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Lawn Darts...an in experiment sugars. how very scientific.
the magnum idea was a joke. i hereby apologize for stimulating so much fear and trepidation in the group. i suplicate myself before the altars of your mercy and beg for forgiveness.
the saaz is a good hop, if everyone is able to get their grubby little hands on it, let us decide to use it. i am up for changing it if a late comer wants to get in our science and is not able to get saaz, but for now...moving forward.
maybe we should start handing out assigments:
brewskinewbski = molasses
anyone else want to claim a sugar? i honestly don't care, and if no one wants to use corn sugar since they have used it before in other recipes or it just doesn't sound as glamorous as some of the others, i will do it.
let's wait on the yeast finalization until we see if anyone else is interested. it is looking like WYeast #1028 or #1056. unless we decide on something and we need to wait for ingredients in the mail.
i sure would like some more takers on this experiment, but we can't wait forever. i say we leave discussion open until the end of the week. can everyone brew this saturday?
Saaz are easy to obtain. I assume we will all be using pelleted hops (just trying to keep things standard). Are we going to one hop this or combo up Saaz with a finisher???
that is still open for discussion. if we do use finishing hops, it will be with whatever hop we boil with, so there aren't multiple hop profiles to contend with as we try to taste out the different sugars.
as for pellets, that is fine with me. if someone can't get pellets we can do a plug or whole hop equivalency.
I have issues with gettin whole hops. They show up bruised and funky.
Well unless people weigh in on this I think we have a good start.
X-lite DME, could we find a specific brand?
Saaz hops for a boil and finish. Boil for 60min finish for 15?
Sugar addition may still be up in the air, the last 15 minutes, for me I'd go with the last 5min to save the sugars inherent but fragile notes. I mean we want to know what the sugar does for flavor right??? So while boil off half of it???
5-7 days in the primary??
5-7 days in secondary??
14 days int he bottle???
Prime with corn sugar, but we need a specific amount as to not cause extreme variables at the end of this whole ordeal.
I would also like to make a request for Whirfloc tabs. They just make stuff settle easier.
Krausenator: I figured you were just tossing the magnum around as funny, so no worries. But not having a lit of expierience with it I wasn't totally sure.
My input then on our recipe so far:
DME-standardize the brand would be nice if possible, I know I get Muton&Fison (sp?). This shouldn't be critical because for the most part people are familiar with their "local" DME. Evaluation by each brewer on their sugar impact would likely be "normalized" because of this fact.
Saaz-pellets, for 60min and 15 min
Sugar-last 5 sounds good to me.
Fermentation: I think we need to just let people transfer when they are done to the next stage. I would fear that if you say 7 days for someone who had a slow start, or fermented too slow... they would maybe be working with a to young beer or something. We need to accept each brewers ability to know "this beer is ready to move on". Are we doing secondary??? I normally don't when the beer is simple. Seeing how a large amount of fermentables is coming from sugar here, I think a secondary would be unnecessary. Expecially if we choose a highly flocculant yeast... safale-04 by fermentis in the blue package (dry yeast, takes guess work out of starters etc etc, very clean very quick).
Bottleing: prime with corn sugar (for speed or finish)
I want to redefine this experiment for people that may be lurking but are unsure of joining the experiment.
We are planning on brewing a standardized base beer with DME and Saaz hops. Each brewer will add a different sugar to the beer as part of the brewing process. Then report back their findings on fermenation characteristics, flavors and overall impressions.
If this sounds interesting to you and your not sure what to brew next, join us. There will be no need to share samples or give stuff away or share an abundance of personal info to people (unless someone wants to do that). There are plenty of interesting sugars on the list and we could use the help.
Give it a thought.
Oh yeah, I can't brew this weekend. But that shouldn't hold you up. I can brew next week I think. Especially an extract brew.
For the record:
The recipe as we have it now from an extract standpoint:
4lb DME
3lb sugar of choice
This creates and OG of for 5 gallons of 1053-1063, depending on the sugar used (Cane low end, maple syrup is high end).
That gravity range is good, something inside me worries that it might be too high, but I want to open that up for discussion before I really comment too much on it.
I am wondering if molasses is going to bump my OG up a bit more than expected. I have no issue with bottling right out of the primary. I have just gotten used to racking to a secondary. But in hind sight I'd say the less I mess with it the less chance I have of goofing something up. 2oz of Saaz, 1 for the boil 1 for the finish??? I'll be able to order the ingredients in a week and so I should be ready to brew in two weeks at the most. I don't see any reason why we'd all have to start at the same time so long as we keep and post diligent records.
for the sugars, peoples need to be choosing their preferred so we don't get any noses bent out of shape. all that is off the table so far is maple syrup.
as to fermentation procedures: primary only, let's not limit time though. ferment to completion. as we will all be using different types of sugar, this will be inevitably be a variable.
hops: let's do 1.5 oz boil, 0.5 finish oz.
DME: use what is easily available at your local store. if we are all using extra-light DME, the variations in brand can't be so great as to affect it too much. if one company uses 5% more of one grain than another company, i don't think that even chicken little will be concerened.
bottling: i think 10 days will be sufficient. we can discuss this, but if we all bottle with corn sugar those babies will be carbonated in a week (as long as you don't store your bottles in the limestone cavern below your medieval castle).
potential gravity range: let's do it man, let's torch the whole city! i am going to guess this will finish at about the 1.012 - 1.008 range, giving us a respectable 6 - 7% ABV. some will finish better, some will not get an OG as high...no sweat.
as long as ingredients amounts are the same, we will have an idea of how each individual sugar affects the wort. and it is all in the name of science. it will be nice to know that 3 lbs of corn sugar does/does not increase gravity in the wort as much a 3 lbs of maple sugar or confectionary cugar or blueberry pie.
did i miss anything?