NoIguanaForZ
Well-Known Member
First recipe post
Sooo, the situation is as...described after the recipe and questions, since I figure it's easier for people if I start with the recipe and what I'm actually asking about, and people who'd like to help but have a low Teal Deer threshold can still contribute:
With those considerations, and a trial version of Brewsmith2 downloaded today, I've spec'd out the following recipe, using Beersmith predicted values where appropriate:
Recipe Name: Spawn Camper (v0.1) [Tentative]
Style:Imperial Stout(?) "Black Barleywine" seems to be more accurate, based on feedback and further research
Recipe Type: All Grain
Yeast: Safale (Fermentis #US-05), 2 pkgs
Yeast Starter: no
Additional Yeast or Yeast Starter: White Labs WLP-099 (In Secondary)
Batch Size (Gallons): 5.0
Original Gravity: 1.136
Final Gravity: 1.022
IBU: 52.8
Boiling Time (Minutes): 120 minimum, TBD
Color: 55.4 SRM
Primary Fermentation (# of Days & Temp): 21 days @~68
Secondary Fermentation (# of Days & Temp): 21 days @~68
Bottle Conditioning: ~72 days
Tasting Notes: TBD
Grain (percentages not including brown sugar which is not mashed):
51.6% / 12lb pale 2-row malt
12.9% / 3lb smoked malt
8.2% / 2lb Caramunich
4.3% / 1lb Special B
4.3% / 1lb Golden Naked Oats
4.3% / 1lb Honey Malt
4.3% / 1lb Chocolate Malt
4.3% / 1lb Flaked Barley
3.2% / 12oz Amber Malt
2.2% / 8oz Roasted Barley
Adjunct:
Brown sugar syrup as mentioned, which I'm treating as about 3.5lb dark brown sugar for Brewsmith purposes
Hops/Other:
Boiled 45min: 1.75oz Cascade, 1.00oz East Kent Goldings, 1.00oz Fuggles
Boiled 15min: 1.75oz Cascade, 0.50oz East Kent Goldings, 0.50oz Fuggles, 3tsp Irish Moss
Boiled 5min: 0.50oz Cascade, 0.50oz East Kent Goldings, 0.50oz Fuggles
Water Profile:
Consistent with Bru'n Water Black Malty profile
Mash:
Minimum 60 min and probably overnight (I'm told this tends to thin the body back out a bit?)
Starting temperature 156 F
Medium to thin match, TBD
My Questions to all you lovely folks:
1. Beersmith tells me I'm wildly out of style for an Imperial Stout with OG/ABV and Color; would another style label actually be more appropriate, or should I ignore it? (Is "black barleywine" a thing?)
2. Is 2 packets of US-05 in primary likely to be sufficient to ensure good fermentation up to around the 12% point, assuming well-oxygenated wort, without excessive yeast stress or delayed fermentation?
3. Is there an obvious other primary (or, hell, secondary/finishing) yeast anyone would recommend, given my stated preferences and general intent as described below? In particular, I'm considering just making a super-huge starter of the WLP-099 based on its descriptions: "Produces ester character that increases with increasing gravity. Malt character dominates at lower gravities" and "With low gravity beers, this yeast produces a nice, subtle English ale-like ester profile. As the gravity increases, some phenolic character is evident, followed by the winey-ness of beers over 16% ABV" (16% ABV being the Beersmith estimate back when I had misremembered that I had 13lb Pale Malt and 1lb Amber).
4. Should I be worried about whether my base malt is adequate to convert the others? I haven't figured out how to get this information from Beersmith yet (I would be surprised if it didn't include it somewhere..?), but my base malt percentage is currently at 51% and every Imperial Stout recipe I've seen on here is at 63-83%. How much does mash time affect this, if at all? (Using the estimation method described here: http://beersmith.com/blog/2010/01/04/diastatic-power-and-mashing-your-beer/ and the values listed here: http://www.brewunited.com/grain_database.php including the lower estimate of 120 for US pale 2-row, I'm getting a result of 62.6, which is more than double the 30 that's considered the minimum...unless a result of 62.6 is Obviously Wrong somehow?)
