My last ever kit brew. « Brew UK Forum

My last ever kit brew.

1 year ago | Matty (Member)

I'm doing my last kit brew tomorrow. This is using up all my bits and pieces - after this I am AG-BIAB all the way - no more kits.

This is my plan:

1kg Golden Promise pale malt
300g caramalt
300g crystal malt
Steeped at 70degC for 60 mins

Brought up to the boil and:
* 33g First Gold 90 mins
* 33g First Gold 60 mins
* 33g First Gold 20 mins

At end of boil:
* 1kg light dried malt extract
* 500g medium dried malt extract
* 1 x Cooper's IPA Kit Tin
* 20g Amarillo (30 mins steep)

Chill.

Safale 05.

40g AMarillo dry hopping, after 3 days in primary

MONSTER.

Any thoughts?

Drinking: Thai Summer Ale, "Promised Lighning" Cascade Amber Ale
Fermenting: HONK! IPA - American IPA
Keg Conditioning: London's Burning Red Ale, Thornbridge Oatmeal Stout
Bottle Conditioning: Christmas Ale, "Gobhoblin" - a Hobgoblin clone, Kolsch,
Planning: Nelson Sauvin Single Hop Pale Ale

Read responses...

Responses

Hamish:

Posted 1 year ago by Moderator

Save your Golden Promise for the BIAB as it cannot be steeped, it needs to be mashed. Also, personally I don't think there is any need to do a 90 minute boil especially as you're just tarting up a kit, waste of leccy and beer frankly through extra evaporation. So if it was me I would change the 90 minute First Gold to 5 minutes or even steeped at the end, though I've no idea how they would go with the Amarillo. But it looks interesting, keep us posted.

Planning: Wheat beer fermented with Schneider Weisse yeast, a Stout, lots of hoppy pale ales
Fermenting: Summer pale ale
Maturing/Conditioning: Marynka pseudo-lager
Drinking: Wheat beer, ESB, Vienna lager & shop bought stuff

Nath:

Posted 1 year ago by Moderator

Have you worked out what abv this would be? Looks like a fair amount of malt for a 20ish ltr brew, though ive never tarted up kits so I may well be wrong, tis a monster for sure though!

Drinkin' - nowt, it's all gone

Plannin'-
Loads a beer after an upgrade!

nathbrew@gmail.com

Matty:

Posted 1 year ago by Member

It does look like a monster doesn't it? :twisted:

I would plug the bits and pieces into BeerSmith, but I've no idea how to represent a tin of Coopers.

I've got it coming up to the boil now, after mashing the grains for an hour.

Matty:

Posted 1 year ago by Member

Well, I've roughly plugged it into BeerSmith, using 1.7kg of pale liquid extract in place of the tin of Cooper's IPA, and it gives me an OG of 1.063 with an IBU of 29 for a 23ltr brew.

The IBU will be higher than that, 'cos the Cooper's tin is a hopped extract, but it ought to be a close enough approximation of the OG.

I'll post what the OG actually ends up being once I've got there.

Sounds like it has just come to a rolling boil.

I'm going in.

Greg:

Posted 1 year ago by Admin

Nice one Matty. I agree with Hamish.

Matty:

Posted 1 year ago by Member

OK, so my brew day is complete, all the equipment washed and put away, the house purged of the smell of boiling malt and hops ready for my wife to come home from work and not nag my ears off, and my "Hybrid IPA" is in bed, getting its ferment on.

"Hybrid IPA" becuase the techniques used were a hybrid of AG-BIAB, Extract Brewing and Kit Brewing.

Sure I could have just thrown a kilo of Beer Kit Enhancer in with my Cooper's Kit, but then I wouldn't have learned anything.

So this was my recipe:

1.2kg Golden Promise Pale Malt
250g Caramalt
350g Light Crystal Malt

Mashed in 15 ltr water at 66degC for an hour, using the BIAB mashing technique.

Grains removed, bag squeezed, and allowed to drain into another pot - runnings added to main pot.

