basic bitter recipe

[silkyuk9]

i want to try to make my own bitter or ale. ive looked on the net for items that i would require but im asking you guys for a little advise on making my first homemade bre from scratch rather than using a kit.

So basically i want to make a basic bitter to begin with nothing to difficult, as if i can get the basic together and know the quantities, i can start to experiment further.

What do i need??

for 40 pints of bitter.

something pretty simple please just the basics for an idea of quantities.

cheers

[Madbrewer]

I assume by starting from scratch you mean all grain (rather than buying malt extract and boiling it up with the hops)?

You will need a mashtun and lauter tun (somehing to remove the grain from the wort) something to boil in and a fermenter.

Fist time out don't worry too much about the water, unless it smells like chlorine. Then Follow Jims well written, tried and tested instructions here:-
http://www.jimsbeerkit.co.uk/mashing.htm

Here's a basic reipe for 23 litres - it should taste a little like Hogs Back TEA at 40 IBU's quite bitter without being 'grapefruity' :-

Crushed Pale Malt 4300
Crushed Crystal Malt 350
Goldings 6.2%aa 30g 90
Fuggles 4.8%aa 25g 90
Goldings 6.2%aa 8g 10
O.G. 1.044
Safale yeast


Very basic detals here, read the link above for he proper procedure ... but basically you Fill mashtun up with 18 litres of water at 72c
empty in the grains above, stir well & adjust with hot/cold water as necessary to get temp to 66c & then Mash at 66c in your mashtun for 90 mins

Drain and keep the liquid (now called wort)
add another 15 litres of water to mashtun at 80c, stir, wait 5 mins and
Drain this wort off to (that's a VERY simple batch sparge) you should have collected around 25 litres.

Put it into the boiler, get it to the boil then add the first two of the three hops quantities as mentioned below, then after 70 mins of them boiling add the last hop addition.

Goldings 6.2%aa 30g (weight) 90 <-(minutes spen boiling in the wort)
Fuggles 4.8%aa 25g 90
Goldings 6.2%aa 8g 10

empty the boiling wort off into fermenter and cool it to 30c or less (immersion chiller, or sit fermenter in bath of cold water) you should ferment ideally at a starting gravity of 1.044 (use hydrometer here) - dilute the wort down to that with boiled & cooled water if necessary.

add the yeast

ferment as usual

Bingo!

Don't worry too much about the aa%'s of the hops - mine are as stated above but yours will vary. If they are within 2% + or - of mine it will work well, if they are grossly different you may need to scale up or down the weights of hops to get bitterness back in the 40 range. With nearly 10% crystal malt it will hide som botterness if you go too high, and if you go to low (but not much too low) you will end up with something more akin to the leel of bitterness you get with a Yorkshire Bitter.

To change the recipe for a different amount of litres just divide all he ingredients by 23 and multiply by the intended target volume.

[anomalous_result]

Edit: beaten to it I'll leave my post anyway

It's difficult to know how much you know or how basic to make the advice, but starting from first principles take a look at Palmer's How to Brew.

Brewing is essentially broken down into the following steps:

1. Mashing - Malted barley is soaked in hot water to release the malt sugars.
2. Boiling - The malt sugar solution is boiled with hops for bitterness.
3. The solution is cooled and yeast is added to begin fermentation.
4. Fermentation - The yeast ferments the sugars, releasing CO2 and alcohol.
5. Conditioning - When the main fermentation is complete, the beer is bottled with a little bit of added sugar to provide the carbonation.

So you need a something to heat water in, mash in, boil in and ferment in, and something to dispense from. Some of these can be done in the same vessel.

Also check Jim's great guide on a brew here. Click along the menu to see it step by step.

[Madbrewer]

Edit: beaten to it I'll leave my post anyway

It's difficult to know how much you know or how basic to make the advice, but starting from first principles take a look at Palmer's How to Brew.

I liked your post and I must really learn not to post ten words when one will do! Good Luck against Barnett tomorrow! (We're home to Bradford)

[silkyuk9]

great instructions there.

ok my next question is reqarding the cost, you know you can buy a tin of sticky stuff in the brewes shop for around £7-99 and all you need to add is 40 pints of water (plus the packet of yeast) and a kilo of sugar. This costs around £8 to make up.

going by the instructions in the above post, what would the cost be of the overall ingrediants be to make up a barrel of 'basic' bitter.

[Whorst]

My basic recipe:

Pale malt
special roast( I believe this is similar to Amber malt?)
crystal 120L
challenger, target, fuggles or EKG in copious amounts. S-33 Ale Yeast

[Madbrewer]

great instructions there.

ok my next question is reqarding the cost, you know you can buy a tin of sticky stuff in the brewes shop for around £7-99 and all you need to add is 40 pints of water (plus the packet of yeast) and a kilo of sugar. This costs around £8 to make up.

going by the instructions in the above post, what would the cost be of the overall ingrediants be to make up a barrel of 'basic' bitter.

I budget for around 30p per pint - I don't over economise though, if I reused yeast, bought bulk ingredients, shopped around more I could probably get it down to 25p

That's probably £2.00 more than your kit and hopefully worth the 5p extra per pint.

If you are going to do a kit - get a 3kilo one!!