Second All-grain attempt

[monk]

Well, I'm just about done chilling the wort of my second all-grain attempt. I'm hoping it works out--it was more an experiment of "can I do it" than a serious attempt at phenomenol beer. Anywhoo, here's my recipe. What do you think?

Special Bitter
19L

4 Kg English Pale malt
110g Aromatic malt
30g Amber malt
230g Crystal malt
225g dark brown sugar

19g Target 11% for 75 min
14g Kent Goldings for 10 min
21g Challenger for 0 min

White Labs English Ale yeast (slurry)

I added more base malt to try to correct the low efficiency i plan on getting. My only mistake, I think, was adding the Target too early...it looks to be about 42 ibu's! Too bitter for me, usually

When it's chilled, I'm going to take a gravity reading and we'll see what kind of efficiency I pulled.

Monk

[Orfy]

That looks like a really nice beer.
Sounds like it's going well.

Any reason you're going for 19L rather than 23L

Happy brewing.

[monk]

Okay, I ended up with 13.25 liters of wort at 1.061. I added 4 liters of water and got about 17.25 liters at 1.050. I think I'll stay with that because the Target made it so bitter, it'll need the extra maltiness to balance it out.

As for efficiency, I'm totally confused because the idea was to end up with 20liters at 1.045. Instead I have 17 liters at 1.050, I added a gallon of water, and I ended up leaving a pint or so in the kettle due to all the gunga fu that had settled during the cold break.

I had fun, anyway.

monk

[monk]

How do you add the copper hops too early? You can add them as soon as the wort comes to the boil or as most seem to prefer just after the hot break.

With extract recipes I only boil 60 min, so I add them right away. With this recipe the boil was 90 minutes, originally, and I only calculated the ibu's for 60 min of boiling time. It's a difference of about 8 ibu's, according to the computer...

I should have just calculated for 90 min and then I wouldn't have had to think about it. Another good lesson, I suppose.

monk

[monk]

That looks like a really nice beer.
Sounds like it's going well.

Any reason you're going for 19L rather than 23L

Happy brewing.

Thanks!

Two reasons for the volume: I'm in the US and all our recipes and stuff are geared towards 5 US gallons instead of the Imp; and I only had so much base malt.

Speaking of units...I found a nice program that switches all your quantities to metric. It's nice cuz at the click of a button I can have a "Jim's Forum Friendly" recipe to post. I know you all don't mind too much, but it's always easier to get the feel of a recipe when one sees it in his everyday units.

monk

[Orfy]

Ok that explains it. Also as to why you're brewing on a Saturday evening when we're all suppin' the stuff.

I hit reply and i didn't show your location. Most people who brew 19L are doing so because they are doing 5 gallon US. The metric conversion threw me. I frequent a US forum and am quite used to reading imperial recipes and quantities. I actually learnt to brew in imperial and had to convert everything to metric

[tubby_shaw]

Monk,
Great sounding beer. IMHO the bitterness will be fine. Surely brewing your own is as much about experimenting as anything else
Anyway after a couple of pints your taste buds will become numb
You could always bottle a couple of pints and leave it to mature, this always helps to smooth out the hop bitterness

[monk]

Monk, You could always bottle a couple of pints and leave it to mature, this always helps to smooth out the hop bitterness

Yeah, I think the gravity is high enough, and the bitterness, that this might be a great brew to stash away for a few months of conditioning. I read somewhere that Fuller's ESB has about 40 bu's--could've been wrong, but maybe not.

Monk

[Garth]

Good luck with the brew monk, sounds like a good 'un, 40 IBUs does not sound excessive, and as the other lads have said it will mellow if you leave it for a while.

oh and me too, as a beginner I always like to see a recipe in the units I feel the most comfortable with (usually g/kg)

[monk]

Well, this one's been bubbling like crazy for the last two days. I pitched some slurry I've been keeping in the fridge--a yeast cake of white labs Eng ale. It took a little longer than usual, but started going nuts when the wort cooled down a bit. Funny. Maybe it's been conditioned to like cooler temps from it's previous batch. One other funny thing is that there is almost no krausen. ?? Has anybody had that happen? I have a gut feeling that it's not a good thing, but at least it's fermenting.

monk