Flame on for the boil.

Boil hops:

* 33g First Gold - 60 mins
* 33g First Gold - 30 mins
* 34g First Gold - 0 mins (steep for 30 mins after boil)
* 20g Amarillo - 0 min (steep for 30 mins after boil)

15 minutes before end of boil added:

* 1kg light dried malt extract
* 500g medium dried malt extract
* 1.7kg tin Cooper's IPA Kit

10 minutes before end of boil added:
* 1 tspn Irish Moss

Crash chilled to 30degC in 30 mins by standing the pot, with the lid on, in the kitchen sink, filling with cold water, leaving for a few minutes, circulating the water, emptying and repeating.

This left me with almost 10 ltr of wort at an OG of 1.112, siphoned into the fermenter, leaving about 1.5 ltr of murk and bits (is this called trub, or boiler trub??)

Diluted into fermenter with just over 10 ltr of Asda mineral water to make a final OG of 1.050 at 20 ltr.

Fermenting with 1 pack Safale S04, and about half of the yeast that came with the Cooper's kit.

Retained 20g of Amarillo for dry hopping in 3-4 days once the yeasties have calmed down.

Things I have learned (a day which is not a school day is a failure)

* My BIAB bag is far too small - need a much larger one. Think this is why the OG was a lot lower than I was expecting - low efficiency.

* The big ring on my hob is capable of sustaining a rolling boil of 15 ltr, but probably not much more. Need to look into a propane burner for use outside (thereby neatly mitigating the "My House Stinks" factor from Significant Other).

If you've read this far, award yourself a housepoint.

Thanks

Matthew
Head Brewer (part-time)
The Chapeltown Brewhouse

Hamish:

Posted 1 year ago by Moderator

"Hybrid IPA" becuase the techniques used were a hybrid of AG-BIAB, Extract Brewing and Kit Brewing.

Ah, I see.

Don't know much about BIAB but is it usual to have such a thin mash?.

Matty:

Posted 1 year ago by Member

is it usual to have such a thin mash?

Do you mean my using only 1.2kg of pale malt?

If so, then no. My next planned BIAB is a single-hop IPA - 5kg pale malt, 300g crystal, 300g munich (and then *a lot* of hops) to make a 15ltr brew.

Once I move to brewing outside and can maintain a good 20-25 litres at a rolling boil, over propane, then I can start to use 10kg (plus or minus whatever) grain bills like the 3 vessel AG boys do. But at the moment it's either short brew lengths or weak beer (not a fan of too weak a beer) because my stove limits how much liquid I can boil.

I only used such a small amount of pale malt in this brew becuase I knew I wanted to use up the Cooper's kit and the three 500g spraymalt bags I had hanging around - and I was getting plenty of fermentables from those.

Hamish:

Posted 1 year ago by Moderator

1.2kg Golden Promise Pale Malt, 250g Caramalt, 350g Light Crystal Malt mashed in 15 litres.

By my reckoning thats a ratio of 1kg grain to 8.3 litres liquor, just seems a bit thin, my usual mash is 1kg to 2.5lts.

How will it affect the conversion?.

simonb_13:

Posted 1 year ago by Member

With BIAB you use all the water you're going to use in your boil. So I've done 4Kg of grain in 25 litres of water. So you're right it's a very thin mash but that's the way it works. Matty's then gone and fortified what would be a very weak beer with extract and kit.

Planning: Something with Styrians, Discovery Clone
Fermenting:
Condtioning:
Drinking: Twibute Clone, PJ Clone

Hamish:

Posted 1 year ago by Moderator

Righto I see now, told you I knew nothing about BIAB.

How efficient is it as I keep toying with idea of building a Speidel Braumeister type set up, which looks very much like BIAB but shiny.

Matty:

Posted 1 year ago by Member

The Aussies seem to be super keen on BIAB (see BIABrewer website) and they reckon that efficiencies of 75%-80% are pretty commonplace.

Don't know how that stacks up against other AG methods.

Reply

You must log in to post.