5. Given my stated preferences and intentions below, any thoughts on the grain or hop selection? (In particular, what should I expect from the aroma additions at 5 minutes with regard to the malt character and overall flavor? And I'm considering adding a little more grain to raise the OG back to what it was before I revised my guess at what I had in pale malt and amber; would brown malt be redundant/otherwise problematic given that it already has both amber and chocolate? Any other recommendations?) The brown sugar syrup, pale 2-row, and amber malt I already have and aren't really changeable (they're in airtight containers, but already milled, so I don't want to delay using them), and the Golden Naked Oats are included in an order I need to receive before December 3rd so I'm putting that in within a day or two, and I will be committed to them shortly, but I'm not wedded to the other grains, or the hop selection.
6. Should I be worried about the acid addition in the brown sugar syrup (to be added in the kettle) affecting the wort pH? It tastes noticeably, but not distastefully, sour as well as sweet with strong caramel-toffee flavors when I taste a sample, but I don't want to stick my pH meter in it (I might try testing a 10x diluted sample). Also, is it likely to make much of a difference when in the boil I add it?
Rationale/notes are as follows:
1. I have been brewing for most of a year, mainly using recipe kits my LHBS provides, which I've taken to tweaking a bit here and there (in particular, the hop additions on the recipe printout page are designed for extract brewing, and using larger boil sizes than the recipe called for in my fifth and sixth extract-kit recipes got me results which were considerably hoppier than I wanted them to be or than was even in-style; since I understood that issue to be worse with all-grain, I've taken to subtracting 15 minutes from every hop addition spec'd for more than 30 minutes of boiling and been extremely pleased with the results). I switched from Extract With Specialty Grains to All Grain about 5 beers ago. I want to try formulating a recipe of my own, and I also want to brew a big beer around Christmas and bottle condition it until my birthday in April.
2. I have a recipe kit from the local homebrew shop for their Strong Scotch Ale. It was designed as an extract kit, but I had them put it together as an all-grain. The employee estimated some amount of pale 2-row malt, somewhere in the 11-12 pound range, and a small amount of amber malt, as a substitute for the extract the kit originally specified. Unfortunately, unlike most of their recipes, this one doesn't have all-grain version base malt amounts printed on it, and I didn't write the results down. I weighed out 12.75lb total grain that's not in the plastic pouch holding the specialty grains intended for the extract version, and am assuming that this corresponds to 12lb pale malt and 3/4 lb amber malt (seems reasonable?). I asked about using Maris Otter instead of the basic pale 2-row, was told it would add about $6 to the total price, balked at it, and am now seriously regretting that decision.
3. I found Golden Promise malt, which is especially well-suited to (and authentic for) Scottish styles as I understand it, available online (the LHBS does not offer it) and am planning to order some (along with amber malt, since the pale 2-row and amber from the LHBS are mixed in together, and the Golden Naked Oats for the above, which my LHBS also does not have) to replace the pale 2-row and amber I got from the LHBS with. This means I have a bunch of pale 2-row and some amber malt left over, which seems like a pretty good starting point for formulating my own recipe.
4. A few months ago, I discovered that a plastic cannister of brown sugar I had been storing, which contained on the order of 4 pounds of it less a cup or so, had solidified into something resembling brick mortar. I eventually gave up and decided to make a beer-addition-friendly syrup with it. I added enough water to it to dissolve the sugar, poured it out into a saucepan, and, having read an article about candi sugar with advice for making your own recently, added about a teaspoon (I did not, sadly, record the measurement) of the phosphoric acid I use for pH adjustments, and boiled it until the volume reached roughly the 18oz line on each when divided among three 20oz plastic bottles (after cooling). (I actually calculated the SG for it, but don't seem to have written it down >.>) I decided I needed those bottles back and transferred it to a sanitized half-gallon mason-type jar, and have kept it in the refrigerator for several months. I figure my big birthday beer is a good time to use it.
5. My tastes run strongly towards malty dark beer. I don't like a lot of hop bitterness, and I intensely enjoy roasted, smoky, caramel, and so forth kinds of flavors as well as some fruitiness ("dark fruits" etc.). I also like full-bodied beer, and enjoy some sweetness/residual sugar. I also hate to waste grain/grain potential. I also, I think, habitually underestimate the heat capacity of my 10-gallon cooler mash tun. Thus, I tend to mash relatively thin at higher temperatures, sparge extra-thoroughly, and end up with a starting boil volume (for 5 gallon, ~6% ABV batches) that's at least 7.5 gallons, then boil for extra time. (With my last batch, the first where I actually measured wort gravity, I calculated my brewhouse efficiency as 86% using this resource: http://www.brewersfriend.com/brewhouse-efficiency/ ). I'm told this increases "kettle caramelization," which is relevant to my interests. I'm prepared to boil this one for longer than my usual 90-120 minutes if needs be, as likely will....
