Home Brew Forum

It's not really my first AG brew day but a first with my own recipe. I'm in a need for a session beer. Oakham's Citra is one of my favourites so I decided to make up a recipe inspired by it.

Batch Size: 25.00l
Mash Temperature: 64 C
Sparge Temperature: 75 C
Total Grain Weight: 5.50kg
Total Hop Weight: 115g
Est OG: 1.051 SG
Est FG: 1.012 SG
Est ABV: 5.2 %
Bitterness: ~40.0 IBUs
Est Color: 8.2 SRM (~16EBC)

Water:

• Tesco Ashbeck 18l mash, 18l sparge
• 5g Gypsium and 4g Calcium Chloride added to mash water

Grain bill:

• 3.00 kg Pale Malt, Maris Otter
• 1.00 kg Munich Malt - 10L
• 0.50 kg Vienna Malt
• 0.50 kg Wheat Malt
• 0.25 kg Cara-Pils
• 0.25 kg Crystal Malt - 60L

Hop bill:

• 15.00g Magnum [12.8%] @ 60.0 min
• 10.00g Citra [13.5%] @ 30.0 min
• 10.00g Citra [13.5%] @15.0 min
• 15.00g Citra [13.5%] @ 5.0 min
• 15.00g Citra [13.5%] @ 0.0 min
• 50.00g Citra [13.5%] Dry Hop 3.0 Days

Wyeast WLP-005 harvested from Jim's wee bastard.

Misc:

• Irish moss 1 tsp @ 15min
• Yeast nutrient 0.5 tsp @ 15min

It was the first time I was crushing the grains myself. I conditioned the grain with about 200ml of water and left it in a closed bucket. I went about getting the mill ready. I attached the drill and run a bag of rice through it few times. I blew of the rice flour and adjusted the mill to about 1 mil. Crushing the grain was a breeze and I haven't had grain that fluffy before even though there was a fair amount of flour. With grain ready I got the Grainfather ready and started heating up mash water. I got my salts ready and added them @ 64C. I put the grain basket in and mashed in. As it started recirculating, the temperature dropped to 59C but came back up quickly. I took PH reading after few minutes and I was at 5.36, happy days. The mash was lautering through really well so I might try crushing at 0.9 mil next time. After about 40 minutes the wort was clear and I checked for starches, none detectable. I left it for the rest of 60 mash. I went a tad crazy sparging and ended up with 32l @ 1.044 pre-boil. The boil was uneventful. I guess it was going too good. I plugged in the CF chiller and recirculated to sanitize it, as the last addition steeped for few minutes. Then I started pumping straight into the fermenter. After around a half of the wort made it into the fermenter GF started beeping. I forgot to switch of the heating and it was coming up to the boil again. DOH! As a result I had no proper cold break and loads of thrub ended up in the fermenter. The end result was 27.5l @ 1.0478. I oxygenated it and pithed the yeast. Once it was safe in the fridge I opened a well deserved beer. I hope this will be a refreshing beer with a dry finish. As well as a nice base recipe to experiment with. I checked up on it in the morning and it was going strong. I should be raking it off to secondary Thursday or Friday and bottling it the weekend after next.

Looks great, can't wait to hear how it tastes!

I was a bit busy last week but eventually found the time to move it to secondary on Saturday. I took a reading and it was down to 1.013. Not much left. On Tuesday I'll add the dry hops and start cold crashing it. I'll keg it on Friday.

The gf does make lovely clear wort doesn't it? Mine this weekend looked like leek and potato soup in comparison.

I love citra. The cattier the better.

It looks great and smells great. Taste wise, it's very light. Maybe I'm getting immune to bitterness too quickly but it doesn't taste like 40ibu. I'd give it 25-30 tops. Still looks like it'll be a great session beer.

Rad wrote:It looks great and smells great. Taste wise, it's very light. Maybe I'm getting immune to bitterness too quickly but it doesn't taste 40ibu. I'd give it 25-30 tops. Still looks like it'll be a great session beer.

That has dropped nicely clear - is that before even crash-chilling? Haven't tried the 005 but it looks like it drops out like 002.

I also wonder about "hop immunity". I sometimes think I am struggling to taste bitterness in one of my beers, and then I give some to a guest and they remark on how bitter it is.. so yeah, I do think you build up a tolerance to it!

This is my first liquid yeast. None of the dry ones I've used flocculated quite like it. It drops down like bricks. I'm happy that all the thrub I managed to pump into the fermenter settled well too.