Afternoon all,

I know form the previous threads (all appear to be closed) that there are a fair few of you that have used the kit. I’m about to use mine for the first time this weekend.

Any one have any pointers?
Any one got good recipes for future brews with quantities for the 10L kit?

Do you have beersmith? If not, then it’s worth having, it’s not expensive and takes most of the guesswork out of building recipes, doing things like correcting the bitterness/AA% and calculating the various efficiencies, calculating volumes of strike water exactly. You cna do all that by hand or guesswork, but this takes all the fudgeing out of it.

It also has a scaling function whereby you can input a recipe intended for a 25l 3 vessel system, and it will work out how much you need to make 10l BIAB (it’s not direct scaling because BIAB is less efficient at sparging, but a mash tun and kettle have dead spaces etc).

On the other hand these are for 23l batches, as an approximation I’d divide the grain by 2 and the hops by 2.3 (then correct the bittering hops for whatever you’v bought)

Malty Mongrel Porter
3.5 kg Pale malt
0.5 kg Munich
0.37 kg Caramalt/Crystal 60
0.34 kg Melanoidin Malt
0.2 kg Chocolate Malt
0.14 kg Black Malt

Mash at 66C, 60min

35g Fuggles at 60
35g EKG at 60
17g EKG at 15
17g Fuggles at 0, steep for 20min before chilling.

Nottingham yeast.

OG 1.053
FG 1.012
5.5% ABV

And bloomin’ delicious. Might be a bit bitter though as my hops were old, I’d put money on half the bitering hops I used being sufficient if they were fresher.

Default West Coast IPA

5.7kg Pale Malt
0.16kg Malanoidin (aka dextrine malt)
0.16kg Carapils (aka carafoam)

Mash at 64C, 60min

Either:
44g Cascade @60 (all these hops were about 10%AA)
6g Centenial @15
9g Amarillo @15
13g Centenial @0
13g Amarillo @0 + 20min steep

Mangrove Jacks M44 (west coast yeast)

20g dry hop on day 10 for 5 days before bottling.

OR:
Simcoe (13%AA) Pine, citrus, can taste almost garlic, I’ve put more than I would into the 15min addition as I’ve never noticed it before and want to try it. This is currently fermenting in my fermentation chamber, no guarantees it;s good but it’s an example of what you can do to tweek a recipe.
25g @ 60
25g @ 15
25g @ 0 + 20min steep
25g @ dry hop as above

You can throw pretty much any hop in an IPA, and that grain bill gives a slightly nicer character than some of the astringently dry SMaSH IPA’s. If doing the maths by hand, just correct the bittenress of the 60min hops and stick with between 15 and 25g for the other additions.

English Best bitter:
4kg of pale malt
30g of black malt

~Or 4kg of Golden Promise malt and no black malt.

~ Or add 250g of caramalt/light crystal if you like Fullers London Pride.

Mash at either 64 or 66 depending on how much residual sweetness you like.

Any mix of Fuggles, glodings or other 4.5%AA-5%AA english hops in roughly:
50g @60min
10g at 15min
10g at 0min + 20min steep

Nottingham yeast for something similar to TT Landlord, or Windsor Yeast for Brakespear/Youngs/Fullers type estery fruityness.

Cheers for the reply tinas, I’ve not got beersmith. But will put it on my home computer later, i think work IT may raise issue with it on my work computer.

Cheers for your edit, that make the rescipies a little clearer

Brewdog have published all there recipes online, if that’s to your taste?

https://www.brewdog.com/diydog

interesting rewski, thanks.

I had some Brewdog punk IPA for the first time in ages at a wedding last weekend and thought at the time it was pretty nice but have been mainly drinking the http://www.williamsbrosbrew.com light ales and IPA’s recently.

Yea, I realised after posting that it was just one huge indecipherable body of text.

It takes a couple of brews to get beersmith dialled in because some of the efficiency numbers aren’t immediately obvious how they’re calculated, but if you fill out the volumes tab on your first brewday it will give some good numbers which you can refine with future attempts. Don’t panic though if you’re way off, the worst you can really do is end up with weak beer (if it’s too high an OG, just dilute it down to where it should be).

A bad recipe fermented properly will make good beer, a good recipe fermented badly will make awful beer. In other words if you’re going to throw time and energy (and money) into any part of the process, it’s finding a spot (or butchering a fridge) that’s a stable temperature of about 19-20C.

Incidentally, Steve (founder of MB) has recently set up a brewery himself, so isn’t making more.

The spot i have planned for the fermentation is in the cupboard under the stars that backs onto a radiator. This being in the center of the house should have a pretty stable temperature. Will get an idea of the temperature in there from my daughters bath thermometer and if need be i could pop an oil filled rad in the cupboard with out too much trouble.

The spot i have planned for the fermentation is in the cupboard under the stars that backs onto a radiator. This being in the center of the house should have a pretty stable temperature. Will get an idea of the temperature in there from my daughters bath thermometer and if need be i could pop an oil filled rad in the cupboard with out too much trouble.

If anything, cooling is always the problem. If it’s in the centre of the house then it’s probably as close to ideal as you’ll get. Too cold just slows fermentation down (it’ll stop entirely at about 15-16C), but too warm will make and estery mess of your beer. Unless it’s belgian or wheat beer, in which case esters are ‘to style’, which is beer snob shorthand for “this beer was always traditionally f*****’d up, so now we put in a lot of effort to f******ing it up consistently to keep it traditional”.

