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After many years of kit and full grain brewing I have decided that
Youngs Premium Ale Kit - American India Pale Ale IPA is the best yet, great hoppy flavours etc, etc.
But it weighs in at 6.5 ABV, yes part of the character I know, but I would like something not quite so strong to allow a few of an evening.
The kit contains 3kg of hopped malt extract, 1 kg of brewing sugar and dry hopping pellets.
My plan is to not use the brewing sugar, I guess this will give me an ABV of about 6.5 x 0.75 = 4.8 ABV. All comments and input welcome !
There are loads of apps (I use BeerSmith) that take all the guesswork out of brewing and allow you to tweak recipes in a precise way, specifying ABV, colour, bitterness etc
Beer recipes tend to balance bitterness levels to strength/sweetness/body, giving what brewers refer to as well balanced beer.
Your plan may work really well, or you might end up with the bitterness featuring more strongly than you want, if you felt the original recipe was 'balanced'.
So you might want to use zilogs bitterness calculator, with a view to reducing the early bitterness hop additions..... perhaps.
If there is hop extract in the malt extract ,then your ability to modify the bitterness is limited, because the bittering hops will be in the extract, with the sugar to bring the alcohol level up.The hop pellets don't release much in the way of bitterness. Personally,I'd follow the recipe,leaving out the sugar,and see what you think.
P.S.
Have a look at The homebrew forum,and Jims beer kit,lots of good advice there.
Good point about the extract being pre hopped jes
Thanks everyone, I understand the comments about a balanced beer, but like thejesmonddingo said the bittering hops are in the the malt extract so I can't change that, so will leave out the sugar and report back, in 4 weeks or so...
As well as taking out the sugar, try adding some wheat malt, maybe 400g. Won't add much sugars (and therefore alcohol) but will add more body to buffer the bitterness... Maybe.
Could mash that on the stove, BIAB style
As above, I'd try and do some extract brewing on the stove as the next logical step. Although you could do that with some of the darker malts that might be in the recipe. Perhaps something like 100g of caramalt and 150g of melanoidin malt in a couple of litres of water. The idea is to extract the flavour, but do it slightly too warm to 'mash'.
Then ferment it a few degrees warmer than normal too. This will promote fussel alcohols which make it taste "boozy", and stress the yeast in a similar way to the original higher gravity.
just add 50% more water
It'll be fine , put those hops in the fv, ferment it down to 1012'
Thanks for the above - wondered what "BIAB" is ? Brew in a bucket ?
Also I didn't remember to measure the OG using my hydrometer, so now won't be able to calculate the ABV from the Final Gravity.
Does anyone have a rough idea what the OG may have been with 3kg of darkish malt extract in 32 litres of water ?
A proper India Pale Ale should be at least 6.5% anyway; the original IPA was brewed strong to better withstand the journey from Britain to the East. I think people have forgotten/don't know what an IPA actually is, and should be. Get it stronger!
BIAB Brew in a bag
https://www.brewcabin.com/brew-in-a-bag/
Is that 32l pre or post boil?
If you final batch size is 23litres then it will still be pretty strong, probably >5%.
If that's a final batch then it's going to be very week, around 2.5%.
https://www.brewersfriend.com/homebrew/recipe/calculator
Thanks for the BIAB. My numeric dyslexia so original quantity was 23 litres, no boiling involved.
I estimated a final ABV of around 5 % ABV, can anyone have a stab at what my OG was ?
I estimated a final ABV of around 5 % ABV, can anyone have a stab at what my OG was ?
It's was somewhere around 1050.
Why can't you measure the gravity now?
How long has it been fermenting?
Thanks for the estimate !
I started it on Friday, so been going for a few days now.