Hi Chaps,
So I've done a few 2 can kits and played about with steeping / dry hopping. Results aren't bad to be honest, but nowhere near commercial quality. So today I bought a 32 litre stainless steel pan with hop strainer (brupak) to start something a bit more advanced. I don't have time to go full grain at the moment and I am not brewing to save money, but more just for the enjoyment (I tell the wife it's the men's equivalent of baking - she seems to buy it!). I dont have 6 hours available though! Anyway, as the phrase goes "I have the gear, but no idea!". So my question is whats a good basic recipe to start with and preferable something with pretty clear instructions or maybe even a video instruction? I have seen some pre made "summer ale" kits - should i go for these or just get my own ingredients and give it a bash? Want to get the most out of this 32 litre pan - is this mainly for full grain brewing or good for extracts too? I did read the "kit" only needed a 6 litre pan so i am 26 litres over!
Any help/advice appreciated. I want to master the key techniques so i can quickly move forward to producing a good quality extract ale without it consuming too much of my time and p*ssing off the wife!
Thanks
Mark
Starting my first extract
-
Jocky
- Even further under the Table
- Posts: 2738
- Joined: Sat Nov 12, 2011 6:50 pm
- Location: Epsom, Surrey, UK
Re: Starting my first extract
I've just made the jump to extract after doing a couple of kits (and thinking I can do better), so I'll relate my experiences.
With a couple of extract brew days done, my general experience is that whereas I could get a kit into the fermenter in an hour, extract is 4 hours (although I'm sure I can improve on that). And as soon as you start steeping speciality grains, you're 90% of the way to basic all grain brewing.
The basic process is:
1. Put water in pan and heat it up.
2. Add extract (you can do this while heating the water).
3. Boil for 90 minutes, adding a measured amount of hops at specified times. Leave the lid off.
4. Cool the wort down to below 30 degrees
5. Put in fermenter
6. Pitch yeast.
If you have speciality grains in your recipe then you steep those at 60-70 degrees for half an hour before adding extract.
The only wrinkle in the process is knowing how much water to use, as quite a lot can boil off in 90 minutes. It's better if you undershoot as you can then top up with cold water to hit your desired gravity, which also speeds cooling. As a starter, go for 20% extra water in the boiler.
The difficulty you may face is cooling your 33 litre pot of wort. Stick it in the bath maybe?
You can also speed up the process (or make bigger batches than your pan can take) by doing a partial boil, where you boil half (I think) your water and extract with the hops, and then top up with the rest of your water/extract in the fermenter. That may solve your cooking problem. Just pour the hot wort onto some cold water.
Really that's it. The new difficult bits are around recipe calculation/conversion.
I'll put up a simple recipe to get you started, but you need to let me know what kind of beer you like.
With a couple of extract brew days done, my general experience is that whereas I could get a kit into the fermenter in an hour, extract is 4 hours (although I'm sure I can improve on that). And as soon as you start steeping speciality grains, you're 90% of the way to basic all grain brewing.
The basic process is:
1. Put water in pan and heat it up.
2. Add extract (you can do this while heating the water).
3. Boil for 90 minutes, adding a measured amount of hops at specified times. Leave the lid off.
4. Cool the wort down to below 30 degrees
5. Put in fermenter
6. Pitch yeast.
If you have speciality grains in your recipe then you steep those at 60-70 degrees for half an hour before adding extract.
The only wrinkle in the process is knowing how much water to use, as quite a lot can boil off in 90 minutes. It's better if you undershoot as you can then top up with cold water to hit your desired gravity, which also speeds cooling. As a starter, go for 20% extra water in the boiler.
The difficulty you may face is cooling your 33 litre pot of wort. Stick it in the bath maybe?
You can also speed up the process (or make bigger batches than your pan can take) by doing a partial boil, where you boil half (I think) your water and extract with the hops, and then top up with the rest of your water/extract in the fermenter. That may solve your cooking problem. Just pour the hot wort onto some cold water.
Really that's it. The new difficult bits are around recipe calculation/conversion.
I'll put up a simple recipe to get you started, but you need to let me know what kind of beer you like.
Ingredients: Water, Barley, Hops, Yeast, Seaweed, Blood, Sweat, The swim bladder of a sturgeon, My enemies tears, Scenes of mild peril, An otter's handbag and Riboflavin.
