So i made my first ever brew of GB following the common recipe and method. results werent bad but not what i was looking for so i did some more research and found a few, what seem like, much better recipes. alll recipes were calling for a pale or amber malt extract and a lot of crystal malt. all recipes i found used different hop combinations, some were using traditionally aroma or finish hops for the bittering as i suppose you arent looking for a strong ale taste - some recipes were using claasic hop combinations of fuggles then a finishing hop. so i've drawn from different recipes (all the bases are basically the same) and selected the hops i think may give me the taste i'm looking for.
1kg crystal malt
3kg amber DME
Saaz hops (bittering)
Hallertauer hops (finish)
Root ginger
cinnamon stick
ale yeast
what difference does it make if i use liquid or dry malt extract?
any preffered brands of malt extract?
how does the hop combo sound?
anyone got experience of going GB like this?
any tips for getting th least amoun of sediment - or is it possible to eliminate sediment (i will be bottling)?
Extract GB - need some advice
-
mshergold
Re: Extract GB - need some advice
Firstly, what's GB and how much beer are you brewing? For 23 litres/5 gallons, 1kg of crystal malt seems a little too much. The recipes I've used have used less than half a kilo. Goldings and fuggles seem to be the classic hop combination for British beers, but different hops give different aromas and tastes (such as grapefruit) and are obviously suited to different styles of beers.
As for liquid versus dry malt extract and which brand, I'm pretty sure Muntons are the only people in the UK who produce malt extract. When I was extract brewing, I only once used LME. I've heard that, unopened, DME keeps for longer. Both stick like glue and have the potential to be messy and once opened. I don't know how long liquid will keep when opened, but I know dried does (although it has to be kept in an airtight container or it clumps).
DME requires less in weight than LME and also has the advantage that you can use the odd say fifty grammes extra or less without having a part used can. Also, you can use it to make up a priming solution for your bottles (you'd need a syringe to do this), rather than trying to get half a teaspoon (or slightly less if you're useing 500ml bottles) of sugar in to a bottle.
Something to remember about using LME is that you need to add it to your boiler before it gets too hot as, being heavier than water, it'll sink and scorch on your element.
With regard to less sediment, do you mean in the bottom of your fermenting bin or your bottles? Some yeasts fall into a fairly tightly packed layer at the bottom of fermenting bins and bottles, meaning they're easier to handle (I believe S04 is one). As long as your bottles have stood upright for a few days, you shouldn't have any problems with sediment transfering to your glass. I use S04 for all my beers as I've not had a chance to research any others. The last couple of brew, I got my conditioning temperatures wrong and so they didn't have much carbonation, So it was a case of pouring from a height and fairly quickly to try to get some bubbles, but even this didn't seem to have any effect on the ammount of yeast transferring to the glass.
Finally, Brew Your Own British Real Ales by Graham Wheeler is a great book of clone recipes and even if you never used any of the recipes, has lots of invaluable information. Which reminds me, every beer in the book which has an extract version, Graham seems to recommend using pale LME/DME.
Hopefully all the above is correct and if it isn't, I'm sure someone more experienced will put me right.
As for liquid versus dry malt extract and which brand, I'm pretty sure Muntons are the only people in the UK who produce malt extract. When I was extract brewing, I only once used LME. I've heard that, unopened, DME keeps for longer. Both stick like glue and have the potential to be messy and once opened. I don't know how long liquid will keep when opened, but I know dried does (although it has to be kept in an airtight container or it clumps).
DME requires less in weight than LME and also has the advantage that you can use the odd say fifty grammes extra or less without having a part used can. Also, you can use it to make up a priming solution for your bottles (you'd need a syringe to do this), rather than trying to get half a teaspoon (or slightly less if you're useing 500ml bottles) of sugar in to a bottle.
Something to remember about using LME is that you need to add it to your boiler before it gets too hot as, being heavier than water, it'll sink and scorch on your element.
With regard to less sediment, do you mean in the bottom of your fermenting bin or your bottles? Some yeasts fall into a fairly tightly packed layer at the bottom of fermenting bins and bottles, meaning they're easier to handle (I believe S04 is one). As long as your bottles have stood upright for a few days, you shouldn't have any problems with sediment transfering to your glass. I use S04 for all my beers as I've not had a chance to research any others. The last couple of brew, I got my conditioning temperatures wrong and so they didn't have much carbonation, So it was a case of pouring from a height and fairly quickly to try to get some bubbles, but even this didn't seem to have any effect on the ammount of yeast transferring to the glass.
Finally, Brew Your Own British Real Ales by Graham Wheeler is a great book of clone recipes and even if you never used any of the recipes, has lots of invaluable information. Which reminds me, every beer in the book which has an extract version, Graham seems to recommend using pale LME/DME.
Hopefully all the above is correct and if it isn't, I'm sure someone more experienced will put me right.
-
Fuggled Mind
- Hollow Legs
- Posts: 381
- Joined: Mon Dec 14, 2009 6:13 pm
- Location: Zurich, Switzerland
Re: Extract GB - need some advice
I also spent some time pondering over what GB was and drove myself mad thinking of all the short names for popular beers such as TTL, OP and SNPA.
Looking through the ingredients, could it be that GB is ginger beer
Of course, I could be completely wrong
Cheers
Jason
Looking through the ingredients, could it be that GB is ginger beer
Of course, I could be completely wrong
Cheers
Jason
Once, during Prohibition, I was forced to live for days on nothing but food and water.
W. C. Fields
W. C. Fields
-
JammyBStard
Re: Extract GB - need some advice
I did my first Extract brew today: I got my LME from Rob: http://www.themaltmiller.co.uk/index.ph ... at&catId=5 It seems to have made very goog wort; but I cant comment on the taste for a couple of weeks. Cheapest I could find too!