Brew Dudes Homebrewing Blog

Brewer’s Friend Recipe Calculator

On February 10, 2012

The Brew Dudes received an email from Larry at Brewer’s Friend letting us know they had an early release of their recipe builder. I used it today and it’s pretty good.

The design is clean and self- intuitive. I found the functionality of adding ingredients and/or deleting mistakes pretty easy to follow. All malts, adjuncts, and sugars are in a dropdown under the Fermentables heading and you can select them for your recipe.

The hop addition functionality works a bit differently. Varieties are presented once you start typing in the open field. After the one you are looking to use is presented, the typical alpha acid is carried with it to your recipe calculation. You can modify this percentage though, which is nice because sometimes the package of hops you have may have lower or higher than the average.

The yeast list is up to date and has strains from the big producers.

It has other sections where you can enter in spice, herb, or other additions and one to describe your water chemistry.

Overall, it’s similar to other tools you have used in the past and I think that’s a good thing. I give it high marks for its layout and its font/text box size.

There are a couple of things I would change to make it even better.

1. Maybe this is just me, but I know yeast strains by their number and not their descriptor. WLP001 means more to me than California Ale yeast. When I was using the dropdown to dial in the yeast strain I wanted, it took me a while to find the one I was looking for. If the strains were ordered by the code number, it would help me to find the strain faster. Again, maybe that’s what I am used to with other tools so maybe it’s not a big deal.

2. I think the “Matches Style” indication needs to be a little more detailed. Style Guidelines have many facets and a pass/fail grade may not be helpful enough. What I would like to know is how close I am to style for all the top level guidelines like color, starting gravity, IBUs, etc. so I know what to change in the recipe to make it fit the style.

Good stuff. If you would like to check it out, please go to http://www.brewersfriend.com/homebrew/recipe/calculator/

Amber Malt

By John Krochune

On February 9, 2012

In Malts

I am flying to London for business next week so I started looking at more English grains. I pulled together a whole bunch of information about Amber Malt and wrote it up – read on.

This malt originates from England – Maltsters toasted pale malt to get it to a certain color. It was (and is) used in Brown Porters. You can buy Amber malt but you can also make it at home by toasting it in your oven.

There were a number of sources that said if you couldn’t buy it or couldn’t make it, you could substitute it with Biscuit or Victory malt…but they are still different enough.

Here are the specs:

Flavor: Powerful – a little goes a long way, it can be a bit bitter. Biscuit-y. Strong toasted

Color: 15- 20°L

Body: N/A

Use: 5 to 10% of total grain bill. Put it in your porters and browns, but I have this thought that it would work in bitters and IPAs too.

Optic Malt

By John Krochune

On February 3, 2012

In Malts

I was looking through my Northern Brewer catalog and was studying up on base malts. I saw this kind offered by the Fawcett Maltsters named Optic.

It is made from a single barley variety grown in the UK. It seems to be a newer variety than Maris Otter, and it is a spring variety. Fawcett follows the traditional floor malting procedure when making Optic malt.

A few forums noted that the kernel size may be a little smaller than other base malts. As with any new base malt you’re trying out, you may need to adjust your mill to get the crush you need for your usual mashing experience.

Flavor: Very aromatic. Adds a good amount of biscuit flavor to your beer.

Color: 2.3- 3.0°L

Body: N/A

Use: Base malt for English pale ales – IPAs.

2012 Boston Homebrew Competition

By John Krochune

On January 31, 2012

In General

We’ll be entering beers into the 2012 Boston Homebrew Competition again this year. I think I have at least four I want to submit, plus I can send in a bottle of cider and/or mead.

I don’t think I am going to subject the judges to the Belgian Wit I brewed in the summer. I poured the contents of the remaining bottles down the sink this weekend and redemption for the sins of the recent past will be the subject of my next brew log.

There is a couple of updates to this year’s competition. All entries must be submitted online and only entries with the official labels attached to them will be accepted.

Entries must be received by February 17th, 2012. Good luck to all who enter.

Bottling Flavored Stouts

By John Krochune

On January 27, 2012

In Brew Log

This is an update to the epic multi-flavored stout project. I started to bottle some of the flavored sweet stouts.

Vanilla stout – we took a gallon of sweet stout and let it sit on a whole split vanilla bean for two weeks. Initial tastes at bottling revealed a prominent but not overwhelming vanilla taste. I liked it – it wasn’t in the background at all.
Chocolate stout – for this one, we took a gallon of the same sweet stout and let it sit on 1.5 ounces of cocoa powder for 2 weeks. The few tastes I took at bottling revealed some bitter cocoa flavor. This one may be a miss but we won’t know for sure until it’s ready.
Cherry stout – I haven’t bottled this one yet, but I did take a sample from it a week ago. The tart cherries were detectable in the beer but it seemed unfinished. If it mellows out, this beer could be the best of the bunch.

So all of these different stouts should be ready to drink in two weeks. Let’s have a tasting then, shall we?