen simply by looking at a few different american pilsner recipes, as I said before I really don't know that much about grains, their flavors, etc. but I'm learning more daily.

 

[chickypad]

It's going to be light, for sure. You probably want to read up specifically on brewing this style. As was alluded to, other than mashing with enough base grain there are other techniques which may help you get all you can from the corn. Also correctly handling the lager yeast is important, again as already mentioned. A beer like this doesn't have much else going on that will hide flaws.

 

[thrashandburn]

I will do that, and as far as the yeast goes, I plan on making a starter wort to ensure fermentation in the low temp.

 

[thrashandburn]

After considering the suggestions regarding additional base malt to get better conversion from the corn, I thought about modifying the grain bill to include Briess Crystal 10L. So it would then be this:

2 lbs Briess Pilsen (50%)
1 lbs Briess Crystal 10L (25%)
1 lbs Flaked Maize (25%)

My thinking is that the crystal will help the corn conversion while also adding a darker color. Any thoughts on this?

 

[chickypad]

Crystal won't help. if you're worried you're better off going with 6 row as was suggested.

 

[thrashandburn]

the problem with 6 row is that my local homebrew shop doesn't have 6 row in stock. Are there any other grains that I could use to substitute for 6 row? By the way, thanks a lot to chickypad for all the replys, I really appreciate the help. Clearly I don't really know what I'm doing and I really don't want to screw up, which is why I'm questioning everything.

 

[chickypad]

Yes, 6-row can sometimes be harder to get. You could also use 2 row (in between pilsner and 6-row in terms of diastatic power), but again I think researching that specific issue of using corn is a good idea as you are doing. I don't have much personal experience with recipes using a high percentage of adjuncts, mostly just reading myself. So getting a good book with expert advice or maybe searching the boards here for more experienced posters on this issue is a good idea. I think things like longer mash time, different rests during mash can help compensate for not using 6-row.