Brewuk exmoor beast recipe questions

[sbond10]

Well I did do making some grain teas throwing a few hops in and now look I'm boiling 15 litres of wort and splashing starsan around like eau du cologne. And the shiney collection has started .... I think I'm well and trually on the slope

[PhilB]

Hi Sean
+1 Pinto

I was gonna biab but all the fiddling recipes to suit your equipment. It just became scary

... Best way to get over the scary is to wade in and do it

... I don't know whether you've seen my maxi-BIAB "worked example"/"how to" thread over on the BrewUK forum (link)? ... my intention with that was to try to give a step-by-step guide to scaling a recipe for maxi-BIAB and brewing it, but I can understand that that might still be a bit scary for some ... in principle with maxi-BIAB you need to scale your recipe because you'll need more hops because you're boiling in higher gravity wort, in practice it turns out to be around 10% more hops on average, or if you just brewed the recipe unscaled it'll make your beer around 10% less bitter ... however, since the human palate can only taste to within plus or minus 3 IBUs anyway, if you were to buy an AG recipe kit (from a supplier like BrewUK or Worcester Hop Shop or whoever) and brew it up using maxi-BIAB techniques, then you would still make beer and there's a good chance it might be very much like the beer you were intending making anyway Worth thinking about???

Cheers, PhilB

[sbond10]

Cheers for that Phil you've relieved one of my main concern tho with water I need to put exactly 15.68 litres in no 14-15 litres would do or until I'm comfy. Still a lot of playing around. Need to get a dedicated PC as someone helped me on biab.info to build a recipe for a simple one hop brew suited to my equipment then Swmbo saw it decided it was clogging her laptop up and deleted it.

I'm fairly comfy with making grain teas and understanding how my equipment behaves. So I'll happily go brewing complex extract kits just need someone to hold my hand with my first biab.

I've said it before wish places like the mm and Worcester hop would do mini extract kits as in the grains and hops weighed out and you source the dme give you far more choice in what beers to brew

[jaroporter]

yeah i'd just round that to 15,5L i just go to the nearest half litre when i do 15L BIAB. still gets me plenty close enough for me. whatever setup you got you just adjust as you go with subsequent brews. too little water? top up and add less next time..

[jimp2003]

I've said it before wish places like the mm and Worcester hop would do mini extract kits as in the grains and hops weighed out and you source the dme give you far more choice in what beers to brew

WHS do sell all-grain kits that have the hops and speciality grains weighed out and supplied with the required base malt plus the yeast. It might be worth contacting them to see is they would consider selling the kits without the base malt. I thought they also sold cheap malt extract but I can't see it on their site now.

A good source for full extract kits is The Homebrew Company who are based in Ireland but supply to the UK. I have used them a few times and their delivery service is second to none. Their kits are HERE. For £17.10 you get 2 cans of LME, Hops, grains, yeast and a muslin bag..

The other option would be to buddy up with a local all-grain brewer who can supply you with the hops and grains from their store. I do this with a friend of mine who does not have the space or time for AG.

[sbond10]

What size pan are we looking at for them extract kits. The brew uk ones allow either for a 6 litre boil or a 15

[PhilB]

Hi Sean

Cheers for that Phil you've relieved one of my main concern tho with water I need to put exactly 15.68 litres in no 14-15 litres would do or until I'm comfy. Still a lot of playing around.

... I think I was trying to suggest taking a little more "casual" approach to BIAB brewing (I think that's what jaroporter is suggesting too ) ... basically, because you're limited by the size of your pot (used as your mash tun and boiler) you can afford to let that limit be your guide, don't feel constrained by it, USE IT!! ... so what you'd do is ...

• fill your pot to close to the rim, then take 1 litre/kilogram of grain in the recipe out (to make room for the grain) and heat the water up to your "strike temp" (use an online calculator if you want or just make it around the low 70s C
• put your mash bag in the water and dough your grain into the water in the bag
• add hot/cold water to adjust the mash to the mash temp and to fill the pot as full as you feel comfortable with (heat the mash if necessary, but keep stirring the grain while heating if you do that)
• insulate and/or monitor the mash to maintain the mash temp for the duration of the mash (or until converted if you're one of those testing types
• pull your grain bag and move it to another pot/bucket add 2-3 kettles of water "just off the boil" and "dunk sparge your bag, meanwhile start heating your pot to get it boiling
• top up your pot/boiler with wort lautered off the grains in the sparge pot/bucket until it's as full as you feel comfortable with it boiling, to avoid boilovers
• once boiling start adding your hops to the hop schedule in the recipe
• as wort boils off, keep topping it up with wort lautered off the grains, add more water to the grains to sparge more as you need it, add your last lot of wort to the pot 15 mins before the end of boil and add no more after that
• after the boil, cool your wort and transfer to your FV ... and at this point you can start worrying about gravities and volumes, because that's when you should take measurements and decide whether to dilute to the volume you were planning to make and/or to the original gravity of your recipe. Until then you've just put "as much as you feel comfortable with" into your pot, at every stage

