Simplify, simplify, simplify.
Get rid of the dextrin malt and honey. Most LME (are you using dry or liquid? If liquid, make sure it is very fresh) will give you more than enough unfermentables to give the beer some body. That amount of honey will be completely undetectable in a beer like this (or most any other also). You can leave in the munich, although it isn’t necessary. If you do want a honey-like flavour you could add 4-6 oz of honey malt in place of the munich.
For hops, just pick one or two and use them. I’d get rid of the Fuggles altogether. Use 1-1.5 oz of chinook or cascade at 60 minutes for bittering. At 5 minutes or less add 1-2 oz of some mix of your C-hops (it’s up to you). I’d also dry hop with an additional 1-2 oz of hops. If you want pine/pineapple, go with simcoe/centennial hops for the late/dryhops additions.
If you insist on using pineapple flavour, get the extract and experiment with adding it to a portion of your finished wort to get the proportions right (20 drops ~ 1 ml). Just add enough drops to 6 oz to get the profile you want, then multiply that number of drops by 50 to get the total number you need for 5 gallons.
Not trying to be a downer, but you need to get basics down before you start playing too much.
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Basically.
6 lbs Light Malt extract
1lb Dextrin malt
.5 lb Munich malt
Add another pound or two of extract here and leave out the Dextrin and Munich.
1.5oz Fuggles (60)
.5oz Chinook (60)
.25oz Cascade (60)
.5oz Fuggles (30)
.5 Chinook (30)
.5 Simcoe (30)
.25 Cascade (30)
.5 Cascade (5)
.5 Simcoe (5)
This hop schedule is all over the place.
Make is simple and add 2 oz. Chinook at first boil and a total of 4 oz. Cascade and/or Simcoe at less than 5 minutes.
.5lbs Honey (5)
This doesn’t belong here. If you want a higher gravity, just add a pound of white sugar.
Don’t really know what kind of yeast to go for
Use Chico or London Ale yeast. I would go with Chico. MAKE A STARTER.
.5lb crushed pineapple at secondary
PLEASE leave this out of this beer. You can always go back to making a pineapple beer later (like when you have a couple beers under your belt) but it’s going to make things confusing here.
Dry hop 2oz Simcoe for 7 days.
Sounds good. I’d go 14, though.
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I don’t necessarily agree with this, but everything else Joe said is pretty much right on. I’d really caution against pineapple fruit. I’m not sure why it fucks up beer but I’ve only heard horror stories. There are some hops that give some serious pineapple aroma and even some pineapple flavor that might work. Simcoe is one but some of the new zealand/australian hops have that character to. The pineapple extract should be ok, as Joe said add that to a bit of the wort to determine how much you need to bottle. Lastly, Honey Malt is your friend in an IPA. I prefer that to using actual honey.
Why don’t I agree with Joe? well I’m on my 15th or so batch and the most "regular beer" I’ve done is a weizenbock, my first beer was a Scotch Imperial Porter and everyone still tells me it was the best one. It really all depends on what you want to brew. If you don’t want to brew a session beer there is no reason why you should have to. Its more work for you as you will probably have to do the recipe from scratch. For my first couple recipes I used existing recipes and just added a couple things or changed a few things. But now I do them all from scratch. The single most confusing thing about extract brewing IMO is knowing which grains you can use as specialty and which you can’t. Northern Brewer doesn’t tell you so you will have to find out from the experts here or just roll the dice.
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Thanks for the input, fellas. I think I’ll try the extract and cut the honey. Why not just make a regular IPA? Because I can go buy one anywhere, I want to home brew to make drinks I haven’t had. I’m sure I’ll try to make some bitchin’ ’normal’ beers, but plenty of people make those.
So...anyone wanna point me to a good ’how to’ for a making a starter??
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If you want to use honey, why not make a hoppy braggot?
4 lbs honey
5 lbs DME
Whatever hops you want.
WLP001
Do this 2 days before you brew
Add 1 cup of DME to 2 pints of water.
Bring to a boil.
Cool.
Pour into a growler.
Pitch yeast into growler.
Swirl/aerate every chance you get until you see activity.
Pitch into cooled wort when it is ready.
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Sick, thanks!
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All the beginner basics are covered here:
http://www.howtobrew.com/
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Here’s what that’ll look like according to Beertools:
Original Gravity: 1.069
Terminal Gravity: 1.014
Color: 2.57 °SRM
Bitterness: 110.6 IBU (this number does NOT represent actual IBUs)
Alcohol (%volume): 7.3 %
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That may not be hoppy enough for the malt being used. Not sure. I know. If you like really hoppy you may want to add another ounce of bittering hops.
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So, much to my shagrin, I cut the pineapple. The honey will stay, but this is what I’ve ended up with. It’s been in primary for two days and seems to be bubbling along nicely. I got way to impatient to make a starter. There will be other batches. The hop bill isn’t what I had hoped for, but I had to work with what my HBS had in stock.
6.6 lbs Light LME
1 lb 6 Row Crystal (40L)
2 oz Chinook (60)
1 oz Columbus (60)
1 oz Newport (20)
1 oz Cascade (20)
1 oz Cascade (5)
1 oz Simcoe (5)
When time to put into secondary, it’ll add 2 lbs locally make, unpasteurized honey. Dry hop w/ 2 oz Simcoe for 14 days.
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