beer My Homebrews

Ah, very well. Thank you sir for the advice.

I don't know that i'll be able to make it to the brew store by wednesday when I plan to brew. Might just do the choc and carmal malts and leave out the roasted barey... but what will this make my beer style, a stout-ish?
 
It's splitting hairs that roast barley makes stout.

It's technically a dark Ale, but I reckon you can make a good beer with that recipe. Go for it mate!
 
HTH, if you go by what georgej is saying that mean, looking at what you posted above and using the 3 to 1 he suggested then:

0.5 Lb Chocolate Malt = 8 oz
using a round down philosophy you'd use 2 oz of Roasted Barley.

George is steeped the Crystal, Chocolate and Roasted Barley for 45 to 60 mins at 150 dF(66.7 dC) then he should be good and since his ratio would be a little plus towards the Chocolate should avoid the astringency of the Roasted Barley.

Anyways, that's probably what I'd do but JMHO.

RM
 
Dern it, I knew I should have got the RB along with the others.The brew store is a good 40 minutes away, I don't think I'll be makin a trip just for a little barely, so perhaps I will just call this a dark ale, and hope for the best. I didn't want to deviate too far from traditional recipes during my learning process, but this may not turn out half bad at all.

Oh and this time I bought the vial of liquid yeast and i've never used that before. So its already hydrated, I can just pitch it as is?
 
I use the liquid and have always made a yeast starter 24 to 48 hours ahead of brewing. I just use a pound of Light DME to a 1000ml wo water and boil for 30 to 45 minutes. Cool to pitching temp, that's the temp you want to pitch the yeast to your wort, stick a cork and air lock on and set it out of the way till needed. If you are going to just pitch it make sure you shake it up a bit to loosen up the yeast cake.

You could always go buy some Pearl Barley, on the soup isle at Publix, and make your own Roast Barley. Takes a couple of hours to do it but make sure you remove every fire alarm in your house and open all your windows cause it's a bit smoky and you really have to pay close attention as you go.

Here's how: http://www.chezwalli...ted_grains.html

:cool: I think I just made wheebz and george cringe at the thought of making their own Roast Barley. :cool:
 
RocketMan said:
You could always go buy some Pearl Barley, on the soup isle at Publix, and make your own Roast Barley. Takes a couple of hours to do it but make sure you remove every fire alarm in your house and open all your windows cause it's a bit smoky and you really have to pay close attention as you go.

Here's how: http://www.chezwalli...ted_grains.html

:cool: I think I just made wheebz and george cringe at the thought of making their own Roast Barley. :cool:
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I do it all the time, It's not hard at all . I use my base malt ( 2- row ) Made some crystal 40 and special B. Used it in an ale Recipe, was killer.
Like Rocketman sez gotta watch the temps or it'll be like burnt popcorn!
 
you can still make a decent beer without the roast man. just try it the following brew with RB.

Yeah what Rocketman said, make a starter under sterile conditions. you can use a little cane sugar to get it going (on a large scale you wouldnt want to cause of the off flavours you can get, but small scale no problem). the liquid vials are usually a little small to just direct pitch.

though it would work, it would be perhaps a day or two lagging in fermentation.. you want that fermentation metabolism to be strong from the word go, because it prevents infection.
 
While georgej is correct about using pure chocolate in the beer to an extent when it comes to commercially available products, I have used it in homebrew as well as in one of our current beers we have on draft

Best I have found is using it at the whirlpool phase and letting the extra particulates settle out as much as possible if you are going to do it

and 8oz of chocolate malt isnt that much, but you are looking at a porterish type recipe doing it that way

since you are doing a chocolate stout, what I would recommend is finding amazon cacao nibs, and using 6 ounces once you flame out and whirlpool your beer, dropping it down to 4oz of chocolate malt and 4oz of debittered black malt, or debittered carafa 3 to reduce that astringency
 
Scoville DeVille said:
HtH...
lets be sure and get f**ked up together someday.... huh?
Click to expand...
You gonna find yourself in florida land? FO SHO


Ok, a couple things. I am gonna put off making an actual choc stout until I have all the proper ingredients, for now it'll be my porter-ish as I posted above.

