Critique my Halloween recipes? :)

[onelegout]

Morning all!

I've just put together two very simple recipes that I am going to put together for my halloween flat-warming party (I'm moving out of my mum's house and into a flat with my girlfriend at the end of the month - eek! ) and I was wondering if you could give your input?

Brew Name: The Hop-ness Monster
Brew Length: 5 gallons / 23 litres
Style: IIPA
Grist:
3800g Maris Otter
500g Caramalt
1000g Sugar (added just before boil)

Hop schedule:
120g Styrian Goldings (5.4%AA) 60 mins
80g Styrian Goldings (5.4%AA) 30 mins
40g Styrian Goldings (5.4%AA) 15 mins
120g Styrian Goldings (5.4%AA) 3 days Dry-Hop


Brew Name: Midnight Blue
Brew Length: 5 gallons / 23 litres
Style: Blueberry wheat beer
Grist:
2500g Lager Malt
1500g Wheat Malt

Hop schedule:
35g Hallertauer Hersbrucker 30 mins

Rack to secondary over 1kg crushed blueberries


Cheers,
H

[booldawg]

1000g of sugar seems a fair amount, its just under a quarter of your grain bill. May make the beer thin and cidery. I've never gone about 5% sugar in a recipe so I'm not sure what you can get away with?

[mysterio]

10 - 20% is easily doable for something higher gravity, but a kilo is maybe just a tad OTT. You want a dry beer but you also need some malt sweetness to balance the hops.

You've not included any OG or IBUs. Also no info on yeast & pitching rate

Second recipe looks fine

[mysterio]

OK I get 96 IBUs for the IIPA, assuming whole flower hops. Which would be fine if it had the OG to stand up to that but it is only 1.059 assuming 75% efficiency. Those IBUs will really jump out (in a bad way) in such a dry beer, too. As it stands, I don't think that recipe would make a good beer. I don't have any experience with Double IPAs but for a regular IPA I would switch the sugar with an appropriate amount of malt (about 5.6kg of pale malt in total), half the bittering hops, switch the 30 and 15 minute additions, and use a quarter of the dry hops.... you'll still have a very hoppy beer this way.

[onelegout]

Heya,
Firstly, thanks for the advice!

The reason why I added so much sugar was because my mash tun can only hold 4.3kg of grain without the mash being ridicuously thick
Would it be worth reducing the batch size to increase SG?

According to Beersmith, if I reduced the batch size to 4g (by boiling off or collecting less wort from the mash) I would get these stats:

OG: 1.077
IBUs: 87.3

giving an IBU/SG bitterness ratio of 1.138 which is spot on what an imperial IPA should be according to... well... the internet

Am I correct in saying that dry hopping does not impart much bitterness, but instead adds more aroma and flavour?
If so, would I be better dropping the 60min hop addition down instead of the dry-hop?

Cheers!
H

[mysterio]

Do you have a spare cool box lying about anywhere? You could do two equal mashes, one in your mash tun, the other in the cool box. Once you're done sparging your mash, discard it and pour in the second mash into the lauter tun, and sparge again. OR, just reduce batch size.

Sugar is not a replacement for malt, but small amounts are fine to boost gravity without increasing sweetness/flavour.

[onelegout]

Hi all,

Ok I settled with a recipe, and went with it! I think it's going to be too bitter, but there's only one way to find out!

Type: All Grain
Batch Size: 4.00 Imp gal
Boil Time: 60 min
Brewhouse Efficiency: 75.00


Grain Bill:
3800.00 gm Pale Malt, Maris Otter (5.9 EBC) Grain 72.80 %
590.00 gm Caramel/Crystal Malt - 20L (39.4 EBC) Grain 11.30 %
Additions:
330.00 gm Lyle's Golden Syrup (0.0 EBC) Extract 6.32 %
500.00 gm Sugar, Table (Sucrose) (2.0 EBC) Sugar 9.58 %

Hop Schedule:
80.00 gm Styrian Goldings [5.40 %] (60 min) Hops 36.4 IBU
15.00 gm Keynor lane wild [4.50 %] (30 min) Hops 4.4 IBU
25.00 gm Styrian Goldings [5.40 %] (30 min) Hops 8.7 IBU
40.00 gm Styrian Goldings [5.40 %] (15 min) Hops 9.0 IBU
80.00 gm Styrian Goldings [5.40 %] (Dry Hop 3 days)

Yeast:
1 Pkgs S-04


Beer Profile:
Est Original Gravity: 1.073 SG
Measured Original Gravity: 1.070 SG
Est Final Gravity: 1.017 SG
Estimated Alcohol by Vol: 7.25 %
Bitterness: 58.5 IBU
Est Color: 15.1 EBC


What do you reckon it will turn out like?
H