Looking for a solid recipe!

If you are bottle priming to carbonate, be aware that it can take much longer when brewing beers over say 8% ABV unless you add additional yeast to the bottling bucket (usually 1/10th of what you initially pitched to ferment the beer). I'd recommend shooting for a DIPA with a 7-8% ABV since you are new, it will save you the hassle, and I like drinking my DIPA's as fresh as possible so why bother extending the priming time just to get an extra 1% ABV

 

RIS 6.25g all grain recipe (I don't know any extract recipes)


16 lbs pale malts
2 lbs flaked barley
2 lbs caramel 60
1 lb 10 oz chocolate malt
1 lb carafa II

mash at 154F for 60 minutes
mash out at 168F for 10 minutes
75 minute boil

NOTE: I do a no sparge brewing method and it takes me 9 gallons of water to brew this one. If you sparge, then divide that 9 gallons up as you see fit or calculate your own water needs.

add 2oz warrior at 75 minutes
add 1/4oz progress at 60 minutes
add 1/3oz of cascade at 30 minutes
add 2/4oz progress at 15 minutes

ferment with 2 packs of Danstar Nottingham dry yeast around 64F for 3 weeks

rack to secondary and condition for 2-4 weeks (your preference)

rack to bottling bucket onto about 2.3 - 3 grams of nottingham yeast and your priming sugar of choice (I like DME for RIS's)

Bottle prime at room temperature for at least 4 weeks

OG 1.098 (with 77% efficiency)
FG 1.030
ABV about 9.1%
IBU's about 78

 

Everyone seems to want their first batch to be something grand, with umpteen percent ABV, 243 continuously hopped IBUS, and coffee, chocolate, bourbon-soaked wood chips, and peanut butter added to secondary. I always recommend keeping it simple at the start. Try a medium gravity pale ale ale or stout. Learn the process of brewing well, learn to formulate recipes and make beers that you know you will want to drink. Once you have tasted some success, build upon those recipes with a little craziness here and there.

 

I'm with pweis909 on this one I'm afraid. It's hard to get the complexity and size you seem to be aiming for on your first batch Anthony either fucking up or letting your experienced friend do most of the work. On the one hand taking a back seaton a more complex brew is a great way to learn, but on the other there is something so special about making your first batch on your own anchor actually tasting good.

I strongly recommend trying maybe a super hoppy session ipa as your first go. You can experiment with dry hopping and whatnot while still making a noob friendly all extract brew.

 

You'll be getting your feet wet with your first batch. It may or may not turn out great and rather than spend a ton of cash on your first try (extract costs a lot of money), you can brew something more forgiving and less expensive so that the risk is minimized. Unless your boy is hand-holding you through the entire process, you'll more than likely make some mistakes, and that's ok--the point is to get the hang of procedures and making an ok beer in the process. However, it doesn't look like you're interested in practical advice. lol Why not look at Norther Brewer's site for recipes and pick something that interests you like maybe this imp stout recipe:

http://www.northernbrewer.com/documentation/beerkits/ImperialStout.pdf

Good luck on your first brew.

 

French Onion Soup:
take your favorite full body stout: I usually try to use either Young's Double Chocolate or GI Nightstalker
put 3 cans/bombers in a large stock pot and crank on medium. The point here is to reduce by 1/2. Be sure to stir every 5 or so minutes, dont want a dirty pot to ruin your soup.
take 4 large onions (Vidalia are a great choice, large white will work in a pinch, try to stay away from red, they end up being a little stringy/chewy in the end)
sautee these onions until they are caramelized (this takes a good 20 minutes)
once caremalized, add 2 bay leafs, 3 cups of chicen stock. Give a good 10 minutes to let flavors combine then add to stock pot and put on simmer.
take a baguett and cut on bias (if you dont know what bias means ((cut on an angle to give you larger cut pieces)).
take garlic butter (mix a stick of softened butter with 2 cups of garlic, mix well, cover the remainder with saran wrap, will keep for a good couple of weeks) and slather one side of the baguette and lay on a sheet tray and stick in a pre heated 350 degree pre heated oven. Let toast for 5 minutes, once toasted, remove from oven and flip. Cover the flipped side with your choice of a good melting cheese (i.e. provo, swiss, havarti, etc) and put back in oven for another 4 minutes.
While the cheese is melting, ladel soup into bowls. After cheese is melted, set in to bols of soup and sprinkle with chives, and garnish with cracked black pepper.
hope you enjoy, if you do, let me know.
sorry if its not beer, the title didnt limit it to..

