OT - Home Brew Wednesdays: Best Recipe

Sweet. Looks good. Brewing newbie here. Quick question...

When you lost your hops with boil times do those times indicate when you added the hops during the mash?

Cheers!

My favorite drink recipe so far is:

1. Go to the store
2. Buy a Mountain Dew

Snark aside, I respect you passion and level of detail and am intrigued by what is clearly a vast world I have no knowledge of.

I just had a couple Irish Red Ales that I got from AIH in Ann Arbor and they are freakin delicious.

I have one small concern though.  There's a ring of sediment sitting at the top of the beer in the neck of the bottle.  I'm used to a little in the bottom, but can't say I've experienced floating sediment before.  It doesn't effect the taste at all.  Just curious if anyone else experiences this.

 

I still do kits (& haven't "graduated" to all-grain) & the best I feel that I've brewed so far has been midwest supply winter beer. Must brew in the spring as it needs months in the secondary for the flavors to mellow and meld. Dark rye and other specalty grains as well as caraway make for a delicious and flavorful beer. 

I've been very happy with a some recent no-boil Berliner Weiss brews lately.  I copied and pasted your format.

STATS:

Batch size: 5 gallons (use low alkalinity water)
Original Gravity: 1.045
Final Gravity: 1.010
ABV (standard): 4.6%
IBU (tinseth): 4?
 

FERMENTABLES:
4 lb - Pilsner
4 lb - White Wheat
0.5 lb - Carapils

HOPS:
1 oz - Hallertauer (at FWH)
 

MASH GUIDELINES:
1) Infusion, Temp: 123 F, 10 min

2) Decoction, Temp: 138 F, 10 Min (2 qts)

3) Infusion, Temp: 145F, 50 min

4) Infusion, Temp: 168F, 5 min

5) Boil for <1 min (only for sanitation)

 

YEAST:
Lacto bacillus brevis (at 0 hours)

US-05 (after 24 hours)

 

It's pretty sour but great on a hot day. I'll update with pictures later.

My personal favorite is Rye IPA - about 30% of the grain bill is rye malt and it has a ton of late-addition west coast citrusy hops. The most well received, in terms of competition results, was a Wee Heavy I made last year as well as my American Wheat, British Porter and English Mild.

I've never brewed a beer (I've helped others from time to time); however, I'm in my third year of cidermaking. One of my recipes is for a malted cider commonly called graff. The foundational recipe and megathread at HomebrewTalk has plenty of info if you are interested in trying this once cider season really gets going in a few months.

Some modest suggestions from my personal experience, if you are interested in trying this out:

1. If you can, use good, late season unfiltered cider from an orchard. Most grocery store apple juice comes from China and won't add anything interesting. Here in Michigan, October and November juice makes better cider than September juice. More sugar, and more complex flavor. I've used cider yeast and S-04 yeast, and have been happy with both.

2. Cider making is a lot like winemaking, I gather. Throw yeast in a carboy with juice and wait a couple of months before bottling or kegging - there's no boil. Once I sanitize, brew day lasts about 5 minutes for straight cider - the basics are much simpler than beer. Someone getting into this from beer will really have no problem - sanitation, fermentation, and bottling methods are all about the same.

3. Graff is a bit trickier than straight hard cider only because you will boil a gallon of wort (I do 3-gallon batches, so my personal recipe is about 2.5 gallons of juice and a bit over half a gallon of wort. Handling that on the stovetop is pretty straightforward). But it takes time for this stuff to condition nicely. Give it at least two months in the carboy. You won't be sorry.

4. So what is the result like? My favorite graff (I've made 5 separate batches now) is amber and clear with a modest head. Dry (it will ferment dry, down close to 1), but with a thicker mouthfeel than straight cider due to the malt, and tart/acidic cidery flavor - if you've had craft dry cider, like that! The finish is a bit herbal/hoppy, and I imagine would depend a lot on the choice of hops. Personally, I think it's easy to over-hop cider - just a quarter-ounce of Tettnang in a 3 gallon batch is enough, IMO. If aged less than two months it will be a little rougher to drink, but mine gets very smooth by 3 months - I have a batch on tap that I started back in November, and it is tremendous. Graff seems more like a beery cider than a cidery beer, if that makes any sense. Alcohol content will be around 6-8%, so I don't exactly drain multiple pints of it at a sitting.

 

 

The two highest scores I've gotten from competitions came from a double IPA with orange zest, and a black ale. Both around the 41-42 pt range and pretty good beers. But my personal favorite recipes are an oak aged Scottish wee heavy, and a hoppy red ale. Here's the red recipe.

Old Kentucky Shark

11lbs 2 row pale malt
1lb 4oz crystal rye malt
12oz Caramel 40
2oz Briess Roasted Barley

Mash 60 min @ 151

1oz Simcoe hops @ 60 min
1tsp Irish Moss @ 15 min
1oz Centennial @ 10 min
1oz Cascade @ 1 min
1 vial White Labs Cal Ale

Ferment about 4 days @ 67 degrees
Secondary for a week with cold crash for 3 of those days before kegging.

The first time I brewed this beer, I was experimenting with overnight mashing and it was a BIG success. Malty, flavorful, clear. The second brewing did not have the overnight mash, and while it was still really good, it lacked a touch of the maltiness the other had. Maybe it was a degree warmer the first time, maybe not. But there was a slight difference.

I always create my own recipes. I do some research looking at other recipes, and use Designing Great Beers for style guidelines and percentages. I love going into the homebrew shop and tasting and smelling the malts before I make decisions. There's a lot of variance in malts, chocolate malt from one maltster is never the same as the next guys.