What brew from these ingredients?

[badgerdan]

Due to moving house I hadn't brewed an extract brew in a long time but am now ready to start up again However, I just realised my dried malt extract's best of before date is March so I want to get it going now but no idea what recipe to use; I have the following ingredients:

Hops: Target, East Kent Goldings, Saaz, Willamette, Fuggle, Goldings, Challenger
Grain: Choc Malt(BBE 22.09.10), Carapils(BBE 31.08.10), Carared(BBE 31.03.11)
Light Dried Malt Extract(BBE 03.11)

I have Muntons premium yeast, Nottingham, safe ale and safe lager and seeing as I'm living in Norway at the moment I have a nice storage room that can be as cold as 12c- 15c so can use the lager yeast.

Hope you guys can give me some good recipes using some of these ingredients

Cheers

[richc]

You could do a classic bitter or something using the carared instead of crystal and may be a touch of chocolate. Then hop with fuggles and goldings then ferment with muntons. Should turn out a slight variation on a classic bitter.
If you want something slightly more exciting swap the goldings for the Willamette...

[barl_fire]

If you want something slightly more exciting swap the goldings for the Willamette...

That's what I'd do. I do a regular brew for an ESB where I bitter with 30g Challenger for 90 min. Add late Willamette as follows, 20g at 15min, 20g at flame out, then dry hop with 20g, this gives me an intense blackcurranty flavour and aroma, one of my favourite hops Willamette.

[badgerdan]

Sounds good to me, I think I'll go for that one there but have increased the amount of challenger and reduced to 60 mins and will get 20 litres.

What do you guys think? I'm no good at what beers are which IBU's but it seems to be in the area of nicely hopped beers.

2,50 kg Light Dry Extract (15,8 EBC)
0,25 kg Carared (39,4 EBC)
0,15 kg Chocolate Malt (886,5 EBC)
45,00 gm Challenger [6,50 %] (60 min) Hops 25,6 IBU
20,00 gm Williamette [4,00 %] (15 min) Hops 3,5 IBU
20,00 gm Williamette [4,00 %] (20 min) (Aroma Hop-Steep)
20,00 gm Williamette [4,00 %] (Dry Hop 3 days)
1 Pk Nottingham (Danstar #-) Yeast-Ale

Est Original Gravity: 1,046 SG
Est Final Gravity: 1,011 SG
Estimated Alcohol by Vol: 4,59 %
Bitterness: 35,5 IBU
Calories: 90 cal/l
Est Color: 36,0 EBC

[barl_fire]

I think the bitterness will be spot on there. Last time I did my brew I thought it would benefit from being closer to 35-40IBU than the 30IBU mark I got especially as I'd gone for the full 3kg of spray malt. When them dry hops are in the fermenter it'll smell like an explosion in a Ribena factory The aroma will mellow quite a bit in the keg though which is a shame as I love it, although the berry fruit flavours remain quite prominent, very tasty

Feeling a tad jealous looking at your recipe though as I was all geared up to do an odds and sods brew to use up some dark crystal and carared and I was gonna hop it with that sort of challenger and willamette schedule but early last week I had a mouse get into my grain store in the garage and wreak havoc, so I've had to bin 1kg of brand new carapils, 1kg Chocolate malt, 1kg Black malt, 1kg Wheat malt, 800g dark crystal, 300g carared and a load of other stuff that had been nibbled at, pooed on and no doubt peed on too It'll teach me to be a bit more sensible where I store stuff. The crazy thing was some of it was in a large tupperware box which I thought was sealed but the lid although looked fully on and was still shut when they'd nicked of must have had a tiny bit cracked open. Gotta hand it to the little buggers they can't half squeeze through some narrow gaps

[badgerdan]

Well, brewed this up yesterday and filled the house with a great smell of malt and hops Used 2 packs of Muntons Premium Gold instead of the Nottingham seeing as the ones I had were out of date in August of 2009 :/

I'll put it in the secondary after a week to get it off the old yeast and all the crap from the steeped grains then dry hop the last 3 days (around 2 weeks in total)

Thanks for your help guys, I'll get back to you when I take my first taste

[barl_fire]

Look forward to hearing how it goes Love those Willamette hops.

[badgerdan]

After two weeks conditioning I just had to test it and I'm pleased to say it's great and my best beer to date Can definitely taste the blackcurrant in there and also bottled two before I dry hopped it for testing and really like the aroma I get from dry hopping; also was good to be able to compare two beers with a slight difference to help get my head around what each process offers It's quite bitter which I was wanting but may knock it back very slightly next time, but I'll see how it all turns out after another 2 weeks conditioning.

Thanks for your help guys and cheers

[barl_fire]

Great to hear it's turned out so well! Challenger and Willamette are a great combination. I've got an idea how bitter your brew is because I've got one on the go using a tad more Challenger 50g for bittering and a total of 50g Amarillo for late hop additions and it has a wonderful clean rounded bitterness to it which lets the aroma hops come through really nicely. Personally I like that level of bitterness so next time I use Challenger and Willamette together I'll probably stick with the 50g and 90 min boil, might even up the Willamette too.

I've got some Willamette that needs using up but I think I might use the Fuggles I have left over for bittering next time and do a mixture of Fuggles and Willamette for the late additions. Used alot of Fuggles in late hop additions in another brew once and loved the herby/fruity flavour and aroma it gave so I'm keen to see how that blends with the blackcurrant of the Willamette.