6. US-05 is a yeast I'm pretty familiar with and that has served me well, and it's cheap. It seems like a logical choice to provide the bulk of the fermentation and flavor. I've also gathered from searches that its alcohol tolerance is known to be up to 12%, hence the WLP-099 in secondary to finish the beer off.
7. As previously noted, I don't particularly like strong bitterness; I particularly dislike "grapefruit peel" bitter flavors (as opposed to, say, burned or woody bitterness). I was therefore apprehensive about using Cascade hops in my first all-grain recipe kit, an American-style stout, (the LHBS apparently changed the formulation; this was one I'd brewed twice before and I'm certain it had either Mt. Hood or Willamette the previous times I'd bought the kit), and this (plus the known greater hop utilization in all-grain) was what inspired my original "subtract 15 minutes" approach. The end result was moderately but not harshly bitter, with a sort of earthy, slightly-smoky herbal flavor that wonderfully complemented the roasted and caramelly malt flavors (my girlfriend, who doesn't like beer much, described it as "very smooth" and enjoyed it), so I've taken basically that approach here.
8. I wanted to add some variety to the hops, as well as adding enough IBUs to make it not-cloying while still having the malt character dominate. East Kent Goldings and Fuggles are styles I've used before (though only as bittering additions per the recipe kits, back when I was doing 60 minute additions at all) and been reasonably pleased with, and understand are well suited for malt-forward styles in general. My LHBS sells hops in 2oz increments, and I'm splitting off a little bit of them to try as "aroma" additions.
9. The malts chosen were a little arbitrary; I'm trying to include a variety of caramelly and toasty flavors to make it relatively rich and complex with characteristic imperial stout notes but not an overpowering burned flavor. (I like malty dark beers; I don't much care for beers that taste like ashes.) It's probably a bit heavy on body-adding malts, since I'm planning to overnight-mash it and I'm told this tends to thin the body out.
*deep breath*
Sooo, the situation is as...described after the recipe and questions, since I figure it's easier for people if I start with the recipe and what I'm actually asking about, and people who'd like to help but have a low Teal Deer threshold can still contribute:
With those considerations, and a trial version of Brewsmith2 downloaded today, I've spec'd out the following recipe, using Beersmith predicted values where appropriate:
Recipe Name: Spawn Camper (v0.1) [Tentative]
Style:
Recipe Type: All Grain
Yeast: Safale (Fermentis #US-05), 2 pkgs
Yeast Starter: no
Additional Yeast or Yeast Starter: White Labs WLP-099 (In Secondary)
Batch Size (Gallons): 5.0
Original Gravity: 1.136
Final Gravity: 1.022
IBU: 52.8
Boiling Time (Minutes): 120 minimum, TBD
Color: 55.4 SRM
Primary Fermentation (# of Days & Temp): 21 days @~68
Secondary Fermentation (# of Days & Temp): 21 days @~68
Bottle Conditioning: ~72 days
Tasting Notes: TBD
Grain (percentages not including brown sugar which is not mashed):
51.6% / 12lb pale 2-row malt
12.9% / 3lb smoked malt
8.2% / 2lb Caramunich
4.3% / 1lb Special B
4.3% / 1lb Golden Naked Oats
4.3% / 1lb Honey Malt
4.3% / 1lb Chocolate Malt
4.3% / 1lb Flaked Barley
3.2% / 12oz Amber Malt
2.2% / 8oz Roasted Barley
Adjunct:
Brown sugar syrup as mentioned, which I'm treating as about 3.5lb dark brown sugar for Brewsmith purposes
Hops/Other:
Boiled 45min: 1.75oz Cascade, 1.00oz East Kent Goldings, 1.00oz Fuggles
Boiled 15min: 1.75oz Cascade, 0.50oz East Kent Goldings, 0.50oz Fuggles, 3tsp Irish Moss
Boiled 5min: 0.50oz Cascade, 0.50oz East Kent Goldings, 0.50oz Fuggles
Water Profile:
Consistent with Bru'n Water Black Malty profile
Mash:
Minimum 60 min and probably overnight (I'm told this tends to thin the body back out a bit?)
