My first recipe
I was looking at all of my beer ingredients and realized I have a lot of stuff leftover from cannibalized Mr. Beer kits, among other things.
Leftovers?
The above pic includes:
Grains:
8 oz Pilsen Malt
4 oz Vienna Malt
4 oz Red Wheat Flakes
Extracts:
250 g (8.8 oz) Golden (LME)
250 g (8.8 oz) Pale (LME)
3.5 lbs Pilsen Light (DME)
2.5 lbs Pilsen Light (DME)
Yeast:
1 Safale US-05
Mr. Beer MYSTERY YEAST (ale yeast, per my notes)
Lalvin K1-V1116 (I think I bought this for mead or cider)
Lallemand Belle Saison
Hops:
4 oz Amarillo
Misc:
1 oz Lactic Acid
I wanted to use these ingredients but I really didn't know what for, since the rest of their kits have been used up for other brews. I decided to make a kitchen sink type beer, one of my own devise. I had never developed a beer recipe on my own, so this was a little intimidating and I had no idea what I would be producing. I also needed to make a smaller batch, since my two 6.5 gallon fermenting buckets were both in use (I had a batch of American wheat and a saison in progress at the time). I figured the best thing to do was to use my 2.5 gallon Mr. Beer fermenter to get a small batch going and bottle it.
Using the Brewer's Friend Recipe Calculator and just sort of playing with what I had available to me, I developed the following recipe, which I am calling Kitchen Sink Ale. To be honest, I have no idea if this is an ale... or what style it should fall into. But I assumed it wouldn't have a lot of bold characteristics, so I stuck with "ale."
Kitchen Sink Ale
4 oz Vienna Malt (for steeping)
4 oz Pilsen Malt (for steeping)
8.8 oz Golden Light LME
2.7 lb Pilsen Light DME*
0.25 oz Amarillo hops @ 10
0.25 oz Amarillo hops @ 0
1/2 pkg US Safale-05 yeast
Not pictured: steeping grains and yeast. I'm not good at doing stuff and taking pictures of doing stuff at the same time.
Weigh out the DME and hops.
Bre makes bread every week so my scale is ALWAYS covered in flour.
Bring 1-gallon of water up to 165F
Add Vienna and Pilsen malt grains in a grain bag and steep for 30 minutes.
Remove grains and bring water up to a boil.
Removing the steeping grains
Add the 2.7 lbs of DME and 8.8 oz LME.
DME - you want to add this VERY CAREFULLY as it will happily boil the fuck over and ruin your stovetop. Remove from heat as necessary.
LME
Add 0.25 oz Amarillo hops and boil for 10 minutes.
Greenish tint from the hops - add these carefully too.
After 10 minutes, remove from heat and add the remaining 0.25 oz of hops.
Fill the Mr. Beer keg with 1 gallon of ice water. Then add the hot wort. I topped it off with more cold water, pretty full, up to approx 2.5 gallons, maybe a skosh less.
Ferment for 10 days. Then add 2 oz table sugar (for priming) and bottle.
Bottle condition for 2.5 weeks then chill and drink.
*Originally, I was going to use 2.5 lbs of DME, but lazy me had TWO open bags of DME and when I emptied them both entirely, it came up to 2.7 lbs so... Whatever. It's a kitchen sink recipe, after all!
The OG came in right about at what the Brewer's Friend Calculator said it would, at 1.060 vs the predicted 1.059 (I had adjusted for the additional LME). Predictability is a good sign.
It was hilarious me trying to take this specific gravity. The hydrometer is so long that it easily touches the bottom of the Mr. Beer keg, so I had to tilt the keg quite precariously (liquid almost up to the brim) to give the hydrometer enough depth to take a reading. I ALMOST spilled the entire keg, YEE HAW. Note to self: do this in the sink next time.
Still, I wasn't sure how this recipe would turn out. Frankly, I hadn't been over the moon with Mr. Beer's recipe kits which is why I switched to all-grain brewing. However, I've not ever used any of their kits which included steeping grains. I had read that steeping grains can bring you a lot of grain character and really enhance an extract recipe. I was hopeful that adding so little hops in the boil would keep the bitterness to a minimum, and adding a bit at flameout would help bring some of Amarillo's great citrusy flavor to the brew.
If it fermented down to the predicted 1.011, it would have an ABV of 6.43%. A bit higher than I normally brew, but I've been wanting to make stronger beer and 6.43% wouldn't put it in a new category, ABV wise.
After 10 days of fermentation, I bottled the beer. The FG came in at X.XXX, for an ABV of X.XX%. I expected to get around 20-25 beers from a 2.5 gallon batch but really wasn't sure because I'd be losing some volume to trub as usual. In all, I was able to get XXX 12-oz bottles of beer from this batch. Then it was time for the waiting game. 2.5 weeks for bottle carbing, boy that is something I don't miss since switching to kegging. But I've had a hard time keeping beer in my kegs (nooo idea where it goes, tee hee), so maybe making some smaller batches will bridge the gap and also give me something to take to parties and what-not, if I want to. But who knows if this beer will be drinkable enough to want to share? I'd have to wait and see.
After 2.5 weeks of bottle conditioning at room temperature, I chilled the beer and poured myself a glass. The results? Well, ...