First AG Recipes

[splitter]

After doing a few kits i am going all grain this month!
I have put together two recipes based on others i've found on this site. Thought i'd put them up to see whether people thought they looked ok before i go to the hb shop to get the ingredients.

First brew i hope will be a darkish hoppy bitter, with a fresh aroma.

SUFFOLK BITTER

4000g Pale Malt (m otter)
100g Choc Malt
250g Crystal Malt

Challenger 28g (start of boil)
Fuggles 28g (start boil)
Goldings 20g (last 15)
Golgings 10g (last 5)

Yeast - Safale 04

Second one should be a strong malty stout along the lines of jamaican dragon stout.

SUFFOLK STOUT

3500g Pale Malt (MO)
400g Choc Malt
500g Roast Barley
500g Flaked Barley

Challenger 28g (start of boil)
Fuggles 28g (last 60 min)
Fuggles 5g (last 5 min)

Yeast - ? Safale 04 ?

Any suggestions for improvements to get the flavour i'm after will be much appreciated.

[tubby_shaw]

Both those recipes look excellent
Good luck with the first brews, once you start you'll never go back

[splitter]

thanx mate. just making sure i didn't get anything too wrong.
forgot to mention both recipes for a 5 gallon brew.

[Garth]

That Suffolk stout looks tasty especially with the choccy in it, with a nice low hop rate should be great. As a stout/porter fan I'll be interested how that turns out, I use Safale -04 nearly all the time and find it works well in a stout.

get brewing man!!

what sort of efficiency are you working with? cause I might have a go at that myself

[Horden Hillbilly]

After doing a few kits i am going all grain this month!

Nice one splitter, hope it goes ok for you. The Suffolk Bitter looks like a well balanced recipe to me, I like the look of 100g of Choc malt. I have used it myself in smaller quantities and been happy with the resulting beers. I am not a stout lover myself, hopefully some of the stout fans here will be able to comment on your stout recipe.

I would advise you to do a "dry run" of your ag set up if you have not done so, far better to find out now if you have overlooked something rather than half way through the brew. On my first ag I sparged using a shower head, when it was time to connect it to the fv containing the heated sparge water it dawned on me that I had not sorted out the plastic tubing to connect it! I hurriedly cut a length to size, got halfway through the sparging before I realised that I had not sterilised it either!

I got away with it fortunately, the brew still turned out ok, lesson was learned.

[mysterio]

Excellent looking first recipes.

All I would say about the bitter is to increase the late hops if you're looking for hoppy flavour and aroma. I find you really have to pound the Goldings in without thinking about it too much to get flavour and aroma from them. The stout looks tastey.

[splitter]

cheers guys, some good advice.
nice to know the safale wont ruin my stout.
will also do a 'dry run', especially important as all my stuff is begged and borrowed so probably seen better days!
think i'll double the aroma and taste hops on the bitter recipe and see how it turns out. looking fwd to tweeking the next one to taste.
I am planning on using jims technique but was talking to my dad yesterday and he suggested an overnight mash to cut down on the time. that is, leaving the well insulated tun to mash overnight so its ready to sparge in the morning. Could there be any problems leaving the mash for that long?
thanks again for all your help.

[Scooby]

I've done a few overnight mashes and they were fine, I still do an extended mash of 3 hrs or so. There is a school of thought that on longer mashes you should start a little hotter, say 68c. But on your first mash it may be advisable to stick with convention. Good luck