Starting temperature 156 F
Medium to thin match, TBD
My Questions to all you lovely folks:
1. Beersmith tells me I'm wildly out of style for an Imperial Stout with OG/ABV and Color; would another style label actually be more appropriate, or should I ignore it? (Is "black barleywine" a thing?)
2. Is 2 packets of US-05 in primary likely to be sufficient to ensure good fermentation up to around the 12% point, assuming well-oxygenated wort, without excessive yeast stress or delayed fermentation?
3. Is there an obvious other primary (or, hell, secondary/finishing) yeast anyone would recommend, given my stated preferences and general intent as described below? In particular, I'm considering just making a super-huge starter of the WLP-099 based on its descriptions: "Produces ester character that increases with increasing gravity. Malt character dominates at lower gravities" and "With low gravity beers, this yeast produces a nice, subtle English ale-like ester profile. As the gravity increases, some phenolic character is evident, followed by the winey-ness of beers over 16% ABV" (16% ABV being the Beersmith estimate back when I had misremembered that I had 13lb Pale Malt and 1lb Amber).
4. Should I be worried about whether my base malt is adequate to convert the others? I haven't figured out how to get this information from Beersmith yet (I would be surprised if it didn't include it somewhere..?), but my base malt percentage is currently at 51% and every Imperial Stout recipe I've seen on here is at 63-83%. How much does mash time affect this, if at all? (Using the estimation method described here: http://beersmith.com/blog/2010/01/04/diastatic-power-and-mashing-your-beer/ and the values listed here: http://www.brewunited.com/grain_database.php including the lower estimate of 120 for US pale 2-row, I'm getting a result of 62.6, which is more than double the 30 that's considered the minimum...unless a result of 62.6 is Obviously Wrong somehow?)
5. Given my stated preferences and intentions below, any thoughts on the grain or hop selection? (In particular, what should I expect from the aroma additions at 5 minutes with regard to the malt character and overall flavor? And I'm considering adding a little more grain to raise the OG back to what it was before I revised my guess at what I had in pale malt and amber; would brown malt be redundant/otherwise problematic given that it already has both amber and chocolate? Any other recommendations?) The brown sugar syrup, pale 2-row, and amber malt I already have and aren't really changeable (they're in airtight containers, but already milled, so I don't want to delay using them), and the Golden Naked Oats are included in an order I need to receive before December 3rd so I'm putting that in within a day or two, and I will be committed to them shortly, but I'm not wedded to the other grains, or the hop selection.
6. Should I be worried about the acid addition in the brown sugar syrup (to be added in the kettle) affecting the wort pH? It tastes noticeably, but not distastefully, sour as well as sweet with strong caramel-toffee flavors when I taste a sample, but I don't want to stick my pH meter in it (I might try testing a 10x diluted sample). Also, is it likely to make much of a difference when in the boil I add it?
Rationale/notes are as follows:
1. I have been brewing for most of a year, mainly using recipe kits my LHBS provides, which I've taken to tweaking a bit here and there (in particular, the hop additions on the recipe printout page are designed for extract brewing, and using larger boil sizes than the recipe called for in my fifth and sixth extract-kit recipes got me results which were considerably hoppier than I wanted them to be or than was even in-style; since I understood that issue to be worse with all-grain, I've taken to subtracting 15 minutes from every hop addition spec'd for more than 30 minutes of boiling and been extremely pleased with the results). I switched from Extract With Specialty Grains to All Grain about 5 beers ago. I want to try formulating a recipe of my own, and I also want to brew a big beer around Christmas and bottle condition it until my birthday in April.
2. I have a recipe kit from the local homebrew shop for their Strong Scotch Ale. It was designed as an extract kit, but I had them put it together as an all-grain. The employee estimated some amount of pale 2-row malt, somewhere in the 11-12 pound range, and a small amount of amber malt, as a substitute for the extract the kit originally specified. Unfortunately, unlike most of their recipes, this one doesn't have all-grain version base malt amounts printed on it, and I didn't write the results down. I weighed out 12.75lb total grain that's not in the plastic pouch holding the specialty grains intended for the extract version, and am assuming that this corresponds to 12lb pale malt and 3/4 lb amber malt (seems reasonable?). I asked about using Maris Otter instead of the basic pale 2-row, was told it would add about $6 to the total price, balked at it, and am now seriously regretting that decision.
