Greetings fellow brewers. I am new to this whole brew thing. I was given this recipe by a friend but can't seem to get a few things in line. This is a small batch recipe at 2 gallons when complete. Anyway, some of my numbers are way off of his and I am kind of trying to figure out if one of us is mixing up a calculation somewhere. I am looking at getting an OG of 1.053 a FG of 1.012 a color of 7-8 SRM 25 IBUs and an ABV of 5.4%. My current recipe, as you will see is way over those numbers. Any help in tweaking this would be greatly appreciated. https://www.brewersfriend.com/homebrew/recipe/view/1308251/tiny-pale
You can probably lower your efficiency. 70% is totally obtainable, but you probably won't hit that on your first brew. 65% is a safe place to start. Do you know how much liquid your kettle boils off in an hour? I doubt it's a full gallon. My 4.5 gallon pot loses 2.5 quarts per hour. You could lower the amount of caramel malt until you hit your target SRM number. Same with the 20 minute CTZ addition, lower it until you hit your target IBUs. You will need to mash these grains as this is an all grain recipe. Your only water addition says "steeping", but technically it's a mash. Most people mash the grains for around 60 minutes. That's a safe place to start. Hope that helps!
Thank you good sir. Like I said I am new to this whole brewing thing so my hope is that tweaking the recipes will get them dialed for me. Currently I am without any equipment but will likely be going with a three gallon pot to boil in. I don't know my loss numbers so I might go with a base 2.5. There has been the consideration of going with a 5 gallon kit and just doing some small batch runs through that. I appreciate your help on this and will work ok tweaking the recipe to make it work. Thanks again for your help.
Not sure where I am going to get that honestly. It wasn't actually in the written recipe so not sure if I am going to include it!
lol, ok. if you need to adjust PH, phosphoric or lactic is prolly a better bet. plus it is easier to get
ya, its not a flavor you ussualy want, lol. the rest of it looks good. if you dont hit all the targets bang on for your first one, dont kick yourself. it will still be beer and you will learn a ton on your first 5 batches. lots of us been doing this for years. still learn new stuff all the time.
Cool, I am pretty stoked and plan to start gathering all my ingredients in the next few days. Then I will share my process and results very soon.
The numbers are slightly high but definitely not "way over". You can brew that and it probably will end up right where you want it A fine crush in the grain will increase your biab efficiency. You will be unable to detect the IBU difference. Mashing for only 20 minutes is a little short, that may reduce efficiency; consider 30 or even the more typical 60 minute mash. You can mash for 6 hours with no harm, but too short and you leave some 'goodness' in the grain.
quite a few people here do small batches, @Sunfire96 is one, for sure. just make sure when buying equipment, if you think you will want to do 5 gal batches to get stuff that will support it. you can put 2 gallons in a 5 gallon fermentor and not hurt anything. one thing that has helped me with getting better is sharing my product with other people and getting feedback. the entire chiropractic office I go to gets samples every batch, lol.
