I'm starting to go recipe crazy. But before I waste too much time, I'd like to make sure that I'm doing it right.
First, water volumes. I'm reckoning on the basis of about 6.5 gallons to get 5 gallons of wort. Is this about right for homebrewers?
Grain quantities: after a comment about the mashing efficiency homebrewers get, I've started upping the amount of grain by 5-10%. Are the quantities I've given correct for target gravity? I'm sure some of you have that fancy brewing software you can just feed it into.
Hops. Currently I'm giving the vintage and scaling down the quantity as given in the log. That is, I'm not making any allowance for the age of hops. Do you prefer the recipes as they are or would you prefer me to just give the equivalent amount of fresh hops?
Any other comments or suggestions are welcome.
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21 comments:
The malt quantities seem pretty good to me. Most homebrew systems I've seen get between 65-75% efficiency. When I plug the numbers from the IPA recipe into Pro Mash and set it for a 6 gallon batch (which I believe is 5 Imperial Gallons), I get the correct OG when it's adjusted to 70% efficiency. (OK, I get 1.036 and not 1.03573, but I'm not that precise anyway). I'd be fine getting the malt and sugar quantities as percentages by weight if that's easier. (Since I have to adjust them anyway to fit my system). But the 70% number you're using should be good for most homebrew systems.
Water quantities seem correct but I have to admit that I measure water volumes in my system by sight. I've brewed enough batches of beer that I have a good idea of about how much water I need for X amount of grain. I'll leave the actual nitpicking of the water quantites to others since I don't get that hung up on precise water quantities. (So long as I ned up with the proper amount of wort at the end of the boil). I do pay attention to mash and sparge temps though.
I like the hop quantities as stated without having you adjust them for age, etc. I actually prefer getting the recipe as close as possible to how it was recorded in the logs, and don't mind having to adjust the hops quantities to reflect the age. If I know it's 4.25 oz of two year old hops, I can make a rough estiamte of what that would be in fresher hops. Without the actual alpha of the varieties when they were picked, it's a bit of a crap shoot anyway, so I prefer to have the hop quantities listed as an accurate scaled down quantity of what's in the logs.
My two cents.
Water Volumes: To me the mash temperatures are more important. I know what I need to hit those temps on my set up. Theres also the difference between US and Imperial gallons to make things confusing.
Grain quantities: Percentages please. Makes it easier to adjust to individual batch size and efficiency.
Hops: The equivalent of fresh hops would be welcome.
WATER: There are so many variation of the basic brewery design out there that I think the best bet is to give us the info on the liquor used according to the log and let us adapt it to our systems. Obviously we need to know the taget volume!
GRAINS: Some of the recipes (the EI Porter for one) seems to have a gravity unobtainable even at 100% efficiency. Again there is so much variety in brewery techniques, efficiency etc that I think the only useful information is the percentages of the grist make-up. We can then adjust from there.
HOPS: Give the full quantity in the log but with age information so that we may adjust accordingly.
I am planning to brew the EI Porter and the "Boys" IPA. They both sound interesting, as do several of the others!
Thanks for all the hard work. I'll try to put it to good use.
I have just entered the Whitbread 1923 IPA recipe in my brewing software and the grain quantities seem about spot on. Maybe the EI Porter was a blip (or I may be an useless prat and cocked up).
I'd like to see the grain bill in percentages, actually, since I brew to collect 11 gallons of wort and it makes it easier to scale a recipe up that way.
Interesting points everyone.
I'll probably change to giving both %age of each malt and the amount to brew 5 gallons.
I'm still thinking about the hops. Maybe I need to include the original numbers and an equivalent in fresh hops.
Another useful fact would be IBUs... (despite all of the problems with that measurement it is probably the best we have).
If you are keen on producing home-brew oriented recipes you might wish to avail yourself of my free 'BeerEngine' software, (which is very much a work-in-progress and unfinished) and is available at www.practicalbrewing.co.uk. It is not perfect and there is still a lot to do on it, but once you get used to it, it will take a lot of the donkey-work out of recipe design. If you leave it set to the default efficiency of 75% and use Fuggles for any unspecified hop in a British recipe prior to about 1960, you will not go far wrong. You can view / save the recipes in HTML, which will enable you cut and paste or do even cleverer stuff with them. There are some olde-worlde conversions in the calculator section: brewers' barrels to anything else and lbs/barrel to S.G or Plato, and I can quickly add any other conversions that you might think useful. Just a thought.
Water volumes: One way to look at it.
