pulykamell, just bear in mind that one of the side-effects of the late add method is improved hop extraction, so if you are going to try it with a recipe that you’ve used before you’ll want to cut back a little bit on your bittering hops. (ProMash can do the math if you don’t want to guess. But guessing is one of my favorite parts of homebrewing…)
Wow. I’m really not seeing a downside to this method. 
But, seriously, from your experience, if I’m doing something more malty or balanced, can you guesstimate about how much more extraction there is? Like is 1 oz of hops more like 1.5 oz of hops now, or are we talking on a smaller scale?
Gotcha. That makes sense. Actually, I have a few recipes where I caramelize on purpose.
I’m lucky enough to have really good tap water, so chlorine isn’t an issue for me.
I’m a hophead, so my guesstimate might be a bit high, but when I extract/late-add brew I either cut the hops back by about 25% (1 1/2 oz becomes 1 1/8 oz) or I choose a bittering hop with fewer alphas.
Quick bump for this one as I’ve got my stuff together so I’m going to get a brew on tomorrow. Just going over my recipe - is 4.5 kg of extract in 5 gallons not a shit load of malt to be brewing from? I’m reading a lot of recipes that use closer to 3kg. What will be the effect of using so much malt - will it be a booze monster of a brew? I had in mind creating something fairly light 
So, 10 pounds of extract in 5 gallons. Liquid or dry? Even assuming liquid, that is a good bit of malt. You’re looking at about a 7-8% brew there. More if you’re talking dry extract.
For a standard brew you should be running maybe 3.25kg of extract. 4.5kg is going to definitely bump the finish to the 8-9% range. It’s also going to require a bunch more IBUs to stay balanced.
Thks - 8% ale is not something I’d normally drink but I may as well give it a go as I have the ingredients. Be good to just get a brew up and running regardless so we’ll see how it goes.
So who else is brewing? This thread has inspired me to finally brew my own batch. My husband and I brew, but he is always the brewmaster and I’m more of an apprentice. After so many batches, I think it’s time I brewed my own. He does extract/partial mash, so to kick it up a notch, I’ve decided to go whole hog. I’m inviting 3 of my girlfriends over in a couple of weeks for an all-girl, all-grain brew bash. I’ve decided to make a Grapefruit Honey Ale that should be just about ready to drink by my 40th birthday this summer.
What else is everyone cooking up?
All right, so I did it. Got 15 gallons going. I’m lazy so I just went the extract route (w/ steeping grains on two of the 5-gallon batches.)
I’m not reall brewing to style here, so this is what I have. The first is basically a light-to-medium hoppy ale with a little malt backbone:
1 lb Northern Brewer Munich LME
5 lb Northern Brewer Gold LME
1/2 lb brown sugar
1/2 lb Simpsons malt
1 oz Amarillo (8.2%) at 60 min
1 oz Cascade (6.1%) at 30 min
Nottingham ale dry yeast
O.G. ~ 1.054
I’ll probably dry hop this one with Amarillo and/or Cascade
Then I have some kind of strong porter going:
5 lb Northern Brewer Munich LME
1 lb Northern Brewer Gold LME
3 lb Briess Golden Light DME
1 lb brown sugar
1/2 lb Simpsons chocolate malt
1/2 lb Simpsons crystal malt
1 oz East Kent Goldings @ 60 min
1 oz East Kent Goldings @ 30 min
1 oz Fuggle @ 15 min
Nottingham dry yeast
OG ~ 1.076
Then a very simple mild ale flavored with hibiscus:
6 lb Northern Brewer Gold LME
1 oz Perle @ 60 min
1 oz Perle @ 15 min
3 oz dried hibiscus @ 15 min
S-04 English ale yeast
OG ~ 1.040
I think 3 batches allows you to stride amongst us like a colossus for 1 week.
More than that…well it gets showy.
Well, it’s a good thing I checked on my primaries. That porter is kraeusening like a mofo. This is the first time I’ve done the primary in a carboy, and even though I left a good eight inches of headspace, it had krauesened all the way to the airlock. I guess this is why people use blowoff tubes. Anyhow, I fashioned one out of some brewing supplies lying around and we seem to be in good shape again. I’m just wondering if I’m going to have the same issue with the hibiscus ale. (The third beer is in a plastic bucket.)
I need to buy a bag of grain and get brewing again. My gear is lonely and collecting dust.
Damn you all. Now I have to get going again.
I’ll post my Ipswich Ale (Ipswich MA) recipe later. It’s my standard go to pale ale, and IMO, is a bit better than the actual breweries effort. More like it was 20 years ago when it came out.
Now I want to brew up a batch. We had used our gear to try some of the wines they sell now and we quite liked the sauvignon blanc, so we’re currently trying a batch of shiraz now. We just bottled it last weekend and we’re hoping it’ll start to be drinkable around Christmas, if we can keep our mitts off it for that long.
But we could get some ale going and have it drinkable by August…hmmm
Bump this one to report that the IPA is now 3 weeks conditioned in the bottle and has been a big success. Easily the best ale I’ve brewed, although obv far from perfect - I’m pretty happy with it given I’d not brewed for ages.
It seems a wee bit underhopped - I’m not sure if that’s due to something going awry in the recipe or if that’s just my taste for a more bitter ale. I didn’t dry hop in the secondary, so maybe that would have helped. Anyhow, it’s pretty good.
Next up I fancy getting to grips with a Timothy Taylor Landlord pale ale - legendary bevvy from Yorkshire.