Making beer

[melykabeer]

Putting down my first all all extract brew tomorrow, 2 weekday rdos which is great the wife will be working. Got 2 cans of unhopped morgans LLME for some reason its labeled as a larger can. No dry malt or pre hopped cans shall be used.

Ill post my actual recipe when i do it but it'll be something like

3kg LLME
300g amber crystal
50g choc
will use some citra for bitterness its 11%
amarillo for flavour
dry hop citra for aroma

im aiming for something on the sweeter side. Ive got brewmate to work out my boil times. Although its only going to be approx 6l boil.

[hirns]

P Got 2 cans of unhopped morgans LLME for some reason its labeled as a larger can.

Morgan's rather than simply making light, medium and dark malt extract offer a greater variety based on styles that include wheat, caramalt, lager, roasted dark and beer enhancer, extra pale. You have a lager style malt, not a lager kit beer that is already hopped, so this will do fine for what you are trying to do (not sure on the style of beer though that you are after).

Cheers

Hirns

[melykabeer]

My local home brew store has them for $10 a can. I thought was alright considering going price where I live is about $7-8 per kg of LDME.

Im kinda following some recipe from AHB it was actually an attempt at cloning a JSAA although im not trying to clone any beers I do that i like that style. From what ive read its a IPA?

[earle]

JSAA is a difficult one to categorise. Its called an amber ale which is an american style but at some stages described itself as being english in style, and may have even mentioned brown ale on the label at one stage. It uses Willamette which is an american version of Fuggles which is english. The american amber ale was developed from English Brown ales which are also closely related to Irish reds. The irish red thing is probably why Morgans Royal Oak amber ale is often seen in Kilkenny clones.

Anyway, my attempts at something JSAA like have often turned out a bit too sweet for my liking. The next one I will be increasing the bitterness which takes it down the american amber ale track. JSAA has quite a light body which could suggest adjuncts but I think they also claim to ferment at lager-like temperatures which combined with the yeast they use give good attenuation.

[drsmurto]

JSAA uses williamette hops as far as my info goes.

Amarillo is in the golden ale.

Citra and amarillo will be a very nice mix, I've never used citra but have tasted several beers made by other brewers using this hop and quite like it.

[Planner]

Bought a packet of citra yesterday (impulse purchase), now need to decide which recipe to use them with.

[melykabeer]

Got my grains steeping now
Here is what i decided on

Colour (SRM): 12.3
Bitterness (IBU): 38.6

3kg 89.55% Liquid Malt Extract - Light
300g 8.96% Crystal 90
50g 1.49% Chocolate

20g Citra (11.1% Alpha) @ 45 Minutes (Boil)
20g Amarillo (8.6% Alpha) @ 20 Minutes (Boil)
15g Citra (11.1% Alpha) @ 7 Minutes (Boil)
15g Citra (11.1% Alpha) @ 0 Days (Dry Hop)

I will use some harvested s05

Im just not sure on how much malt to add when i do my boil.
So im going with 500gm of malt + liquid from steeping grains + water to make up 8litres.

Like Doc said should be pretty tasty

[earle]

If you've got brewmate set up as though your doing a full boil, your smaller boil shoul be about the same gravity to extract the calculated IBU from your hops, otherwise it will throw the bitterness off.

As an example if you just take your malt extract into account and you are making a 23L batch the calculation would be:
3kg malt extract / 23L batch volume x 8L boil = 1043g malt extract - about 1kg.

If you only use 500g of malt as suggested you will get higher hop utilisation and a more bitter beer than your planned 38.6 IBU.

To be more accurate you would also take the steeped grain into account but you can't just use its weight, it has to be multiplied by a fraction relating to how much sugars your steep will extract and so on. There is a post which explains all that but the above calculation will get you close.

[melykabeer]

Thanks Earle

I actually misjudged the amount of malt i was puring in and ended up adding about a kg. This plus the crystal would have probably ended up with a quite higher gravity so i recon i will end up with a bit less bitterness. I did want a sweeter beer tho.

but WOW the aroma those 2 hops produced was amazing. I dont know if its the combo of the hops, not using a pre hopped, the fact that i actually cooled the wort before pouring into the fermenter or the few beers talking that made it smell soo good. Im thinking of making my dry hoping 8g amarillo 8g citra to try and bring that same aroma out in the final product.

[matr]

Mate,you will find it hard to go back to pre hopped kits now..