Homebrew

[thatsmyDJ]

I have just started homebrewing and was wanting to know if anyone had a recipe for an ale that they have used in the past that produced a good brew. I've got a hefeweizen in the bottle conditioning stage and pale ale in the fermenter. Now I'm preparing for the next batch and wondering if anyone was willing to share a basic recipe with a beginner brewer. The store I use have a few recipes that they box and sell with all of the ingredients, but I am looking to branch out from their limited selection.

[larryhead]

I know Paul brews his own.. bump in case he missed this.

[paul]

Hey! I finally got around to catching up on the board... That's awesome that you're getting into brewing. What types of brews do you want to make?

I did this recipe quite a few times on my stove top, when I started. It's a sort of belgian inspired, but not really true to any particular style definition.

Orange Coriander Ale

boil for an hour or more...
6 lbs dried malt extract
1.25 oz fuggles hops
0.50 oz coriander, whole seed, crushed

20 minutes before end of boil add...
1 lb honey

10 minutes before end of boil add...
0.75 oz kent goldings hops
0.25 oz coriander, whole seed, crushed
1.00 oz orange zest

Cool to around 70 degrees F, pitch your preference of american or european ale yeast. Look for an original gravity of 1.040, try to finish as dry as possible, close to 1.005.


Orange zest should be the oily outer layer of an orange ONLY, not the white stuff. Get organic oranges, or scrub the wax or any other artifcial coating off the outside. A fine cheese grater is good for getting orange zest off an orange.

Before you add the coriander, crush the seeds lightly in a mortar and pestle, or with a rolling pin.

You can leave out the orange zest if you want. Hops are flexible too. Any of the American C's style hops (Cascade, Chinook, Centennial) are also good, adjusting for bitterness. I've done lots of variations on this recipe with all sorts of yeast and some different hops, and always had good results.

DJ, since you're a gardener, now is the good time of year to order hop rhizomes. Growing hops is easy and you get enough for quite a few batches from one plant. I started five varieties last year, 4 of them survived. It takes two years to really get a good harvest, so this year should be excellent.

Let us know how it's going? If you're looking to brew any particular style or use any ingredient, I'd be happy to share my experience. At this point, I think I've at least attempted most of the basic styles, and done quite a bit of experimentation with fruit/herb brews.

[fiddup_(is_a_midduP)]

I really didn't do many of my own recipes with extracts, mostly kits. but I always liked this kit from Midwest Supplies (http://www.midwestsupplies.com). its called Big Ben Pale Ale. If you haven't used any Steeping grains with your beers you should. I think it adds a lot.

3.3 lbs. Gold liquid malt extract
3.3 lbs. Amber liquid malt extract
8 oz. Carapils
8 oz. Crystal 10°L
1 oz. of Willamette hops (full 60 min boil)
1 oz. of Fuggle (last 2 min)

Steep grains at 152 deg F for 10 minutes. Remove Grains. Add Extract and boil for 60 min. adding hops at designated times. Cool and pitch yeast.

a web forum that I really like for questions/advice/recipes is Homebrewtalk.com (http://www.homebrewtalk.com)

Sorry it took me so long to reply, I hope your beer turns out fantastic.

[thatsmyDJ]

I appreciate everyones willingness to help. I have been utilizing How to brew by John J. Palmer as a reference book while brewing. The content is good, but I lack the working knowledge that would make the content more usable. Here are a few questions for the offering that I think could further my understanding of the brewing process.
How do you infuse fruit/herbs with your beer? Do you have any advice for selecting yeast, hop, and/or malt variations/combinations when brewing? Do the hops need special care to grow, and how are you growing them?
Also, the cap comes on the first (six) home brew on Friday. I'll post the recipe and give some feedback on brew then.

[paul]

For making recipes, I usually find a recipe in a book that's close to what I want, and modify it from there. There's also some handy resources...
http://www.byo.com/resources/hops?view=hops
http://www.byo.com/resources/grains
... which can help you substitute for ingredients that are more available at your shop or in your area. I've started to be a little more methodical and use bitterness units to improvise with hops. We've also been trying to calculate amounts of dissolved sugar, so you can determine a target original gravity, and estimate sweetness and alcohol by grain volume used. Still, for me, a lot of making an original recipe depends on replicating consistently a found recipe, then tweaking it for what I want.

My first and still most referenced homebrew book was Charlie Papazian's The Complete Joy of Homebrewing, I highly recommend it. Also, I've really enjoyed Randy Moshers Radical Brewing, it's aimed at those who want to experiment with herbs and fruit, but also has lots of pointers and explanation of things other books assume you know.