You want to package (bottle or keg) 5 gallons. You're going to lose some to the trub at the bottom of the fermenter. Call it a half-gallon. So you need 5-1/2 gallons going into the fermenter. You fill the fermenter from the boil kettle. You're going to loose some to the trub in the boil kettle. Call it a half-gallon. So you need 6 gallons at the end of the boil. You lose some volume to the boil. Estimate this at 1 gallon per hour. So if you do a 60 minute boil, you need 7 gallons before the boil. All measurements are for room temperature liquid. The boiling liquid will expand by about a quart.
All that said, the important ones are the 6 gallons at the end of the boil — that's where you measure OG — and the 5-1/2 gallons in the fermenter — that's the volume for yeast pitch.
These numbers are just for illustration — and happen to match my system. Individual systems may have different losses, but you are in the ballpark.
Grain quantities: You've been right to style so far, but I also vote for percentages. Percentage and OG should let individual brewers adjust for their system.
Hops: I'm a hophead, so I'm happy to try higher levels.
How about another book in the series? Historic Recipes for Homebrewers or some such natty catchy title?
Graham, thanks very much for the link to your recipe software. It looks very handy for checking my recipes make some sort of sense.
I would prefer the actual % for the grain bill from the log as just scaling all malts up would likely distort the flavour profile too much speciality grain etc
Velky Al, err, that's sort of the main book I'm trying to write.
It covers the years 1700 to 1973 with a separate chapter covering a specific perion, for example 1830 to 1880 or 1920 to 1939. Each chapter is broken down into sections on brewing materials, brewing equipment, brewing techniques, beer styles and recipes.
Just by themselves the recipes are not much use. You really need to understand what the ingredients were like and what techniques were used for brewing. I realised just how important such background information is when I started putting these recipes together. I had to keep referring to my manuscript for details.
I'll publish "Brown Beer" this month. I plan including a chapter just of old Porter and Stout recipes.
I still haven't finalised all 11 volumes of my Mini Book Series so I might make one a compendium of the recipes I've published.
Ron - One of the reasons that I have been doing all the hop conversions is that I believe they where using the old hops for a reason and that it very much makes a difference to the bitterness and flavor profile. The Beta Acids do not degrade as fast as the Alphas and the longer boil reduces the cheesy aroma of old hops. Remember the Belgians’ still use old hops for their Lambics and tend use longer boil times.
Graham - The BeerEngine program looks good, I'll down load it and play with it some. It reminds me of what I use, SUDS 6.0 at http://www.oldlib.com/suds/
index.html.
Cheers
Jim
Old hops, two or three years old are used because the flavour and aroma of hops is contributed by oxidised essential oils. Fresh hops have poor aroma because they need time to oxidise. Pellet hops, for example usually have a poor aroma.
Brewers often blend hops from three different years, at about 33% each, to smooth out variations between harvests, so that a sudden change does not occur with the new season's harvest.
Graham, avoiding sudden flavour changes is definitely a reason brewers blended different vintages of hops. I think it was in Lloyd Hind where I read something to that effect. A recommendfation to always only start using a small percentage of the new seson's crop and gradually increase it.
I suspect that, certainly in the 19th century, breweries bought in more hops than they needed in years of a good harvest and used them in leaner years when the price was much higher.
Ok, first off all, thanks a lot Ron!
Concerning the hops, as long as I got there age, no problem for me. % for the malt can be great too.
If you have any information concerning the profile of the water, or the salts used, it would be perfect.
And I must say that I have already brewed (yesterday) the Whitbread IPA, it's now fermenting.
Thanks!
Oxidation, in any form, happens quite readily and doesn't need ages to happen. When reviewing hop growers and brewers notes it doesn't make sense that they were specifically aging the hops to increase aroma or what not. They specifically mention the fact that they want to store them in refrigeration and pack them as tightly as possible to avoid air contact. Looking at the same recipe over numbers years the hops change nearly every year and in different percentages.
Meaning, whats most likely, is that the brewer is trying to make the most consistent product. Hops that are 3 years old do not have anywhere near the amount of character and aroma that younger brethren do. On average, hops lose between 28% and 90% of their essential oils in 6 months (20C).
Good reading:
R. Foster and G. Nickerson, "Changes in Hop Oil Content and Hoppiness Potential (Sigma) During Hop Aging," J. Am. Soc. Brew. Chem. 43, 127 (1985).
A. Murikami, S. Rader, E. Chicoye, and H. Goldstein, "Effect of Hopping on the Volatile Composition of Beer," J. Am. Soc. Brew. Chem. 47, 35 (1989).
Beta acids really don't play that much of a role here. Beta acids need to be oxidized, instead of isomerized, to gain their bitter character. More importantly, these oxidized beta acids don't nearly posses the bittering character/potential that the isomerized alpha acids do.
