re: Homebrewing: Official Recipe Thread (All-Grain & Extract)

That sounds really good

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Do you use 2 S-04 yeast packets for that? 1.101 is waaay up there.

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I did. Obviously a yeast starter is ideal.

Santa Clause is bringing me the proper equipment to brew some beer. Is there a website or book any of you would recommend to get me started on the right foot? Is there an "easy" beer to try for my first brew?

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Santa Clause is bringing me the proper equipment to brew some beer. Is there a website or book any of you would recommend to get me started on the right foot? Is there an "easy" beer to try for my first brew?

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Go with How to Brew, and brew the first recipe in that book, the Cincinnati Pale Ale. It is a good little pale ale. The book basically starts you out brewing. The first chapter is a step by step guide to brew that beer. The next chapter explains what you just did, and why you did that. It really is a vital book to any beginning homebrewer.

Finally getting around to this. No one better use this to enter the LA Homebrew club competition.

Award winning Typhoon Amber:
12.25 2-row
1 Munich
1 crystal 40
.5 crystal 120
.5 victory
3 oz chocolate

1 oz Chinook 60
1 oz Cascade 10
1 oz Amarillo 10
1 o cascade 0 (for 10 mins)
1 oz Amarillo 0 (for 10 mins)

S05 dry yeast at 62 degree

Mash at 152
OG 1061

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.5 crystal 120

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Never used 120...

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3 oz chocolate

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Must come out pretty dark for an amber yes?

Sounds awesome though. Glad you threw one up. As of now Im just entering a Stout so I won't be recipe stealin.

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Not really. I've had it before. It's not even a light brown color.

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Interesting. Well sounds solid.

This is an attempt to help new home brewers.

FIRST TRY

I did an American Amber home brew kit for my first brew:

The instructioons that came with the kit were very good.

The following were notes I made that the instructions did not cover.

buy a long stainless steel spoon
buy bottle brush
buy large funnel
buy turkey baster or wine thief
put dry rugs down on tile floors. Area can get slippery.
secondary fermentation is a waste of time.
need about 50 brown and not twist off.
cooling wort before pitching yeast takes a long time.
measure OG before putting in carboy.
yeast is very active the first couple of days
plug and air cap kept getting pushed out of carboy
I drilled larger holes in cap. This seemed to work.
You may want to use a tube and water vessel set up.
Put priming sugar in before bottling. Mix well.

Use priming sugar calculator

Priming sugar calculator

This beer turned out OK but I would not do again. It was a good learner.

SECOND TRY

My second attempt was a partial mash which turned out very good.

This is the recipe I used, kind of like a Blue Moon.

Belgian wit partial mash recipe

It took a long time to cool wort after boil. Put pot in ice water in sink.
Read yeast instructions before starting. Some require 3 hours prep.
Put rags or rubber mat in sink when cooling wort.

I really liked this beer. Family enjoyed also.

THIRD TRY

Working on full grain right now. Will follow this post with more notes if anyone cares.

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Nice! You mention twice about cooling the wort. Look into buying or DIY'ing a wort chiller.

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I started to do this and bought a 20' X 3/8" flexible copper tubing from Home Depot. I would suggest a 1/2" diameter. You do not realize how much heat you have to dispense of. Also, this tubing kinks very easily. The packaged coil diameter was too large for my pot. What I found out through trial and error is that if stepped gently on one end and pulled the coil up vertically to about 3 or 4 feet off the floor, you could slowly tighten the diameter and work the tension down the coil until you reach the desired diameter.

For the 90 degree bend, I used a plumbers tube bender which is just a spring that slips over the tubing. You can slowly get the bend you need. You could possibly heat the tubing with a propane torch and bend it that way.

The connectors, tubing and such are elementary.

Hope this helps.

There you go. Let me know how it turns out.