Designing A Beer

Many a time we sit drinking commercial beer thinking to ourselves, “We can make better than this.” Or drinking our own brew thinking, “It needs just a little bit more of something.”  Well there is a way, and all it’s going to take is a little bit of time and brain use.

The trick to it all is the starting point – which in some cases is actually the end result. Do you want a particular style of beer? Are you looking for a session beer, or something big to warm you up on a winters night? The starting points are endless, here’s a few to think on:

-Style e.g.; Kolsch, Amber Ale, Stout

-Taste; matching a commercial beer, bitter, sweet, dry, pairing with food

- Using a particular ingredient; fruit, vegetables, type of malt or hop

-Alcohol level; session beers, a few with the mates, one drink wonders (10% and above)

-Equipment; all grain, extract, kits, fridges to brew lagers in

Each choice will take you down a narrowing path…say we choose one drink wonders as our starting point. This cuts down our available styles to about 7, ( Double/Imperial IPA’s; Imperial Stouts; US Barley Wines; Abbey Quadrupels; Strong Pales/Darks and Eisbocks ).

Let’s start with a style - IPA’s are popular now so let’s go with that. First choice is British (big hops and plenty of malt) or American (more hops less malt).  Choosing British, first we want to use one of the specialty malts such as Rye, Smoked, Vienna etc. - our choices here are limited to the lighter malts, so no chocolate or black malts (they add too much colour even in small doses). We are going to use some Vienna malt in this one along with some Pale Crystal and some Pale Ale malt.

So our recipe as it stands so far is –

British IPA

Pale Ale malt 75%

Pale Crystal 15%

Vienna malt 10%

The percentages are of the total grain bill, and allow you to scale up or down the amounts to suit the volume. We are looking at a finished volume after the boil of 25L with a Starting Gravity of 1.060 and a Final Gravity of 1.006 as we want it to finish on the dry side. This puts the alcohol at about 7 – 7.5% and this allows us to work out the quantities of grain needed. While doing this we will also work out the colour.

Ok, cue the hold music here, while I grab the books and calculator - or you could use Brewmate to work it out - right we need a total of 6.5kg of grain total. Broken into percentages it looks like this.

British IPA   25L

SG 1.060   FG 1.006   Alcohol 7 – 7.5%

Body – Crisp, dry with a bit of malt sweetness

Colour – 7 to 12*SRM

Pale Ale malt 75%   4.9kg                   4 -6.2 SRM

Pale Crystal 15%    0.95kg                   2.9 – 4.3 SRM

Vienna malt 10%   0.65kg                    0.6 – 0.8 SRM

Now…the hops.  Do we want a single hop IPA? (Only one type of hop used for both bittering and aroma)  Or multi hops? And here we are limited to obviously: British hops.

We will start with bittering: we want about 60 IBU’s so a relatively high alpha acid hop like Northdown (7 – 10% AA) early in the boil, then some Challenger  (6.5 – 8.5% AA) later on, and then East Kent Golding’s (4.5 – 6.5% AA) to dry hop with. So our hop bill and schedule look like this:

90 min 20gm Northdown 8.5% AA =15.4 IBU

60 min 30gm Northdown 8.5% AA =21.5 IBU

30 min 30gm Northdown 8.5% AA =16.5 IBU

15 min 20gm Challenger 7.5% AA =6.3 IBU

5 min 25gm Challenger 7.5% AA   =3.2 IBU

0 min 15gm E K Golding 5.5% AA   =0 IBU

Fermenter 15gm E K Golding 5.5% AA =0 IBU

1^st Racking 15gm E K Golding 5.5% AA = 0 IBU

Total IBU = 62.9 IBU

Ok so our hop bill has also given us our boil time – 90 minutes, and we have a fair amount of grain to convert, so we will give it 90 minutes in the mash.  To finish dry, we will mash fairly low at about 63*c.  As for volumes, we want to end up with 25L.  We will lose 10% an hour in the boil, so we need to recover about 30L from the mash and sparge. We mash in at 3.5L per kilo of grain - so 23L. As I batch sparge I can work out my sparge water after I have drained the mash. If I recover 19L I will sparge with 11L to get 30L.

The last thing to work out is what yeast to use and for this one it’s a no brainer:  English Ale Yeast.

So now our full recipe looks like this:

TinRoof IPA, a British IPA - 25L

SG 1.060   FG 1.006   Alcohol 7 – 7.5%

Body – Crisp, dry with a bit of malt sweetness

Colour – 7 to 12*SRM

Pale Ale malt 75%   4.9kg                   4 -6.2 SRM

Pale Crystal 15%    0.95kg                   2.9 – 4.3 SRM

Vienna malt 10%   0.65kg                    0.6 – 0.8 SRM

3gm calcium carbonate

1gm calcium sulphate

90 min mash at 63*c with 23L of water

Batch sparge to make up 30L

90 min boil

90 min 20gm Northdown 8.5% AA =15.4 IBU

60 min 30gm Northdown 8.5% AA =21.5 IBU

30 min 30gm Northdown 8.5% AA =16.5 IBU

15 min 20gm Challenger 7.5% AA =6.3 IBU

5 min 25gm Challenger 7.5% AA   =3.2 IBU

0 min 15gm E K Golding 5.5% AA   =0 IBU

Fermenter 15gm E K Golding 5.5% AA =0 IBU

1^st Racking 15gm E K Golding 5.5% AA = 0 IBU

Total IBU = 62.9 IBU

Yeast – English Ale Ferment at 20*c

Now all we need do is brew it - stand by, that brew days coming up.