First Recipe Attempt

[Matt12398]

I posted this recipe in the recipes forum but didn't really get any replies because I don't think all of you venture in there very often so I've reposted it here in the hope of a little advice. Hopefully I'm OK putting it in here.

4.2 kg Marris Otter Malt
300 g Crystal Malt
200 g Biscuit Malt
80 g Chocolate Malt
200 g Torrified Wheat
32 g Challenger @ 60 minutes
10 g Challenger @ 15 minutes
10 g EKG @ 15 minutes
20 g EKG flameout
Wyeast 1098

I thought the addition of the biscuit malt would give it a nice flavour. I know I've got quite a few grains in there but hopefully they'll all work together. I've not gone too mad on quantities.

All of these figures seem to look pretty good in Beersmith for the malts but I'm less sure about the hops. I don't know whether I'm gaining anything by having the 15 minute addition or whether I should go with all at flameout. Not sure if I should leave the challenger for bittering only and just use EKG for flavour/aroma. I expect it would taste nice but didn't want get my head blown off by hop flavour, well, at least not taste too strange.

I really just wanted a nice English style ale with some good hop flavours in there. Welcome any opinions.

[seymour]

...I really just wanted a nice English style ale with some good hop flavours in there. Welcome any opinions...

You should get exactly that. Looks very tasty to me. I'll bet no one replied because they couldn't find any fault with it. Go forth and brew!

[alix101]

You will get a nice dark beer from that, looks good, I might be tempted to lose the chocolate malt, but you don't know until your drinking it.

[Matt12398]

Cheers guys.

Alix, The chocolate was for colour more than anything. Do you think it's worth leaving it out?

Seymour, That's good to hear. I'll go for it then and report back. It's nice to try other people's tried and tested recipes but if I can make my own and it tastes nice I think it will be even more rewarding.

[Normski]

Hi Matt

i agree with Alix about that much chocolate. If its not the chocolate flavour your after then maybe use some black malt instead.

Norm

[Matt12398]

Thanks Norm. I didn't think that was a lot of chocolate but I'm not that experienced with using it. I have black malt so will try swapping that in instead.

[Normski]

Hi Matt

Black malt is usually a bit darker than Chocolate malt, so you may want to use a bit less, maybe 65g Black instead of your stated 80G Chocolate would give a similar amount of darkening.
If you don’t have brew software, it’s well worth downloading Grahams Beer Engine.

Norm

[Matt12398]

I've got Beersmith so used that for getting the colour right and that amount of chocolate malt gave me the right colour.