Salvagebeer Homebrew Beer Blog

I know I’m late getting this post out, but I’m a brewer before I’m a blogger, and actual brewing needs to take priority over writing about brewing. I did indeed brew batch #1 of the great gear experiment, and will document the process in an upcoming post.I put together a recipe for the brewing setup experiment, which the poll results decided would be an IPA. As I’ve discussed, I decided on a fairly traditional English style IPA, which the BJCP says should look like this:Vital Statistics:
OG - 1.050 - 1.075
FG - 1.010 - 1.018
IBUs - 40 - 60
SRM - 8 - 14
ABV - 5 - 7.5%Here’s how things shook out. I used Designing Great Beers by Ray Daniels for the math, which I’ve recommended strongly in the past. Anyone who wants to create their own recipes along style lines absolutely must own this book. For those who want to follow along, I’m including most of my work here.

The Recipe

My Target Gravity: 1.055 - This target gravity is toward the low end for the style, while allowing me a little bit of fudge-room for setups with poor extraction.

Finished Volume of Beer Produced - 5.5 gallons. I included the extra 0.5 gallons because I will be using a secondary fermenter (I’ll lose some volume when I rack to the secondary), I expect to lose a smidge of water in the brewing process, and wish to have 5 gallons of beer in the end.

Grain Bill

• 90% maris otter pale malt
• 4% each flaked barley and crystal 60°

This is pretty straight-forward, according to style guidelines. I chose Maris Otter as my base malt to give the recipe a real traditional English feel, though any pale base malt would have worked just fine.

The crystal and flaked are pretty common additions for pale ales and bitters, and though I was looking for crystal 40°, my local homebrew shop doesn’t carry it, so I grabbed crystal 60°. This shouldn’t impact gravity much, but will result in an IPA that’s a little bit lacking in the “P.” Both of these specialty grains will contribute a bit of color, body, and head retention.

I’m assuming 68% efficiency for all of the gear I’ll be using for the experiment, as I’m unfamiliar with the use and efficiency of many of them. I’m building a few specifically for this project. I’m certain that efficiency will vary significantly from one to another, and 68% is recommended for beginners by Ray Daniels in his book. This seems like a pretty good assumption for keeping things controllable and consistent. Now comes the math that won’t make a huge amount of sense without the book.

• Total amount of extract needed for batch
  • 55 x 5.5 = 302.5 GU of total gravity

• Amount of extract from each source:
  • Maris Otter = 0.90 x 302.5 = 272.25 GU of ingredient gravity
  • Flaked Barley = 0.04 x 302.5 = 12.1 GU of ingredient gravity
  • Crystal Malt = 0.04 x 302.5 = 12.1 GU of ingredient gravity

• Pounds per Ingredient:
  • Maris Otter = 272.25 ÷ (38 x 0.68) = 10.54
  • Flaked Barley = 12.1 ÷ (34 x 0.68) = .52 (extract potential for flaked barley isn’t given in the book, so I took my numbers from middle of the range for flaked grains in the article located here)
  • Crystal Malt = 12.1 ÷ (34 x 0.68) = .52

So, the total grain bill looks like this:

• Maris Otter: 10.54 pounds
• Flaked Barley: .52 pounds
• Crystal Malt: .52 pounds

I find these measurements awkward, and don’t trust myself to hit them exactly, batch after batch, so I’ll ballpark it just a bit at 10.5, .5, and .5 pounds, respectively. This is a pretty big liberty for me to be taking if I wish to be at all scientific, as the math exists for a reason, but I’m much more interested in consistency batch-to-batch than in following the formulas to the letter.

Water Volume

I followed the book almost exactly for this section, and there’s no need for me to transcribe Daniels’ formulas word for word – doing so might even get me into trouble. I’m just going to include the salient numbers, if anyone cares.

• 11.5 pounds of grain
• 2.43 gallons of water lost to grain
• Batch size – 5 gal
• Final boil vol – 5.5 gal
• Total – 9.4 gal

One other note on water: I’m brewing some of these batches at my friend Jól’s place, and some at my house. I’m using tap water in each case. We live only a few miles from each other, and pull water from wells. The water in this whole area is very similar, so I don’t expect this to alter the end result very much, but I may send out samples from both places for testing if I get to feeling anal.

Hops

I really wanted to use East Kent Goldings for this batch. Goldings is the most-used variety of hops in English Bitters and Pale Ales, according to Daniels.

Despite my preference for whole leaf hops, finding leaf Goldings locally is a spotty proposition at best, and given the hops supply crisis going on right now, and the way it’s directly affecting my local shop, finding any leaf variety locally is pretty unreliable.

I went with East Kent Goldings pellets, clocking in at 4.0 AAU, as I’m pretty sure that I’ll be able to get more when I need them. I want to land somewhere between 40 and 45 IBU for a 5 gallon batch. Using this calculator, I can hit the target range smartly with 3 ounces of hops, using 2 oz for bittering with a 60 minute boil and 1 oz for flavor with a 15 minute boil.

I will not add any aroma hops, which I expect to impact judging negatively, but I want to be able to smell differences between batches prominently when it comes time to gauge the beers.

Mash

I want to mash at 154 degrees. I used this calculator (as it’s easier than the formulas in my books) to land on a strike water temperature of 173 degrees. This will, of course, be impacted by the materials and surface areas of my mash tuns, but I don’t know how much heat to expect each of them to suck from my mash as they warm up, so I’m gonna go with this, across the board.

That’s what I came up with. I did take some liberties here and there, and I welcome feedback on my methods. I need to be clear – I think of myself as an able brewer, and one who consistently brews pretty good beer, but I don’t want to represent myself as an expert. A big part of this blog, and the work that I am documenting with it, is a quest to learn more about our craft, and to provide the results of my learning to the homebrewing community. I want to do research on things that I feel are not adequately covered online, and point folks to resources that I’ve found helpful, but please don’t take my work as “wisdom.” I’m no great scientist, either, and if the greater homebrewing community ever finds its way to this blog, I fully expect to be corrected or criticized for mistakes made. Take all of this with a grain of salt. That said, this should be a pretty solid recipe, from my perspective.

[EDIT, 11/07/07 - I neglected to mention yeast at all in this post, which is a hugely important variable. Liquid yeasts offer excellence in terms of repeatability, but they need to be treated consistently. Smack-packs should be smacked on consistent timetables, should be of the same age, and can vary wildly in terms of pitching rates depending on temperature, and whether they are used with a starter or not. I want a consistent pitch rate, and I don’t want to worry about smacking a smack-pack the same number of hours before brewing time nor monitoring incubation temps. I’ll be using a high-quality dry ale yeast from Fermentis, pictured below.

I’ve chosen this yeast as they have an excellent reputation for consistency in both flavor and active cell-count.]