Case in point. Burton ales. TRUE Burton ales nearly 100% of the time us hops from the prior year. Meaning the freshest they have. The writings on these beers say they have lots of hop character, aroma and flavor and the BU's would have been very high. These were thought of as the pinnacle of beers of the period. If aged hops were ACTUALLY better and made higher quality beer, they would have been used for the best and most expensive ales.
It is well documented that it is the oxidised hydrocarbons that produce the most esteemed flavours and aromas. It is mentioned in "Hops" by R.A. Neve. It is mentioned in "Brewing Science and Practice" by Briggs, Bolton, Brookes and Stevens. Even George Fix mentions it. It is also alluded to in a number of old brewing texts by virtue of them specifying last season's hops and the like.
Briggs et. al. says:
"There is considerable evidence that sesquiterpene oxidation products, and/or hydrolysis products therefrom, contribute to the hoppy aroma of beer although the actual compound(s) responsible have not been identified... ...These hops [Noble] produce high levels of sesquiterpene
oxidation products and some brewers store their `aroma' hops for a period to facilitate this oxidation."
Briggs (among others) mentions 3-year-old hops as examples of hop storage ability, but without much further qualification. Old-time brewing references also mention the use of hops up to 3 years old. From this I assume that aroma properties (as opposed to bittering properties) are at their optimum after two or three years (when compressed in their pockets). Again I have to assume that oxidised essential oils are not so volatile as the hydrocarbons from which they are formed, and thus have more 'stickability'.
For confirmation from more easily accessible stuff on the net, here is some stuff from a couple of hop merchants:
http://www.charlesfaram.co.uk/Technical.htm says:
"Some oxidation of essential oil components is necessary to produce compounds thought to be important in beer flavours, so controlled ageing is important for hops required for both bittering and aromatic properties."
http://www.hopunion.com/hop-use-products.shtml says:
"The relatively slow-release of oils from whole glands of leaf hops allows time for oxidation of the major hydrocarbons such as humulene to humulene epoxides, etc. thought to be responsible for good hop aroma in beer." (This goes on to suggest that pellet hops are not that good at supplying aroma because they don't have a chance to oxidise.)
Weight for weight, oxidised beta-acid is about twice as bitter as isomerised alpha-acid, but its bitterness is less pleasant. A marked hop flavour or aroma was never a strong point of old-time British beers because late hopping was not generally employed until well into the twentieth century. Dry hopping was preferred, but was only useful for beers consumed relatively quickly because its effects soon diminish.
Regretfully I have not been able to find anything spefic as to how long hops need to be stored at ambient for sufficient oxidation to take place. I'd dearly like to know.
Graham - Thanks for the backup and the references to read. Like I have said I think they used old hops on purpose for the quality of the bitterness. Fresh hops have more roughness to them that a brewer maybe trying to avoid in their best beers.
Good to see some debate on this and ideas with references. I'm thinking I may need to find some cheesy EKGs to brew with and test the idea.
Cheers
Jim
Graham,
Very good points but I wasn't arguing about the type of hydrocarbons. Meaning you are correct that the oxidized hydrocarbons do produce some of the finer 'hoppy' elements. However, the majority of these components, the humulenes and myrcenes, can autoxidize. There in lies the problem with actual oxygen. As these age the these hydrocarbons change to epoxides, alcohols, etc. There degradation is no longer an oxygen mediated one but a chemical one. This point is entirely moot b/c the actual oxygenated compounts dont' make it through fermentation.
Moir, M.; Seaton, J. C.; Suggett, A. Proc. Eur. Brew. Conv. 1983, 63.
The reduction of the alpha acids and the increase in solubility and oxygenation of the beta acids increase. The overall bitterness of the beer will go down, and as you say, will be much less pleasant. Then you have to deal with the build up of isovaleric acid (cheese) in old hops. Jim makes a good point about an extended boil removing that character. He's right but a lot of the brewers weren't going over 2 hours, more in the 90 min range (numerous brewing logs 1800-1900s).
To get the amount of needed bitterness by using older hops a much higher quantity was needed. Graham is right about the strict BU units for alpha and beta resins. The beta will pack more of a punch but its a very rough one. THe problem becomes knowing how much actual beta you have to work with. The alpha degradation proceeds on a zero to first order equaition. Since the beta are 'activated' by being oxidized, it hasn't been determined of how much and when. It seems to me that this research hasn't been done simply b/c if stored correctly beta's don't really play much of a role anymore...thats not saying that people don't choose certain hops b/c of their low beta values.
Finally, this all that veg matter going into the copper there would be a much high veg content in the beer. More tannins, grassy, etc.
This theoretical stuff is all fine and dandy but I wanted to see the practicality of it.