I have a question on whirlpooling. I have never done it. Should I be?

As I understand it would come at the end of the boil after flame out, then I literally whirlpool the hot wort, and let it sit for 30 mins or so and THEN proceed with cooling the wort ( I use ice bath) to pitching temp. Is this how it is done?

The purpose of this is simply to leave the trub in the pot? So does the cooled wort need to be siphoned out of the brewing pot into the primary? Can I aerate like normal at this point, pouring back and forth?

Tomorrow is brew day.
 
WP for 2 minutes, let sit for 10, then start cooling, but make sure not to disturb the bottom of the kettle otherwise it was completely pointless to do so
 
Thanks, Wheebz, you da man... I'ma stop in the brewery with my pale ale soon for sure. I hafto, otherwise I'll be out of frickin beer. Stuff goes fast.

I just use a fine metal pasta strainer when I pour my wort in the fermenter. To me whirlpooling just seems like an extra step with having to siphon it. I guess this would be better suited for large batches that you can't physically lift... But that is just my take on it.
 
out of all the homebrewers i know, only one has a whirlpool! haha. i shouldn't worry too much about it mate. people just usually use good old leaf hops. which act like a natural filter anyway.
i think what hes getting at though, is adding it after boiling you don't need to physically whirlpool it, but add them once you flame off and you are waiting for it to settle.

professionally i love whirlpools! no more having to dig the hops out of a boiling hot kettle, pellet hops can wash straight down the drain.
 
Ok so I don't know how, but I followed the recipe I posted and my OG was 1.070... I added half the malts after steeping the grain, and then I added the second half of malts at flame out and let sit for 12 minutes. Then that went into an ice bath in the sink to bring it down to 70 degrees.

I poured the cooled wort into the fermenter through one of them wire pasta strainers. Poured that back into the brew kettle then back into the fermenter. Filled with water up to 5 gallons. Stirred the shit out of it with a wort paddle. Dipped a sanitized turkey baster into the wort and took my OG... which said 1.07... how is this even possible??

I eye balled 1/2 a pound of the DME from a 1lb bag... maybe I was way off? But I used approx 1/2 lb either way. Does a little bit off throw the gravity by that much??

The target OG on the recipe was supposed to be like 1.054
 
Sorry, I'm confused.. You added MALTS at flame out? They need steeping and wort needs boiling.

Are you using a kit? Where are the hops? I'm confused..

Yes a sliight misweighing of dme could easily give you that extra gravity in a 5 gallon batch. It wouldn't have to be too much to gain 16 points.
Also check your hydrometer is thoroughly clean when checking gravity
 
georgej said:
Sorry, I'm confused.. You added MALTS at flame out? They need steeping and wort needs boiling.

Are you using a kit? Where are the hops? I'm confused..

Yes a sliight misweighing of dme could easily give you that extra gravity in a 5 gallon batch. It wouldn't have to be too much to gain 16 points.
Also check your hydrometer is thoroughly clean when checking gravity
Click to expand...

I'm using extract (dried malt extract) and I steeped grains that I listed. (chocolate and crystal 60) I did add hops at 60 mins and 30 mins.

Well my gravity was 1.07... should I pitch more yeast since I was not planning on a higher gravity beer?
 
Ah ok... So that probably is not the case then. I topped off the wort with water and mixed real good so I don't know why it would be off so much
 
8 pounds? Haha wow!

I still don't get American imperial measures, but that sounds steep. Doesn't help that a USA gallon is alot smaller than a UK gallon (used to work in UK barrels, gallons, pints etc but never pounds and ounces). I shouldn't have answered that question off my phone just after I woke up, should have drunk some coffee and switched my brain on and tried to work it out.

Regardless...

You don't need to pitch more yeast. It's already gonna be going crazy and being a glutton on that lovely sweet wort. So long as the yeast is healthy, over pitching or aerating is a schoolboy error that people clutch at in desperation and it ultimately ruins the beer 9 times out of ten
 
Is it possible for hydrometers to be off? I just don't get the high reading... Maybe all I did was suck up the top layer and it wasn't mixed as well as I thought? Either way it seems the reading I got can't be accurate. Eh, I have no clue
 
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