No hop beer?...

[Manx Guy]

Yeah

Malt and hops go SO well together! Like Tomato and Basil...

My Nettle beer didn't taste too bad, in fact once I thought of it as more of a sparkling country wine it was actually very nice!

I used the Hugh Fernly Whittingsname recipe but usued my 'brewing knowledge' and didn't bottle after 3-4 days...

I let the brew ferment almost out then bottled at 1010, knowing it would drop further in the bottle (as it uses simple sugars) Bottled 5 litres of it on the 6th June tasted a bottle last night....

Its quite a good drop if you think of it as more of a TC/country wine...
Its not a patch on even my kit pale ales...

But if you are in the mood for something different its more than OK!


Guy

[196osh]

Hops and malt complement each other very well. They are by far the best combination of things you can put in a beer. The Heather ale by the Williams Bro's is nice.

So you can replace hops in beer but all in all it probably wouldn't be as good as a beer made with hops. You can make a very malt forward beer, by using low levels (relitive to the OG) of hops and using a yeast that brings forward the malt characteristics of the beer.

[markbrannan]

What ratios are we talking about for a "low level" of hop-page compared to OG? Like, a 60min boil of 2.2AA hops to a 1040 OG? More? Less?

[196osh]

Its more like the IBU:OG ratio.

http://www.hogtownbrewers.org/brewschoo ... Ratios.pdf

Is an example of what I mean. So if you wanted a really malt forward not bitter 1040 beer you might shoot for an IBU OG ratio of 0.5 i.e. 20IBUs worth of hops. If you haven't done already download beer engine by Graham Wheeler. Its a great (and free) bit of software that should help.

[markbrannan]

Yeh, i've got BeerEngine. Thanks for the IBU:OG tip - that's a good one. I'm planning on making a stout from just chocolate malt, with some dark muscovado to get the ABV up. What should I process the muscovado under in BeerEngine? I've put it down as the invert sugar with the highest EBC (although I'm pretty sure its not invert).

Anyway, here's my proposed recipe. Please give your suggestions and alterations:

For 1 gallon,

500g Chocolate Malt
500g Dark Muscovado sugar (maybe a little too much, I might scale this back to 250g)

20g Saaz hops (60min boil) 2.2% AA (Or 15g, if I only use 250g muscovado)

This should give a final ABV of 7.1% with an IBU:OG ratio of 62:20 (or 3.8%, 42:18 if I only use 250g muscovado).

These both fall in line with the chart you suggested, with the higher ABV stout having a ratio of ~0.3 and the lower one having ~0.5.

I'm thinking on doing the higher ABV version, i'm just hoping that the muscovado doesn't give it a powerful treacle-ey taste. Anyone used muscovado before? Or chocolate malt? Which is more powerful?

Also, I don't exactly have the best AG set-up - I plan to throw my malt in a muslin bag and boil them up, then maybe put that bag into a funnel and rinse it through a few times to get all the sugars out, then once that's done, throw out the malt and put the hops in said bag for the bittering part. D'you think that will work well?

Thanks for all your help so far.

[196osh]

As in no base malt? Wont work dude. It WILL taste horrific and burnt.

http://www.homebrewtalk.com/wiki/index. ... olate_malt

1. Max in batch your looking at 10%. That is with base malt.
2. No boiling of malts, not ever unless your doing something more complicated which I wont go into.
3. If you want to do a stout but can't mash fully then do an extract recpie, and steep your Chocolate malt, in water at about 70C for about 20 mins.

NO NAME

Date:

Gyle Number:

Fermentable Colour lb: oz Grams Ratio
Chocolate Malt 1050 EBC 0 lbs. 3.5 oz 100 grams 12.5%
Sugar Invert No. 4 Solid 600 EBC 0 lbs. 3.5 oz 100 grams 12.5%
Dried Malt Extract Pale 10 EBC 1 lbs. 5.1 oz 600 grams 75%


Hop Variety Type Alpha Time lb: oz grams Ratio
Saaz Whole 2.2 % 90 mins 0 lbs. 0.7 oz 20 grams 100%


Final Volume: 4.4 Litres
Original Gravity: 1.060
Final Gravity: 1.012
Alcohol Content: 6.3% ABV
Total Liquor: 7.9 Litres
Mash Liquor: 0.3 Litres
Mash Efficiency: 75 %
Bitterness: 22.5421481680289 EBU
Colour: 329 EBC

There is something you could do. If you wanted to make a gallon of stout-ish (porter really) stuff.

[Jolum]

As in no base malt? Wont work dude. It WILL taste horrific and burnt.

I'm glad it's not only me then. That was kind of the point I was trying to convey to Mark when he was proposing making all Chocolate Malt beers etc.
Take a look at this Brupaks guide to grains Mark. It gives you a recommended percentage use for each type of grain. Of course, you don't have to follow any of this stuff religiously but it's not a bad idea to 'start' off building your beers along these guidelines then maybe make changes as you go along - perhaps after you've brewed and tasted the results.

Good luck with it.

[Jolum]

Its more like the IBU:OG ratio.

http://www.hogtownbrewers.org/brewschoo ... Ratios.pdf

Is an example of what I mean. So if you wanted a really malt forward not bitter 1040 beer you might shoot for an IBU OG ratio of 0.5 i.e. 20IBUs worth of hops. If you haven't done already download beer engine by Graham Wheeler. Its a great (and free) bit of software that should help.

But that's regarding bittering only. If I chuck in 50gm of Cascade (or any other aroma hop) at flame out, I don't expect that's going to affect the IBU/OG ratio that much but I am going to get a sh*t load of hop flavour\aroma in the brew. At least that's how my tiny mind rationalises it

[196osh]

Thats pretty much how it is. You will get some bitterness from the flameout hops though not much.