... you see ... no spreadsheets, no scalings, no volumes to five decimal places ... it really doesn't have to be complicated. We only complicate it in search of accuracy/re-produceability, but at the end of the day, it's only beer

Cheers, PhilB

[sbond10]

So your saying Phil I could take a standard 23 l ag kit and use your method just take kilo of grain out and I could end with beer. See now if I could say frig off to these calculators and just let it fly and end up with 18 litres of beer I'd be happy more so if I could buy an ag kit off shelve. See I understand ag just calculators and add 15.68 litres of water make things so disconcerting

[PhilB]

Hi Sean

So your saying Phil I could take a standard 23 l ag kit and use your method just take kilo of grain out and I could end with beer.

... I'm sorry, I wasn't clear ... you'd use all the grain and all the hops in the kit ... the litre per kilo of grain to take out was just getting roughly the right amount of water in the pot to start off with ... but then that's just rough and you'll top it up after you've doughed in your grain anyway. Do a few kits and you'll get a better feel for how much to start with ... then you keep adding water to try to get as much of the sugars off that grain into that pot as possible ... and then after the boil you'll dilute to OG/volume. Depending on efficiencies (which depend on far more factors than I could possibly describe ) then you'll probably get around 19-22 litres of wort at OG from those 23 l AG kits

Cheers, PhilB

[sbond10]

See when I last asked this the general thoughts where I was about to create brewing sin and it simply couldn't be done to take a 23 litre kit and stick it into a 17 litre pot because the hop ratios wouldn't be correct and the beer would be rank. Yes I'm aware extremely grain heavy brews are gonna be hard work but simple ales shouldn't be a issues I hope

[jimp2003]

What size pan are we looking at for them extract kits. The brew uk ones allow either for a 6 litre boil or a 15

You could easily brew up one of the 23l extract kits in a 15 litre pan. I would add half the extract at the beginning and then the rest 10mins from the end (remember to leave room for this at that stage). Use the top up water to rinse the hops as I mentioned previously. Should be easy.

The purists might say that you are making compromises but you will end up with damn good beer at the end if you do things methodically.

EDIT: Remember to briefly turn off the heat when you add the second half of the extract until it is stirred in to stop it catching on the bottom of the pan.

[sbond10]

Cheers Jim I did something similiar with this exmoor beast adding 2kg to start then at the very end with no heat just chucked the remaining 500g in

[PhilB]

Hi Sean

See when I last asked this the general thoughts where I was about to create brewing sin and it simply couldn't be done to take a 23 litre kit and stick it into a 17 litre pot because the hop ratios wouldn't be correct ...

... yes, generally I'd agree with that ... it won't be "correct", as in you won't necessarily make the beer to the recipe, but you will still make beer ...

... and the beer would be rank.

... and that's very much an overreaction, but you're probably exaggerating a little for effect there ... as I say, the likelihood is you'd need around 10% extra hops if you scaled your recipe "properly", or the beer you make will be around 10% less bitter if you just brewed it "straight", as per the recipe ...

Yes I'm aware extremely grain heavy brews are gonna be hard work but simple ales shouldn't be a issues I hope

... and the chances are that many of those "simple ales" will be around the 30 EBU mark, so you'd brew the beer around 3 EBU under ... and you probably couldn't even taste the difference

I think it's worth you considering the approach, at least as a "stepping stone" to getting into AG ... but, of course, if you find it works for you, you may find that's as far as you go

Cheers, PhilB

[sbond10]

I'm certainly gonna consider buying a ten quid ag kit of the wocester hop shop and see we're it gets me

[sbond10]

Any suggestions on priming levels I'm considering 80g s of brewing sugar in 150mls of boiled water this sound right ?