I'm about to do order my ingredients for my third all-grain and have come up with the following recipe. I would appreciate any feedback as I have come up with this one myself.
Sounds like a good malt bill Swifty. Not sure on the dark Munich though have never used it myself. Vienna is another option that I like. You could even ditch the Choc.
I am starting to appreciate 'no crystal' brews in the hotter months.
Whats the AA% on your hops?
Last edited by chris. on Monday Oct 08, 2007 8:35 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Looks good to me too. I haven't used Munich II either, I just go for Munich I and generally go for a bigger addition for flavour rather than using less of say a darker one. I take it (because of the amount) the choc is there for mainly a colour addition and not looking for much flavour or astringency from it? If so, Carafa is a great substitute. It's a dehusked choc malt and so doesn't carry the burnt/astringent/bitter flavour as in choc malt with husk intact. Having said all that, I'm sure the grain bill will be just great if left exactly as is.
Like chris says, would like to see the AA rating for hops and what you are expecting for efficiency.
Cheers, Ed
So the bartender says to the horse "Why the long face?"
From memory the Hallertauer is 3.2% and the Perle is 8.3%, as far as effiency goes I'm not positive on how to work it out. I read in John Palmers book but don't think I converted properly. Have you got a formula so I can work that out? It will be only my third all-grain and I'm not quite up there yet.
The Choc was mainly for colour. I kinda just made this recipe up by looking at others and guessing here and there as to exactly what it would produce. Do you think the Munich dark malt is a bit much?
I do have a formula but it's in a spreadsheet and difficult to post it up. Can you supply the grain bill, volume, and OG's for the previous ones? I could work it out from there and give you a rough guide. Also, I'll try to extract the formula tonight and post it if I get time.
Looking at it on the surface, I think what you have there will work just fine.
Cheers, Ed
So the bartender says to the horse "Why the long face?"
Ed, I can't remember what my OG was on my last but I had 2.5kg of JW Ale, 0.5kg of JW Wheat and 1.0kg of JW Vienna. 13g POR @ 60mins, 13g POR @ 15mins, 13g POR @ final. I think the OG was 1049 and volume was 17L. I'll check tonight though and make sure.
I really wasn't sure what recipe to use for my next and like I said just checked out what other people had done and make a calculated guess at what sounded ok. I checked the recipe on Qbrew and it seemed ok. You never know until you give it a go though and I didn't want to straight copy someone's recipe. I like the thought of doing something a bit different.
That works out to 67% system efficiency. OK, if you have QBrew it's easy. Go to options>>>configure>>>calculations and set the efficiency to 67% (by the way it says mash efficiency but is actually measuring system efficiency). Just remember to set the volume of the brew as well. So after doing this, you'l see the last brew is calculated exactly for what you got. As you do more batches, the efficiency will probably go up and then you can adjust that figure, but leave it at 67% for now.
Now you can work out the estimate for IBU, original gravity, alc/vol, and colour. Aslo where it says "style" in the pull-down box, see if you can match it up with whatever style you're trying to match. That will give you a guide as what to aim for. Then it's easy to make adjustments.
Good on you for trying out your own recipe.
Cheers, Ed
Edit: Just looking back at the recipe, you will be diluting this one so that will have to be taken into account. I take it the boil pot won't handle the whole volume?
So the bartender says to the horse "Why the long face?"
Nah, I've only got a 19 litre boil pot. I've been using frozen blocks of water to chill it and dilute it a bit. How do I take that into account though? Would I put in the final volume after diluting or the original boil volume?
Well that's a little tricky but can be done. Can you tell me how much you diluted the 17 litre one? I can work it from this formula:
New gravity=((current gravity-1)x(current volume/target volume))+1
Then we can figure what your eficiency was before diluting and come up with a new figure to use when adding back in a specific volume (if that makes any sense). The only other thing that will change is hop utilisation, but I wouldn't worry about it much especially if not pushing any limits, or you could say add a few extra grams for the bittering addition.
Cheers, Ed
So the bartender says to the horse "Why the long face?"
Checked the logbook last night and I was a little off. OG was actually 1044 and original volume was 13L diluted to 15L. The OG was taken before pitching the yeast. I'm a bit confused with the formula, wouldn't current and new gravity be the same?
That formula is designed to find the new gravity from dilution or evaporation so it can be worked either way. Applying it to what you got, it seems that you extracted 1.051 from the 4 kg's of grain for total litres of 13. That would make it around 54% efficiency. Reason for the low extraction figure is the small pot, because you're leaving sugars behind in the grain. Would be nice to have a larger pot so you can keep sparging or even go into a second pot and split the boil.
It's going to depend on just how much you end up collecting and how much diluting as to where to set the efficiency figure. If you standardise the amount of dilution and take notes of gravity readings over the next couple of brews, then you'll have a good handle on it.
I think if you use final volume (diluted volume) in the litre size (in QBrew) and set the efficiency to around 50%, that should be reasonably close if adding 2 litres and sticking with the same method (going by the result from the figures supplied).
Cheers, Ed
So the bartender says to the horse "Why the long face?"
So what can I do to increase the effiency? Either get a bigger pot or split the boil or not dilute it at all? I have a 15L pot aswell that I boil the sparge water in, maybe I should collect another 10L or so in that.
If I did a split boil, should I use all the hops in one pot and just boil the other or split the hops evenly over the two?
Efficiency of mash won't increase without the dilution, it will just end up higher gravity.
Yup, that's what I use to do before getting the 50 litre pot. What I did was split the runnings as evenly as I could (within reason) so you end up with about the same gravity in each (if that makes sense). So if your second pot is going to hold say 1/3 of the total boil volume, then chuck in 1/3 of the hops. It's a bit more mucking around and easier with a single pot but does work. If you have a spare Esky, then go higher temp with your sparge water and dump it in there so you can bring the second pot into use.
Cheers, Ed
So the bartender says to the horse "Why the long face?"
I just did a bit of quick reading on the split boil and think I can get a greater volume without much more hassle and using what I have. I'm thinking if I heat the mash water up (say 15L for 5kg of grain) in the 19 L pot then dough in and drain into the 15L pot trying to get a bit over 10L as it seems about 4L or so is lost in the grain. Then heat about 18 L for sparge water in the 19L pot and sparge collecting the runnings in the same 19L pot until I have about 18L. This would give me around 29L and after the boil probably around 21-22L. I would then distribute the hops according to the ratio of boil volume to total boil volume which would be close enough to a third.
I guess this will have to do for now as I can't afford any more equipment, especially such a large pot. I've set this up for a very minimal cost and was thinking I'd be happy with smaller volumes but it's hard to come to terms with "throwing away" perfectly good wort. For now the split boil will be good too as I don't have a wort chiller and chilling two pots in the bath will be easier than 30L in the one pot. That and the stove has enough trouble with 18 L, damn electric crap!!
Well I'm doing my third all-grain this weekend, I'll see how I go. I'll try this for the next few brews to see how effective it is. Thanks Ed.