3. I found Golden Promise malt, which is especially well-suited to (and authentic for) Scottish styles as I understand it, available online (the LHBS does not offer it) and am planning to order some (along with amber malt, since the pale 2-row and amber from the LHBS are mixed in together, and the Golden Naked Oats for the above, which my LHBS also does not have) to replace the pale 2-row and amber I got from the LHBS with. This means I have a bunch of pale 2-row and some amber malt left over, which seems like a pretty good starting point for formulating my own recipe.
4. A few months ago, I discovered that a plastic cannister of brown sugar I had been storing, which contained on the order of 4 pounds of it less a cup or so, had solidified into something resembling brick mortar. I eventually gave up and decided to make a beer-addition-friendly syrup with it. I added enough water to it to dissolve the sugar, poured it out into a saucepan, and, having read an article about candi sugar with advice for making your own recently, added about a teaspoon (I did not, sadly, record the measurement) of the phosphoric acid I use for pH adjustments, and boiled it until the volume reached roughly the 18oz line on each when divided among three 20oz plastic bottles (after cooling). (I actually calculated the SG for it, but don't seem to have written it down >.>) I decided I needed those bottles back and transferred it to a sanitized half-gallon mason-type jar, and have kept it in the refrigerator for several months. I figure my big birthday beer is a good time to use it.
5. My tastes run strongly towards malty dark beer. I don't like a lot of hop bitterness, and I intensely enjoy roasted, smoky, caramel, and so forth kinds of flavors as well as some fruitiness ("dark fruits" etc.). I also like full-bodied beer, and enjoy some sweetness/residual sugar. I also hate to waste grain/grain potential. I also, I think, habitually underestimate the heat capacity of my 10-gallon cooler mash tun. Thus, I tend to mash relatively thin at higher temperatures, sparge extra-thoroughly, and end up with a starting boil volume (for 5 gallon, ~6% ABV batches) that's at least 7.5 gallons, then boil for extra time. (With my last batch, the first where I actually measured wort gravity, I calculated my brewhouse efficiency as 86% using this resource: http://www.brewersfriend.com/brewhouse-efficiency/ ). I'm told this increases "kettle caramelization," which is relevant to my interests. I'm prepared to boil this one for longer than my usual 90-120 minutes if needs be, as likely will....
6. US-05 is a yeast I'm pretty familiar with and that has served me well, and it's cheap. It seems like a logical choice to provide the bulk of the fermentation and flavor. I've also gathered from searches that its alcohol tolerance is known to be up to 12%, hence the WLP-099 in secondary to finish the beer off.
7. As previously noted, I don't particularly like strong bitterness; I particularly dislike "grapefruit peel" bitter flavors (as opposed to, say, burned or woody bitterness). I was therefore apprehensive about using Cascade hops in my first all-grain recipe kit, an American-style stout, (the LHBS apparently changed the formulation; this was one I'd brewed twice before and I'm certain it had either Mt. Hood or Willamette the previous times I'd bought the kit), and this (plus the known greater hop utilization in all-grain) was what inspired my original "subtract 15 minutes" approach. The end result was moderately but not harshly bitter, with a sort of earthy, slightly-smoky herbal flavor that wonderfully complemented the roasted and caramelly malt flavors (my girlfriend, who doesn't like beer much, described it as "very smooth" and enjoyed it), so I've taken basically that approach here.
8. I wanted to add some variety to the hops, as well as adding enough IBUs to make it not-cloying while still having the malt character dominate. East Kent Goldings and Fuggles are styles I've used before (though only as bittering additions per the recipe kits, back when I was doing 60 minute additions at all) and been reasonably pleased with, and understand are well suited for malt-forward styles in general. My LHBS sells hops in 2oz increments, and I'm splitting off a little bit of them to try as "aroma" additions.
9. The malts chosen were a little arbitrary; I'm trying to include a variety of caramelly and toasty flavors to make it relatively rich and complex with characteristic imperial stout notes but not an overpowering burned flavor. (I like malty dark beers; I don't much care for beers that taste like ashes.) It's probably a bit heavy on body-adding malts, since I'm planning to overnight-mash it and I'm told this tends to thin the body out.
*deep breath*