-
Brewski
Re: Starting my first extract
That's great info thanks. I am looking for a hoppy IPA type beer as a start and then to venture out to more interesting winter and darker ales. So is it essential to cool the wort down quickly or could it be left overnight? I guess I could fill up a spare FV with cold water and try that. Or maybe just buy a copper pipe one you dunk in? Still not quite sure whether it is essential to use say 25l or you can make up shorter than that and top-up. Is there a noticeable difference to the end result?
-
Jocky
- Even further under the Table
- Posts: 2738
- Joined: Sat Nov 12, 2011 6:50 pm
- Location: Epsom, Surrey, UK
Re: Starting my first extract
One other question I had, but forgot to ask - do you know how you are going to heat your 33 litre pot? On a single ring of my gas stove I get a reasonable, but not exactly violent boil with 11 litres of wort, it certainly wouldn't do 22 litres.
Regarding chilling - conventional wisdom is that you want to cool the wort quickly to:
1. Stop something else growing in it before your yeast can take hold.
2. Avoid chill haze in the end product.
#2 is at worst a cosmetic thing and may not be an issue with extract brewing, #1 is the problem. I think the best thing is to start simple. I've read that some people can just seal up their pot at the end of the boil and leave it to cool, but I've no experience of that. Probably the best thing for you to do would be to do a part boil, and top up with cold water (as cold as possible) and dry extract in the fermenting vessel to hit your desired volume and gravity and bring down the temperature all in one go.
When you're happy with the whole process you might want to buy a wort chiller and do a full boil.
You can certainly make excellent beers with a partial boil (especially if you add steeped grain too), I don't think at this stage you'll find any difference between that and a full boil.
Couple of IPA recipes incoming...
Regarding chilling - conventional wisdom is that you want to cool the wort quickly to:
1. Stop something else growing in it before your yeast can take hold.
2. Avoid chill haze in the end product.
#2 is at worst a cosmetic thing and may not be an issue with extract brewing, #1 is the problem. I think the best thing is to start simple. I've read that some people can just seal up their pot at the end of the boil and leave it to cool, but I've no experience of that. Probably the best thing for you to do would be to do a part boil, and top up with cold water (as cold as possible) and dry extract in the fermenting vessel to hit your desired volume and gravity and bring down the temperature all in one go.
When you're happy with the whole process you might want to buy a wort chiller and do a full boil.
You can certainly make excellent beers with a partial boil (especially if you add steeped grain too), I don't think at this stage you'll find any difference between that and a full boil.
Couple of IPA recipes incoming...
Ingredients: Water, Barley, Hops, Yeast, Seaweed, Blood, Sweat, The swim bladder of a sturgeon, My enemies tears, Scenes of mild peril, An otter's handbag and Riboflavin.
-
Jocky
- Even further under the Table
- Posts: 2738
- Joined: Sat Nov 12, 2011 6:50 pm
- Location: Epsom, Surrey, UK
Re: Starting my first extract
Regarding recipes you might just want to buy a ready put together extract kit like these: http://www.brewuk.co.uk/store/beerkits/ ... t.html?p=1
They include instructions to guide you through.
They include instructions to guide you through.
Ingredients: Water, Barley, Hops, Yeast, Seaweed, Blood, Sweat, The swim bladder of a sturgeon, My enemies tears, Scenes of mild peril, An otter's handbag and Riboflavin.
-
jonnymorris
- Tippler
- Posts: 12
- Joined: Tue Mar 27, 2012 8:42 pm
Re: Starting my first extract
Hello. New to the forum but with many kit brews under my belt. Am in a similar position to the OP so hope you don't mind me joining in...
I'm aiming for my first extract brew this weekend and was planning on dissolving all the DME at 40degC, steeping the grains until boiling then removing them, adding the bittering hops and boiling for 90mins in a 15l pot, transferring to my FV and topping up with cold water.
My concerns are around the amount of water I can boil in the pot along with all the malt etc and the amount I'm going to loose to steam. I'm assuming I won't loose out significantly flavour-wise by doing a part boil and topping up with cold water? At least I won't have the cooling issues referred to above.
I'm aiming for my first extract brew this weekend and was planning on dissolving all the DME at 40degC, steeping the grains until boiling then removing them, adding the bittering hops and boiling for 90mins in a 15l pot, transferring to my FV and topping up with cold water.