I did an experiment when I started to work with Ron b/c from all the books written on old beer styles the biggest problems I see are their hop values and the true nature of the finished product.
I wanted to make this as old timey as possible. After my last hop harvest I dried my hops and then packaged the whole leaves in four different ways. These hops are Goldings and I tested the AA% on my hops which came out to 5.2%. Not to shabby.
Packaging as follows:
1. vacuum packed under inert gas, -20C - positive control.
2. packed under pure oxygen, -20C - negative control.
3. pressed, wrapped tighly in burlap, 0C - exp 1
4. pressed, wrapped tightly in burlap, 20C - exp 2 (mimics storage at 0C for 3 years)
I aged all of these 6 months at the indicated temperature.
Original AA% of 5.2% and the calculated degradation and actual (C:A) in BU are as follows:
1. + control - 5.0:4.9
2. - control - 5.0:4.1
3. Exp 1 - 4.1:4.0
4. Exp 2 - 2.9:2.8
As you can see the calculated values are quite close to the actual measure ones. I then went further and measure the 'hop aroma units' by two methods. The first (De Clerke) is more subjective but also simple. Basically you rub some hops in your hands and quickly smell then. Take notes. Wait a minute for the most volitile hydrocarbons to leave and then notes again. The second, nearly as simple, were you make a hop tea. 2g hops/ 500ml water. Boil for 5 min, seal lid and chill instantly. Strain off hops and bring volume back up to 500ml. Let cool. Here are the results.
Format - hand (first smell: second smell) / aroma
1. Rich spice, resiny, touch of orange zest: geranium, rosewater, hint of orange/ a combo of the first. spicy, orange with some floral notes
2. flat, flabby, some 'hoppy' aroma but not decernable, touch of toe jam: hoppy gone, now its the jam / same as the first. the hoppy comes out more. Flat and bland.
3. Just like #1 except its muted just a bit with more of the spicy orange / lots of orange and spice, not as much flowers
4. kinda the opposite of #3, low spicy but more flowers and earth / the earthyness comes through well and the flowers come out nicely on end.
Now that I had the idea of what I was getting into I brewed an IPA similar to the one Ron just posted only pale malt and clear invert syrup. 1035, 35bu, ebc 6, etc. I used standard US ale yeast of which you cant get a more neutral strain. Basically it was a vehicle for the hops to stand out. I brewed the beer four times using the four different hops above. I used the measured AA% to derive the amount of hops needed for each addition. The boil was 90min and the additions were made at 80 (15bu), 40 (15bu) and 20min (5bu). I then dry hopped half of each batch with 0.5oz/ 5gal of the corresponding hop and discuss the aroma of these only
Results - #d = dry hopped version
OG, FG, BU (measured), notes -
1. 1.035, 1.008, 32bu - touch of bready malt, lots of spice and orange, quite elegant. Very smooth with a sustained bitter that dries out in the finish. Very slight hint of rosewater in the aroma on warming.
1d - Wow. This really brings out the hop. This is much more reminiscent of the rubbed hops I spoke about before. Lots of resins, earth and spice.
2. 1.034, 1.008, 32bu - cant realy get past the cheesy aroma. Very distracting and unpleasent. Same for the bitterness. Much more grippy (not astringent) which must be the beta acids.
2d. Crap.
3. 1.035, 1.009, 29bu - Very similar to number one however the aroma is more subtle and not as overtly 'hoppy'. It has more of a blended feel to it and not as 'fresh' tasting hop. The bitterness has just a touch of astringency (which I prefer) and stays a little while longer with you. Not as clean as #1.
3d. Much more elegant than #1. More subdued. The resins are nearly as powerful and it has more of a floral note.
4. 1.033, 1.007, 27bu - The aroma is like #3 but even more subdued and its more malt forward in the nose. A faint hint of spice and flowers. Most of the 'hoppy' aroma is more of a grassy quality. This one is quite astringently bitter. Both on sides of tongue and lips. The hop flavor is definitely the highest of all three, mostly b/c it had the highest amount (read oz) of hops going in to it. Its not unpleasant by any means, just quite 'green' tasting.
4d. Like above but much more toned down. I have to put 4 adn 4d together to and smell them side by side to see the difference. Just a very slight touch of flowers and grass. Reminds me of a field of wild flowers near a hay field.
After all is said and done and I went back over my notes and such it seems to me, even more now than before, that it is massively in the hands of the brewers preference as to how they use their 'year' hops. I didn't take into consideration here the effects of water composition (read epsom, gypsum, etc.) but since we were really just talking about aroma then I'm not as worried. This turned out to be a great little experiment that opened my eyes on not just the ages of hops but the ages of hops, their quantities AND when to use then in beer.
I love a good healthy debate...
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