 

Partly, I was thinking about the money spent on ingredients, but really, this is small potatoes. Mostly I was thinking about how I've done close to 100 batches and the best ones still are the simpler ones and the worst of the lot are the ones I tried to get crazy with --maple syrup, cherries, blueberries, lemon peel, cocoa powder, pumpkin and spices, and all the high gravity stuff I did before I learned how to control fermentation through appropriate pitching rates, proper oxygenation, and temperature control. I still try an offbeat beer now and then (grape berliner weiss, most recently) and I have nothing to brag about yet. OK. Maybe I should brag about my sour brown ale from a couple years back -- that was rather good. But you get the picture.

I am not out to discourage you, though. For some people, freedom to make offbeat beers is the reason to homebrew. With the help of your good brewing buddy, your first experience may be solid gold. I've never really brewed with anyone else and I'm sure you can make progress in leaps and bounds when you have an experienced hand to guide you.

 

Here's my extract DIPA, which won a local homebrew contest, revised slightly. I originally brewed 2 beers each with the same amount of summit hops but different malt and different yeast. I took my favorite parts of both beers and made this one.

This recipe is hard to mess up - pitching 2 kinds of yeast solves the problem of making a starter for a high gravity beer and the best aspects of each yeast seem to come out in subtle balance. Also because there's so much malt and hops that flaws in your brewing process may potentially be more hidden so I think it's a great beginner beer. The summit hops are really on showcase here. Hopheads as well as people who've never heard of a DIPA all seem to love this beer.

Twin Peaks DIPA 1.1
12 lbs Pilsen LME
8oz Summit hops
White Labs WLP001 California Ale and Wyeast Trappist HG
hop schedule - 1oz each @ 75, 45, 30, 15, 10, 5
2oz dry hop
Seriously though, northernbrewer.com has the freshest most delicious LME and lbs of summit hops. Cheers!

 

How much Belgian character came through for you? I once used WLP 001 and WLP 530 (the WLP equivalent othe WY Trappist HG) in a dubbel. It was a total screw-up on my part. I was making two beers that day, a dubbel and an IPA, and I pitched my 530 starter into the dubbel fermenter, and then I pitched the 001 starter in the dubbel fermenter -- oops. Enough Belgian character came through to be interesting, but not as much as one might have expected in a Westmalle dubbel.

 

If you're going extract you might try Jamil Zainasheff's Brewing Classic Styles. It has recipes for every style (BJCP) formulated for both AG and extract. He has a couple recipes for imp stouts, one for each porter category, and a DIPA with a pound of hops total. I haven't tried these but others have come out well (the ones I have tried, like the Berliner and IPA).

 

Walk before you run.
But if you must shoot shoot for the stars with your first brew, do a highly hopped IPA (no more than 8%). They are very easy to do, and it will hide all the mistakes that you make with the actual beer. That's one reason so many small breweries tie their lot to them.

 

Splappa DIPA

7lb Light Dry Malt Extract
.5lb Crystal 15L
.75lb Table Sugar

1.5 oz Columbus @ 60
.5 oz Columbus @ 20
1 oz Citra @ 10
1 oz Galaxy @ 10
1 oz Cascade
1.5 oz Citra @ 5
1 oz Galaxy @ 5
1.5 oz Amarillo @ 5
1.5 oz Cascade @ 5

2 Packages of US-05 Yeast

Dry hop 2 oz Citra for 7 days


The Cascade and Amarillo hops were just leftovers I throw in there.

 

Advice:

Don't bother with adding peanut butter, coffee, oak, etc, etc for now. You are brewing your first batch(s) and as such, frankly, don't know what you're doing yet.

I've brewed dozens by now and still feel like I don't know that much. But what I have learned, is that every beer I fuck with - adding odd ingredients - I like less than the plain ol' style-forward recipes.

My pledge this year was to not fuck with any beer because I have had such good success with the non-fucked up ones. Then I split a good tasting brown ale and aged half on nuts. Now I have several gallons of brown ale that is really weird, and I'm kicking myself for not just leaving it alone.

Do I learn from these experiences? Yes, but I still brew better beer on its own.

Just my advice, at least until you brew a few batches and get the basics down. Either way, good luck.

 

I agree with not going for crazy additions like pb oak or coffee. I have to disagree with keeping it too simple. There isn't much difference between a lightly hopped pale and a palate crushing dipa. In the end you should brew what you like to drink.

If you do decide to brew something in the 8%+ range, use dry yeast the first time. There's plenty of time to learn about starters in the future.

Also, +1 to your suggestion of citra. The Michael Jordan of hops, IMO.

 

It's not the dominant flavor but I think it adds a delicious subtle note!