If you're really into herbal/fruit adjucts, check out Steven Buhner's Sacred Herbal Healing Beers (I'm not joking, that's the name). He historically researches almost any sort of herb you can think of, and how it was introduced into alcoholic drink. For a while I was interested in old world brews that came before the proliferation of hops across the world. From that book I developed a yarrow flower, no hops, recipe that was one of my best brews.

I've also seen a number of "clone brews" books, those can be helpful just as a catalog of styles and recipes.

As for adding fruit and herbs... Herbs can be added at different points during the boil, or sometimes in secondary fermentation. Fruit is almost always added in the secondary fermentation, because boiling fruit makes the pectin gel, and that's weird in beer. A few starchy adjuncts, like pumpkins, can go in during the mash. I find it useful to do a few internet searches if I'm not doing something discussed in one of the books I have.

Hops are pretty easy to grow. You can order root cuttings (rhizomes) for around $5 each. You just make a little mound of dirt, plant it, and give it a nice trellis or cord to grow on. Mostly,they just really want to climb up and bush out on some sort of structure. In the heat of the summer, you should probably water them, but that's about it. There is lots of hop advice for maximizing your crop, if you read around, but that's really just for extra, and not necissary. Mine all did pretty good (at least in the first year) with a minimum of care. I just ordered some from http://freshops.com .

Hope that helps! Let us know how brewing goes!

[thatsmyDJ]

Here is the recipe I used:

Hefeweizen
6.6 lbs Wheat Malt Extract
Steeping Grains ( Wheat Malt 6 oz. & Crystal 40L Malt 6 oz.)
Bittering Hops (Apparently they didn't list the name)
Yeast is Safbrew WB-06 Yeast

Hoo-ray!, it's beer. Here are a few charatoristics about the beer I may want to change. I hope some brewers may have some insight on how to address these changes.
The first is I want more banana/clove flavor. I was told that some liquid yeasts produce more "asters?" that create this flavor. Does anyone have any suggestions for a yeast variety.
The second is the dry, hop taste. I am probably looking for a hop variety that is very light for this beer style if anyone has suggestions.
The last is a the lacking head retention of the brew. How could I incorporate this change in the recipe.

Thanks everyones imput to better brewing.

[fiddup_(is_a_midduP)]

For your yeast, I would use WLP300 Hefeweizen Ale Yeast from White Labs Yeast. Its very strong on the bananna and fairly strong on the Clove.

For the hops I use German Haulertau Hops for boiling and no Flavor/Aroma Hops.

As for the Head retention, It may just be your drinking glass. Soap and Jet Dry products from dishwashers can really reduce the head in homebrew. Try rinsing your beer glasses in cold water really well before pooring your beer.

Hope this helps and happy brewing.

[paul]

Good to hear that it tastes good!

Agreed with fiddup about the liquid yeast. The clovey banana you're looking for comes from the yeast. I've used dry yeast a number of times and found that it usually ferments with a pretty clean flavor. But, if you're doing a style where yeast is a big part of the flavor, liquid yeast is highly suggested.

Esters are the fruity tasting compounds that comes from some yeast, often when it's used above it's recommended fermentation temp. If using liquid yeast still doesn't give enough flavor, pay attention to your fermentation temp, and keep it towards the upper end of the range recommended on the yeast package.

If the hops are too much for you... Do you know what kind they were? Especially helpful is if you know the alpha acid percent, it's probably printed on the package, should be something like "5 %AA". You can multiply AA% times the number of ounces, and get the HBUs (homebrew bitterness unit) in your recipe. If your recipe is a little too bitter for your taste, you know, regardless of what hop variety you use next time, that you'll want to have less HBUs.

There's also utilization. Start of boil hops add more bitter flavor. Adding hops towards the end adds more citrus and floral flavors. In general, you taste more bitterness from start of boil hops, and smell more aroma from end of boil hops. Maybe not such a big deal for you, a recipe like your Hefeweizen probably doesn't have any finishing hops, only bittering start of boil hops.

As for head retention... I had not thought about dishwasher drying agents before... Hmm.

Wheat usually contributes a lot to a foamy head. Other grains we've found build head are cara-pils, and european malts like vienna and munich, to a lesser degree. Still, shouldn't be a problem with a wheat beer. Could be that your bottles aren't fully carbonated? How long has it been in the bottle?