Can anyone shed some light on this recipe?

[Ale's What Cures Ya]

A couple of friends of mine who have even less brewing experience than I do want to brew a batch Friday night and want me in on it. I said sure and since I already have all the gear needed, they are buying all the ingredients. So the one guy sent out his recipe:

900g Liquid malt extract
370g Cane sugar
35g Goldings hops
Ale yeast

1.Boil 30g goldings hops, Contained in a sparge bag. Then add 4.5 liters of water for 45min. remove from heat and stand for 5min. remove hops and squeeze out water,

2. stir 900g of malt extract and 340g cane sugar into hopped water and return to a simmer for 5min.

3. Put hopped wort into fermentation bin and top up with 9L of water

4. Check temp. when around 21C pitch in an ale yeast

5. 3 days in fermentation stir 5g Goldings hops. Dunk the hops well so hops do not float.

6. After fermentation has finished, move to cold place for 2 days and rack beer in to bottling bucket, then stir in 30g of cane sugar.

7. Bottle

This recipe seems all kinds of ass backwards to me. Why are the hops being boiled in regular water, and then the liquid malt extract is added? I assume adding a wack load of cane sugar to the boil is simply to add fermentable sugars, but shouldn't we just use some dry malt extract instead? Why is the malt extract and cane sugar only being "simmered" for minutes? Why are the dry hops being added 3 days into fermentation? Why don't we just throw them right in like the rest of the world? Any help would be appreciated with this, as I've never come across a recipe so far quite like this one.

[grub]

i think that falls into the category of "things which could vaguely be considered beer as it has some beer ingredients, but by far is not going to be good beer".

in other words, quick and dirty way to get something alcoholic and slightly beery. you're right on all counts about what's wrong with it. you best bet is to shake your head and walk away, or perhaps take it as a chance to teach them all they're doing wrong. either way, just don't follow those directions for your own brews!

[Ale's What Cures Ya]

i think that falls into the category of "things which could vaguely be considered beer as it has some beer ingredients, but by far is not going to be good beer".

in other words, quick and dirty way to get something alcoholic and slightly beery. you're right on all counts about what's wrong with it. you best bet is to shake your head and walk away, or perhaps take it as a chance to teach them all they're doing wrong. either way, just don't follow those directions for your own brews!

That's what I figured. I'm going to take the opportunity to steer their ship in a better direction. First I want to ditch the cane sugar in the boil. Can I just replace it gram for gram with dry pale malt extract, or should I switch it to mostly dry extract and a little bit of liquid extract? As for hops, I don't mind using goldings, but if I use 5g for dry hopping, what would the ratio of additions be for the remaining 30g during the boil?

Cheers.

[grub]

not sure about gram for gram as the pppg of each wouldn't likely be quite the same. might want to check out something like promash (you can use the free trial indefinitely, but only save 5x without paying, so a handy calculator) and play with the extracts and such until it hits what you want. no need to use liquid, dry works fine.

ratios really depend on the style you're aiming for. your extraction/bittering won't be quite the same for water vs wort (plain water vs water with extract), so you may find you need slightly more hops to reach the same IBU as it'd have gotten before. for an american style, i'd have no quams about using 4-8x more hops for flavour/aroma/dry vs bittering. english is usually less hop forward, but you may want something more. 5g is pretty insignificant - less than a fifth of an ounce. any style that would warrant using dry hops would probably have an ounce or more. i know the original "recipe" was a bit of a mess, but do you know what the rough idea was (or what the new idea will be)?

[Ale's What Cures Ya]

not sure about gram for gram as the pppg of each wouldn't likely be quite the same. might want to check out something like promash (you can use the free trial indefinitely, but only save 5x without paying, so a handy calculator) and play with the extracts and such until it hits what you want. no need to use liquid, dry works fine.

ratios really depend on the style you're aiming for. your extraction/bittering won't be quite the same for water vs wort (plain water vs water with extract), so you may find you need slightly more hops to reach the same IBU as it'd have gotten before. for an american style, i'd have no quams about using 4-8x more hops for flavour/aroma/dry vs bittering. english is usually less hop forward, but you may want something more. 5g is pretty insignificant - less than a fifth of an ounce. any style that would warrant using dry hops would probably have an ounce or more. i know the original "recipe" was a bit of a mess, but do you know what the rough idea was (or what the new idea will be)?