It’s all about technique. Concentrate less on the recipe and more on temperature control (both during mashing and fermentation) and sanitisation. Only progress onto a complicated recipe once you can make a simple beer well.

Daft question, How long do brewing ingredients last? My kit has sat for some time – well since last Christmas so I am presuming some if not all of the ingredients will be past there best.

Difficult to say. They last a while if they’ve been kept in a cool, dark place. You can’t really tell unless you try and make a beer with them.

Your grain will probably be past its best, but I expect you’ll still be able to convert most of the starches to sugars. You may just not end up with as strong a beer as you were expecting. The hops and yeast should be fine if they’re sealed.

Hops deteriorate fairly quickly, losing something like 1/3 of their AA% every 6 months. But on the other hand I’ve brewed recently with some 2014 hops and while you can tell they’re not as fresh as they could have been, it’ still good beer, the flavour profile just goes a bit ‘flat’.

Grain is more dependant on storage conditions, if it’s dry it’s probably fine, bags of youngs pale malt have a 2 year sell by date, probably not ideal after that long, but it’s not ‘bad’ (unless it’s covered in mould).

Best way is to either locate a local shop that sells fresh ingredients, or order in bulk from http://www.the-home-brew-shop.co.uk, or http://www.themaltmiller.co.uk, or others. It keeps long enough that you could buy a bulk of pale malt, and a few bags of various speciality malts, and a handful of hops, for example 100g each of fuggles, saaz and centennial would give you enough variety to do any English, European or West coast style beer.

The spot i have planned for the fermentation is in the cupboard under the stars that backs onto a radiator.

That will be too warm. Anything over 20C is not good.

For ale you want 18C, lager 12C.

I would recommend building a “fermentation fridge” and put that under the stairs. You probably wouldn’t even the heating part of it.

Get yourself signed up to http://www.jimsbeerkit.co.uk/index.htm really friendly and helpful forum. They don’t mind stupid questions.

Before buying that kit I would ask on BIAB Board what they would recommend for a newbie. http://www.jimsbeerkit.co.uk/forum/viewforum.php?f=35

I brew all grain so can’t say if that BIAB kit is any good.

If you want a copy of Beersmith, it was much cheaper to get the code from this Aussie site http://brewadelaide.com/

I use Brewtarget; it’s basically a free alternative to BeerSmith but misses some of the more complex tools. Fine for creation of basic recipes though.

Also, any issues with fermentation temperature are largely dependent on your location. Here in Scotland it’s rarely too hot to ferment an ale inside!

tinas
I check and see tonight if anything has a use by date think i may pop to a local shop tomorrow and pick up fresh ingredients, if it works out i’ll bulk buy next time and get a batch or two done for Christmas.

gobuchul

Thanks for the links, will look into them this evening.

I’ll see what temp the cupboard gets to tonight, I live in Aberdeen so we are not experiencing the heatwave some are down south. The heating in the house is set to 20C so i’d expect that it’d be unlikely for that cupboard to get too far over it if at all and the heating is not on atm.

The heating in the house is set to 20C so i’d expect that it’d be unlikely for that cupboard to get too far over it if at all and the heating is not on atm.

The air temperature might be 20 or less but the problem is that when it begins to ferment, this produces heat so you could end with something like 22 – 23 for the actual wort.

I check and see tonight if anything has a use by date think i may pop to a local shop tomorrow and pick up fresh ingredients, if it works out i’ll bulk buy next time and get a batch or two done for Christmas.

I really wouldn’t worry, I brewed a bitter earlier in the year with whatever was to hand in the local shop (which mostly sells kits and only 2 types of grain), the grain was well over a year old, the hops were 2014 harvest, tasted great, there wasn’t quite the green’ness of new hops, but it wasn’t worth throwing stuff away. Especially hops, 2016 European hops are only just appearing in the shops, so you won’t get fresher than whats in the kit.

The only ingredient I’d maybe replace is yeast, even dry yeast in the fridge loses it’s viability over time. The beginner advice is never use the yeast in a canned extract kit (John bull, coopers etc), you can get a fresh sachet of Nottingham for £2.

The air temperature might be 20 or less but the problem is that when it begins to ferment, this produces heat so you could end with something like 22 – 23 for the actual wort.

Nottingham is recommended between 18-23 so it should still be fine, warmer will be more estery, but
a) some people like that
b) you can always leave it for 2 weeks in the primary, bottle it and leave it for a month or more in there too condition those flavours out if they bother you.

A fridge is the single best upgrade to my brewing, but it’s not essential, especially if you’ve got a decent cupboard. Remember, brewing went of for thousands of years before fridges were invented.

gobuchul,

Didn’t think of additional fermentation temperature of the wort. will see what temperature it is in the cupboard and try and make an educated guess if it’ll work OK. I also have the garage that i could store it in but think that may be too cool especially over night.

In an effort to waste not want not. And Steve saying it should still work fine I’ll just use what I have for this first batch.

See how it goes and then by fresh when I have a better idea of what I am doing.

Daughter is in bed and mash is on. Wish me luck.

I found it a steep learning curve!

My first few brews were chaos.

The final product was always drinkable though.

Good luck! 🙂

Boil on now, looks like this will be getting finished in the early hours.

So far it is going as per the instructions.

Time to clean up and get to bed.

OG noted at 1.065 hopefully that means there was some life left in the ingredients but I guess that won’t fully be revealed till the yeast has done its thing.