Home Brew Forum

Ive been telling my mates at work about my brewing etc and they have been reading thought this site and looked at the brew days etc. So for this AG attempt i had a special guest assistant brewer with me (jim) last sunday and this is the beer he wanted to brew. As the name suggests it might be a little on the hoppy side The ingredients were:

Pale Malt - 5.080 Kg
Caramalt - 0.500 Kg
Wheat Malt - 0.500 Kg

So quite a simple base but decided to keep it as light as possible (17 EBC) The hope schedule was a little more interesting

Amarillo (9.5 %aa) - 90 mins - 10 grams
Chinook (12.7 %aa) - 90 mins - 10 grams
Challenger (5.1 %aa) - 90 mins - 10 grams
Amarillo (9.5 %aa) - 60 mins - 10 grams
Challenger (7.6 %aa) - 60 mins - 10 grams
Chinook (11.5 %aa) - 60 mins - 10 grams
Amarillo (9.5 %aa) - 30 mins - 20 grams
Challenger (7.6 %aa) - 30 mins - 30 grams
Chinook (11.5 %aa) - 30 mins - 20 grams

Protofloc 1tab @ 15min

To give an EBU of 108:

Final Volume: 19 L
Original Gravity: 1.071
Final Gravity: 1.017
Alcohol Content: 7.1% ABV
Total Liquor: 30 L (+½ campden tab)
Mash Liquor: 15.2 L

Was batch sparged, but we missed the OG and ended up with 1.068 so not far off, but given the volumes etc im not surprised, was about the fullest the mash tun has been. Stopped after the second batch sparge but there was still some sugar to be had out of it - we just reached the limit of the boiler We used Nottingham sprinked on top as the yeast and today lookes to have about stopped at 1.015 so about 7.1% final.

Now that its stopped fermenting its going to be transfered to Keg this weekend, but i think a little dry hopping may be in order for this one, its got a nice hoppyness to it, but i need to have a nice aroma on it as well (along the lines of Moonshine, JHB or 12 monkeys etc) but ive never dry hopped before so advice is welcome please, im just not sure what hops and quantities to put in, woule 15g of Chinook and Amarillo be a bit over kill do you think? or any other suggestions welcomed!

Pictures of the day below:

The hefty grain bill


Mash going on


First Runnings


And recycling


The first hops and rememnants of the BBQ


Hops in and the remains of some demolished beers


A very full boiler and some hot break


after 90 mins boil the remains and the cold break, which i have never seen looking like this before


The final gravity (slightly warm at 30oC when cooled was @ 1.068)


And the damage at the end, quite a huge pile of hops in the bin, and ofc the hose that got on my tits by leaking all over the floor for the last time

Sounds nice and hoppy.......................I just think that 80g of pale malt over the 5KG is way way way too much

Woah,hops!

Good to hear you are educating your friends Hope it turns out well...
Shame about that hose, bet it only leaks on the fittings

Looks like a good day and sounds like the beer will be a cracker. I would vote for dry hop if your wanting some significant aroma. How long are you aging it for... if at all?

pdtnc wrote:Shame about that hose, bet it only leaks on the fittings

nah it had been kinked over loads of times and had finaly given up the ghost.

simple one wrote:Looks like a good day and sounds like the beer will be a cracker. I would vote for dry hop if your wanting some significant aroma. How long are you aging it for... if at all?

Ive drawn off some this morning and there is a lovely taste of grapefruit/citrus about it so has the bitterness required but doesnt have a huge amuont of nose, so a bit of dry hopping to sort that out would be nice - my problem is ive never done it so dont want to have a bit of overkill, so im needing a bit of advice from you guys on that front

As for conditioning, its going into the pressure barrel at the weekend and will be in for about 5 weeks, plan is a beer and BBQ day on the 22 aug to drink it all.

The slightly worrying thing is for a 7% beer you do not taste the alcohol at all, so its gonna be one of those that sneaks up on you and nicks your legs when your not looking

I'd dry hop it about a week or so before you plan to drink it. Just put the hops in a small muslin bag and dump it in the barrel, leave it to sit for a while and Bob's your mother's brother.

If you've got a wide mouthed keg, then try and take the bag of hops out after a couple of weeks max.....if there's any beer left. If you're going to drink it all fairly quickly, then don't bother taking them out!

Wow, you guys over there are starting to brew like a bunch of Americans, what up with that? Interestingly, I have spent about the last month trying to brew like an Englishman. I am not a big hophead myself and frankly, most of the beers I brew are much more modest gravity wise also, I guess I am just getting old.

Concerning hop flavor and aroma though, I have just recently gotten interested in adding an immersion chiller to my set up. I currently use a counterflow chiller but I have recently read articles that point out that you can trap much more flavor and aroma if you can chill the wort at least below 140F quickly. As the wort sits in the boiler waiting to go through the counterflow chiller, it is still nearly at boiling temperature so you lose quite a bit of the volitile flavor and aroma components using just a counterflow chiller. To that end, I am seriously thinking about using an immersion chiller (with a wort recirulation line added ala Jamil's whirlpool chiller) along with my counterflow chiller. In Texas this time of year, the groundwater temperature is easily higher than 80F so it's tough to get the wort as cold as I would like (especially if you want to do lagers) just using water out of the tap. My plan is to use the tap water to drop the temperature quickly to around 100F using an immersion chiller then run the cooled worth through the counterflow chiller using ice water as a coolant. To me, this would be one time where having good equipment might acutally result in a better product. Does anybody out there have any experience on this topic?

Fuse wrote:Ive drawn off some this morning and there is a lovely taste of grapefruit/citrus about it so has the bitterness required but doesnt have a huge amuont of nose, so a bit of dry hopping to sort that out would be nice - my problem is ive never done it so dont want to have a bit of overkill, so im needing a bit of advice from you guys on that front

As for conditioning, its going into the pressure barrel at the weekend and will be in for about 5 weeks, plan is a beer and BBQ day on the 22 aug to drink it all.

The slightly worrying thing is for a 7% beer you do not taste the alcohol at all, so its gonna be one of those that sneaks up on you and nicks your legs when your not looking

IMHO you would definitley need some dry hops to add freshness to all the bitterness. At least 30g of a hop from the same family youve used. I love centennial and simcoe. With all those IBUs youll be feeling the drowsy effects of the lupulin as well as the alcohol so watch out!