My concerns are around the amount of water I can boil in the pot along with all the malt etc and the amount I'm going to loose to steam. I'm assuming I won't loose out significantly flavour-wise by doing a part boil and topping up with cold water? At least I won't have the cooling issues referred to above.
Last edited by jonnymorris on Thu Apr 05, 2012 12:24 pm, edited 1 time in total.
-
Jocky
- Even further under the Table
- Posts: 2738
- Joined: Sat Nov 12, 2011 6:50 pm
- Location: Epsom, Surrey, UK
Re: Starting my first extract
Only issue I can see is that you don't want to steep grains at over 75 degrees, or you will extract tannins which will add a not so nice bitter tinge to your beer. Get a cheap thermometer and steep for 30 minutes in the 60-70 degree range (http://www.howtobrew.com/section2/chapter13-2.html).
I also add DME after steeping but it almost certainly doesn't matter - whatever you do just add it SLOWLY and keep stirring so it doesn't clump together.
I also add DME after steeping but it almost certainly doesn't matter - whatever you do just add it SLOWLY and keep stirring so it doesn't clump together.
Ingredients: Water, Barley, Hops, Yeast, Seaweed, Blood, Sweat, The swim bladder of a sturgeon, My enemies tears, Scenes of mild peril, An otter's handbag and Riboflavin.
-
jonnymorris
- Tippler
- Posts: 12
- Joined: Tue Mar 27, 2012 8:42 pm
Re: Starting my first extract
[quote="Jocky"]
you don't want to steep grains at over 75 degrees...[/quote]
Thanks for your reply. I was planning on removing the grains just as it comes to the boil. I've not heard of the 75degC 'limit' you suggest. I think I'll just go for it and worry about the detail later.
p.s. thanks for the link.
you don't want to steep grains at over 75 degrees...[/quote]
Thanks for your reply. I was planning on removing the grains just as it comes to the boil. I've not heard of the 75degC 'limit' you suggest. I think I'll just go for it and worry about the detail later.
p.s. thanks for the link.
-
Brewski
Re: Starting my first extract
With regards to heating, thanks to the wife and a large kitchen refurb bill, we have a six ring gas Rangemaster. Two of the burners are twin so hopefully up to the job!
-
Brewski
Re: Starting my first extract
Also BIAG, is this worth considering and what is the rationale behind this method?
-
Jocky
- Even further under the Table
- Posts: 2738
- Joined: Sat Nov 12, 2011 6:50 pm
- Location: Epsom, Surrey, UK
Re: Starting my first extract
You mean brew in a bag?
Well it's basically all grain brewing with minimal equipment. A layman's view of the process:
1. All the grain for a usual all grain recipe goes into a bag, which is tied up.
2. You then put the bag in two thirds of your brewing water and hold it at a set temperature (this is mashing - it's like steeping grain, but much more anal about temperature). In some cases you might adjust the temperature while doing this.
3. After a while you take the bag out of the water, and dunk it in another pan containing the rest of your brew water. This is sparging. It's also potentially optional (google 'no sparge').
4. Put the two lots of water together, bring to the boil and add hops as per extract procedure above.
The only real downside of BIAB over all grain is that you need to use more grain than a proper AG setup, and that you're limited in batch sizes.
By the time you are steeping grain for extract brews you're really not that far off from going to BIAB.
I'm sure I'll be doing it soon, but I want to get a few extract brews under my belt first.
Well it's basically all grain brewing with minimal equipment. A layman's view of the process:
1. All the grain for a usual all grain recipe goes into a bag, which is tied up.
2. You then put the bag in two thirds of your brewing water and hold it at a set temperature (this is mashing - it's like steeping grain, but much more anal about temperature). In some cases you might adjust the temperature while doing this.
3. After a while you take the bag out of the water, and dunk it in another pan containing the rest of your brew water. This is sparging. It's also potentially optional (google 'no sparge').
4. Put the two lots of water together, bring to the boil and add hops as per extract procedure above.
The only real downside of BIAB over all grain is that you need to use more grain than a proper AG setup, and that you're limited in batch sizes.
By the time you are steeping grain for extract brews you're really not that far off from going to BIAB.
I'm sure I'll be doing it soon, but I want to get a few extract brews under my belt first.
Ingredients: Water, Barley, Hops, Yeast, Seaweed, Blood, Sweat, The swim bladder of a sturgeon, My enemies tears, Scenes of mild peril, An otter's handbag and Riboflavin.