In a recent post of mine BlackBag said he thought my fermentables were quite low. Well, I've seen the calculation for deriving strength from OG and FG, but how can you estimate OG and FG from quantities of fermentables?
For example, if I made up a brew using a kit plus 500g spraymalt I'm guessing it would have a lower OG than if I used the same kit but used 500g of black treacle. However, I'd expect the FG to be higher in the black treacle case.
Are there any rules of thumb here?
There's a reason for this question. I'm thinking about using some black treacle to boost the flavour and strength of my next brew, but I have no idea how much to add. I'm aiming for an ABV of 6.5%.
Calculating how many fermentables to use
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steve_flack
I think that 500g of treacle in a beer of that gravity would be a little too assertive.
As a guideline, you need about 4.5-5.0 kg of liquid malt extract (what is in kit beer's gloop) to get up to around 6% in 5 gallons. You may be subbing some of that with sugar but at the very least you start with a 3kg kit before you start chucking in sugar. If you start with a cheap kit and kilo kit it's going to taste dire with the amount of sugar you'd need to add.
As a guideline, you need about 4.5-5.0 kg of liquid malt extract (what is in kit beer's gloop) to get up to around 6% in 5 gallons. You may be subbing some of that with sugar but at the very least you start with a 3kg kit before you start chucking in sugar. If you start with a cheap kit and kilo kit it's going to taste dire with the amount of sugar you'd need to add.
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Jaoqua
Oooh, that's a lot. I'll be doing some experimentation here, so I'm not too keen to splash out £20 on a 3kg kit.
If I start with a 1.8kg kit I suppose I could add 500g of spraymalt and 150g of black treacle then make it up to 20 pints. Still treacley, but now cheaper.
The problem is, with my lack of experience I don't really know quite what effect different ingredients will have. I'm aiming to brew a Leffe Bruin clone. I have put in some dedicated work tasting the stuff and it seems to be a strong, hoppy brown ale with treacley notes, quite fizzy and, of course, best served well chilled.
Others here have advised the use of an ale yeast rather than a lager yeast, even though it is quite similar to Leffe Blonde. I was thinking of using a brown ale kit, S04, extra goldings, medium spraymalt and some treacle. Also, when bottling it I was going to prime it quite highly.
Advice and observations always welcome. I expect the results of this experiment to be wide of the mark, but a starting point for further experiments.
If I start with a 1.8kg kit I suppose I could add 500g of spraymalt and 150g of black treacle then make it up to 20 pints. Still treacley, but now cheaper.
The problem is, with my lack of experience I don't really know quite what effect different ingredients will have. I'm aiming to brew a Leffe Bruin clone. I have put in some dedicated work tasting the stuff and it seems to be a strong, hoppy brown ale with treacley notes, quite fizzy and, of course, best served well chilled.
Others here have advised the use of an ale yeast rather than a lager yeast, even though it is quite similar to Leffe Blonde. I was thinking of using a brown ale kit, S04, extra goldings, medium spraymalt and some treacle. Also, when bottling it I was going to prime it quite highly.
Advice and observations always welcome. I expect the results of this experiment to be wide of the mark, but a starting point for further experiments.
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Jaoqua
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steve_flack
That sounds a bit more like an old peculiar recipe to me.Jaoqua wrote: The problem is, with my lack of experience I don't really know quite what effect different ingredients will have. I'm aiming to brew a Leffe Bruin clone. I have put in some dedicated work tasting the stuff and it seems to be a strong, hoppy brown ale with treacley notes, quite fizzy and, of course, best served well chilled.
Others here have advised the use of an ale yeast rather than a lager yeast, even though it is quite similar to Leffe Blonde. I was thinking of using a brown ale kit, S04, extra goldings, medium spraymalt and some treacle. Also, when bottling it I was going to prime it quite highly.
The thing about Leffe (and other Belgian brown beers) is that in many cases the beer gets a lot of it's colour from dark candi syrup. I have some of this and neat it doesn't taste much like treacle. It has those notes but it's not so burnt-tasting.
Basically most Belgian recipes aren't that difficult, they are often pretty simple. One of the greatest beers in the world is basically pilsner malt, white sugar, dark candi sugar syrup, hops and yeast. When you strip it down to that you can see what's actually important to the flavour. The yeast is critical, you won't get the flavour with S-04.
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eddy b