Brew UK Forum | Extract Brewing
Confusion with recipes
Hi, I've recently received the book home-brew favourites a recipe book containing 240 beer recipes. Its about half extract and half AG and I'm planning on doing a few of the extract recipes in not too long but am I bit confused about some of the instructions. For instance a lot of the extract recipes also use speciality grains, often the first instruction is to steep the grains at a given temperature for a length of time, then strain the grains out and bring to the boil. However this gives me no indication of how much water they should be steeped in and the volume of the boil. Now, am I missing the obvious and it doesn't actually matter the volume of the boil as long as it is made up to the desired volume in the FV? Or is this recipe book missing vital information?
Thanks
Alex
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Responses
Posted 1 year ago by Member
it is important to get the correct amount of water in the mash tun.
as water is absorbed as well as extracting the useful parts of the grain it is usually best calculated by brewing software.
i also have the book Home Brewing by Graham wheeler and his suggestion is 2-3 liters of water per KG of grain.
i have found this a good guide.
Posted 1 year ago by Admin
Hi Twigster, its important that you have the correct boil volume even for extract brewing as the lower the boil volume the higher the gravity of the boil which will mean less bitterness is extracted from the hops.
If the recipe doesn't mention boil volume then I would assume that its assuming you boil the whole lot. If you want to brew with a smaller volume then add less malt extract to begin with or more hops to compensate.
A good book for extract brewing is "the complete joy of homebrewing" by Charlie Papazian.
Fermenting:
Conditioning:Pale with Styrians
Drinking:Cascade Pale Ale, Summer Lightning
Posted 1 year ago by Member
Thanks for the advise, most of the recipes are 5 gal batches so should I be doing 5 gal boils? Another question with the boil, if the recipe does give the boil volume is that already counting for water lost through evaporation or should I add a little extra water so the final volume is what it says in the recipe? eg when I did the summer ale recipe it says 6 litres of water but after the boil I had about 5 or so.
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Posted 1 year ago by Admin
I would download Beersmith and play with that. You can set all the equipment up which will the account for boil off and boil volume and adjust recipe accordingly.
I would never follow a recipe without putting it through Beersmith to adjust to my equipmemt.
Fermenting:
Conditioning:Pale with Styrians
Drinking:Cascade Pale Ale, Summer Lightning
Posted 1 year ago by Member
Exactly what Greg says ... I'm so dependent upon beersmith now that I've forgotten how to do it all manually. Get it, you'll love it
:o)
(with grateful thanks to the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers and slightly adapted)
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