I'll check out promash, thanks for the heads up on it.

I have no idea what the intended result was for that recipe, or where my friend got it from. I just figured that since it was using goldings hops and ale yeast it was supposed to be some kind of english pale ale, so getting the recipe to a nicely flavoured, but not overpowering (the other guys in this operation are beer neophytes, to put it politely) english pale ale should be the goal.

[markaberrant]

The internet is a great resorce for homebrewing.

And it is also a terrible resource for homebrewing, thanks to recipes like this.

[Ale's What Cures Ya]

The internet is a great resorce for homebrewing.

And it is also a terrible resource for homebrewing, thanks to recipes like this.

I certainly scratched my head a few times while reading it.

[Ale's What Cures Ya]

So after some discussions and some convincing, here is the recipe we are going to brew Friday night:

-3.5 lbs. of Amber LME
-1 lb. of Amber DME

-0.5 oz of Northern Brewer (60 min. I wanted Brewer's Gold but the place we went to didn't have any)
-0.5 oz of Northern Brewer (30 min.)
-0.5 oz of East Kent Goldings (10 min)
-0.5 oz of East Kent Goldings (5 min)
-1 oz of Fuggles (dry hop)

-1 packet Danstar Nottingham Dry Ale Yeast

[matt7215]

So after some discussions and some convincing, here is the recipe we are going to brew Friday night:

-3.5 lbs. of Amber LME
-1 lb. of Amber DME

-0.5 oz of Northern Brewer (60 min. I wanted Brewer's Gold but the place we went to didn't have any)
-0.5 oz of Northern Brewer (30 min.)
-0.5 oz of East Kent Goldings (10 min)
-0.5 oz of East Kent Goldings (5 min)
-1 oz of Fuggles (dry hop)

-1 packet Danstar Nottingham Dry Ale Yeast

looks a lot better then the first recipe, but id reccomend this for your hop bill:

0.5 of NB @ 60
0.5 of NB @ 15
1 oz of Fuggles @ flame out
1 oz EKG for dry hopping

[markaberrant]

looks a lot better then the first recipe, but id reccomend this for your hop bill:

0.5 of NB @ 60
0.5 of NB @ 15
1 oz of Fuggles @ flame out
1 oz EKG for dry hopping

I agree with this. Fuggles are terrible dry hops in my opinion.

The amount of fermentables is fairly low, should make for a nice light bitter. Amber extract is a poor choice - always use the lightest extract you can get, and add specialty grains, in this case steep 1lb of med crystal 40-60L.

[Ale's What Cures Ya]

looks a lot better then the first recipe, but id reccomend this for your hop bill:

0.5 of NB @ 60
0.5 of NB @ 15
1 oz of Fuggles @ flame out
1 oz EKG for dry hopping

All righty, thanks for the suggestion. I will go with that instead.

Mark: I was unfortunately limited to what was available to me locally, but for my next batch I will see about getting lighter extract, going with dry, and then steeping the specialty grains.

According to ProMash my SG will be 1.034. Hopefully we end up with something around 4.5% percent that's nicely hop forward without being too bitter. Unfortunately I have to think of the group on this one lol

[markaberrant]

According to ProMash my SG will be 1.034. Hopefully we end up with something around 4.5% percent that's nicely hop forward without being too bitter.

It would have to ferment out to complete dryness (1.000) if you are hoping for 4.5%.

[Ale's What Cures Ya]

According to ProMash my SG will be 1.034. Hopefully we end up with something around 4.5% percent that's nicely hop forward without being too bitter.

It would have to ferment out to complete dryness (1.000) if you are hoping for 4.5%.

I take it that's not likely to occur? What SG should we aim for?

[icemachine]

Assuming a 1.008 FG, you would need a 1.042 SG

Here's a handy calculator that you can use to help engineer a brew based on size of batch, etc

http://www.tastybrew.com/calculators/gravity.html

[markaberrant]

I take it that's not likely to occur? What SG should we aim for?

If it ferments all the way down to 1.000, it will have the consistency of water and taste extremely dry.

1.008-1.010 would be a good spot to end up.