First All-Grain (BIAB) Recipe - SMaSH Pale Ale

[Udon Pete]

Thanks for all the help, everyone! This has been super helpful for me, and I appreciate how welcoming everyone has been. I wish I could respond to everyone!

Based on the feedback I got here, I changed up the recipe a bit. I added half of a campden tablet, lowered my mash temp to 152, made sure to put instructions in about wrapping the kettle, nixxed the stirring, and maybe a couple more tweaks. Lowering the mash temp increased the ABV a bit and lowered the FG to where it is just outside the pale ale style range, but I think I'm fine with that.

The only thing I decided not to change is the Maris Otter, mainly because I am really interested in that malt, and I've seen quite a few SMaSH beers made with it on the internet, and it seems like it works. I might end up changing to a 2-row before I brew, but I think I'll keep it for now.

Otherwise, I had one more question. Is it unsafe to use a 10 gallon kettle on an electric stovetop? I've only done extract with a 5 gallon kettle before, and that was fine. I'm wondering if a 10-gallon kettle with ~8 gallons of water and 11 pounds of malt is going to a bad idea on an electric stovetop? My burners are coils, if that is important.

Thanks, all!!

Here is the new recipe if people are interested:

https://www.brewersfriend.com/homebrew/recipe/view/1486350/smash-cascade-maris-otter

I would always use MO in a recipe like this for the simple reason it adds a little ‘extra’ to the overall finished beer

 

[Brewer #430359]

Hi all,

I finished brewing this beer a little while ago. Thanks for all the help! I hit a couple of snags, but I think overall, the brew went really well.

My homebrew store was out of Cascade, so I used Centennial instead. The guy at the homebrew store also told me that because I live in the Denver area, I'll only get about 60% hop utilization, which I wasn't aware of, so I went ahead and adjusted the recipe based on both of those issues. I was able to figure out how to set the hop utilization for my recipe to 63%, which seems to be the consensus percentage for this altitude. I also set it on my "equipment", but it didn't seem to have an effect on the recipe, so maybe I'm doing something wrong there?

On to the brew... I ended up with a pre-boil gravity of about 1.030 and an OG of 1.041. My target was 1.053. I ended up with maybe a half gallon more wort than I intended, but I wasn't sure about how much of the gunky liquid I should pour into the fermenter. It took me quite a while to cool down the wort, maybe 1 hour and 15 minutes, so that is probably something I need to work on. I was planning on pitching at 68F, but I got impatient and pitched right around 72F or so. I'll probably get a wort chiller at some point.

I used the "brew" function on the website and entered my gravity readings, and it looks like I have about 69% efficiency for this brew, but I'm unsure if I'm reading and entering everything correctly. I feel like that can't be right considered my OG was so far off. I am still a little fuzzy as to what my gravity readings mean for my beer and how efficiency works, but I'm looking forward to digging into it soon.

Thanks again, everyone! I'll let you know how this tastes in about a month.

Here is a link to the final recipe and brew: https://www.brewersfriend.com/homebrew/recipe/view/1486350/smash-centennial-maris-otter