Good evening all. I am planning to plunge into the art of making the best beverage on earth in the next 2 weeks. I would like to gain as much knowledge as possible from the experienced folk and will probably ask many stupid questions as I stumble about. Brewer's Friend seem to be loaded with info, and I wanted to play around with the recipes on here. But being only on a trial version, which I believe allows for 5 brews, I do not want to waste that on messing about. If I chose a recipe for instance that caters for 21 liters of beer but my equipment can only handle a 15-liter batch, does it autocorrect the recipe to fit my equipment? Hopefully, I will have my first brew up and running, I will try and post about it here. Catch you on the flip side.
There is a scale function under recipe tools in the recipe builder. You just put your recipe into edit mode, and Robert is you Mothers Brother!
Find a good pale ale recipe and brew it a few times, then branch out. You use the same recipe over for a few times, stretching out your five brews if you can keep records on paper.... Full disclosure, I have a lifetime membership.
The first thing you will have to do is make a copy of the recipe. Then you will need to scale it to the size you plan to brew. - Both of these will found under the "recipe tools" tab. It will not auto correct to fit your equipment... However, if you have an equipment profile built, once you've copied and scaled the recipe you can click the "more" button on the right hand side of where it tells you the stats of your brew.... In that pain that expands there will be a drop-down menu for "equipment profile". You can select yours here and when you go to brew it will take into account your water losses etc. based on your equipment. You'll still need to tweak a few thing in the recipe to match your set-up and what not. - You'll also need to adjust some of the hop and grain weights as scaling will leave you with numbers that aren't rounded... like 9.654g instead of just 9 or 10... Let me know if you need help. I can try and scale your first recipe for you but would end up asking you a ton of questions in return... I feel like I ought to make a simple video on equipment profiles and recipe scaling.... I just don't know if I know as much as others do...
By the time you get five brews in the system you'll know whether this site is for you or not. Then you can decide if you want to go for a paid membership or stay with a Trial membership. As @Nosybear mentioned, you can always print off recipes and then delete them to keep under the limit. The trial membership is the reason I use Brewer's Friend and not Beer Smith. When I was still doing extract and partial-mash kits (and didn't really need a recipe builder) I was checking out different brewing software. The problem with Beer Smith was that by the time I started all-grain brewing and knew what I was doing with recipes, the 30 day trial period had expired. But because Brewer's Friend was based on usage and not on time I was able to use it and get comfortable with it and was confident it would be useful to me before I ponied up the cash.
I've paid for Brewers Friend and Beersmith and I use Brewers friend predominantly. HAP you can easily do a 15L batch and then if you want to do a full 21L just top it up afterward. You'll have to do a bit of math to figure out how you're watering it down but that's not to hard. Are you planning to start with Extract, partial mash, or all grain? Or have you figured out the difference yet? I started with Extract, I did about 5 brews that way before I did 1 partial mash (Basically extract with steeping grains for flavour) and then went to All grain. Whatever floats your goat will be the way to do it. I'd say play with the recipe builder on the size of boil/batch you want to end up with, then use this calculator to get an idea of what will happen if you add water to top up to 21L. https://www.brewersfriend.com/dilution-and-boiloff-gravity-calculator/ Also, welcome aboard!
Hawkbox, I am starting off with BIAB, figured that's best since I would want to go all-grain anyway, but thought BIAB might be more manageable for a newbie like me. Thank you all for your replies. I cannot wait to get that 1st one started...Also, I am scared shitless. Cannot afford to mess it up. We currently have a ridiculous alcohol ban here in the good old RSA, and ingredients to brew is also running low. Thus, it is fundamental to get things right. But won't be too hard on myself.
Hi guys. I am new here. In my country we use different hops and barley types.Where would I find info that would be able to tell me what substitutes can be used? For eg. we can get Lallemande Premium yeast, which is called Diamond Lager yeast , made in Austria, but I dont see that brand name used in the recipes here. Can anyone help please. We can get Simpsons malts, but they are not the ones I see on the recipes either- does that matter? Thanks for any input.
In the US we can get Lallemand - I use Nottingham regularly (it has a wise temp range 10c to 22c) - Diamond is a tradiitional Lager yeast that works best from 10c to 15c. Unless you have a fridge and a way to control temperatures you may want to use Nottingham (it can may a very lager-esque beer). I use Simpsons Golden Promise all the time! Great malt. For Simpson's malts you will have several categories of malts: Base Malts (like Golden Promise) Crystal Malts - I believe they give theirs names like Light (40L) , Medium (70L), Dark (100L) and Extra Dark (120L) Roasted Malts - Brown, Chocolate, Black and Roasted Barely - I think Amber is in here too You can substitute Simpsons Malts for some of the malts you find in other recipes. We can help with that. I recommend finding the recipe you want to try and brew and post it in a new thread under "Recipes for Feedback" and we can help you from there (just so we don't high-jack this thread) I hope this helps.
Regarding grains, I honestly just pick whatever is closest to what I have and use that for the recipe. We have some small craft maltsters nearby that I don't care enough to get the material sheets for to figure out so I just pick something close.
Ditto. I would challenge anyone to do a fair set of tests against the same beer brewed with different base grains (different Pilsners, two-rows, etc.) and see if they could even determine difference, much less identify the grain. I choose based on country of origin and let it go at that.
I do the same thing. If a grain is not in the drop-down list, I pick whatever is closest based on Lovibond rating (color).
Welcome to the forum! What country are you in? Members on this forum are from all over the world (which I think is pretty cool). Maybe there is a member from your country or region who can help you source ingredients. Plus, knowing where people are from helps to personalize posts.
I have to say our African members are doing the wildest stuff lately in my opinion. Necessity being the mother of invention and all is having them come up with some really interesting ideas.
Damned right. Someday I hope to get over and visit it. Obviously not while we're dealing with the 'Rona.
Welcome from North of your border Looks like the SA alcohol ban is good for the membership of Brewer's Friend
