Trying to create my first recipe looking for some insight.

[menace2sobriety]

So I found this website that hepls create recipes by adding all the math up for you I think I have created a drinkable recipe but wanted to float it by some other people. It doesnt have any style just something I thought would be interesting. OR maybe it does have a style and someone in here can let me know if i'm wrong. So;

6.5 pounds dark malt extract
2 pounds wheat malt extract
1 pound chocolate malt
.5 english dark crystal malt
.5 pounds english black roasted malts

I will steep those at 150 for 30 mins? good?

when boil starts I will remove from heat and add extracts. (this is what everything else tells me to do. I think it's supposed to help make the extract not burn to bottom?)

I will then bring back to boil and add hops

1 oz Centenial at 60 mins
.5 oz. columbus at 30 mins
.5 oz Mt Hood at flame out

I will aslo add 4 pounds of local honey at 15 mins and will be pitching a cal. ale yeast (from what I have read and heard it is the most forgiving.)

I will let it sit in fermenter till done.

Now the recipe math says it should have an original gravity of 1.062 and a finish of 1.015. I dont think it is taking into consideration the honey. It seems like the beginning gravity would be higher. am I correct? I am also thinking of throwing in some orange peel zest (I thought this might give it a chocolate orange hoppy thing?). When do you think would be the best time (if at all)to do that? While fermenting?

Anyhow, any feedback would be appreciated. Like, is this a good idea? will it work? What could I tweek to make it work? Does it have a style? Well thanks for reading my post and cheers!

[BDawg]

All that dark extract with the chocolate, dark crystal, and black roasted malt is too much.
Change the dark extract to pale extract and you will be good to go.
Besides, you always want to use pale malt, so that in the future when you want to convert your extract batches over
to all grain, you will be able to do so. As it is, you will not because who knows what goes into the dark extract (similar things can be said about Amber extract).
Generally, this is a porter-like grain bill with a bit of wheat thrown in, which will be fine and add to head retention, which is a good thing.

Hop wise, you are using citrusy hops for bittering and early flavor (30 mins is a flavor addition but really doesn't impart a whole lot of flavor, just a lot of bitterness with a touch of flavor). Then, you have a Noble type hop at flame out, which is a beautiful hop but it will tend to be overwhelmed by the roast in this beer.

I'd move the 30 min hops to 15, reverse the Columbus and Centennial so you bitter with the columbus and flavor with the Centennial, then use Amarillo at 5 mins for a tangerine hop note.

The orange peel will be a nice touch, too.

If you can get orange blossom honey, that would make it really nice.

1.062 seems in line for the extract/specialty grains. Hard to say exactly what the honey will boost the gravity to but I'd guess somewhere in the vicinity of 1.080 or so.
Oh, and I'd suggest a neutral yeast like US-05 /WLP001/Wyeast 1056.

HTH-

[menace2sobriety]

Thanks Bdawg So if I add my flavor hops later this will help bring out the flavor more and not as much bitterness? Is this because they dont have as much time in the boil to isomerize? Which I think with that it means you get more bittering and less hop flavor and aroma the longer you boil? is that right? that is kinda the way I understood it.Which would also lead me to believe the reason I should switch the centenial and columbus is because the columbus has a higher AA% and will be able to give more of a good bittering if left in longer and the centenial used at 15 because it has less AA% so it will give off good flavor at that time but not to much? Does that sound like I am on the right track? I have read some stuff on it but I'm no sientist or mathmatician and I dont even know what isomerize means, so alot of it is hard for me to make sense of. So with the pale malt would I just substitute 2 row pale ale malt for the extract? and wheat malt for wheat malt extract when I make the switch to all grain?

[BDawg]

Yes, you pretty much understand it.

The longer the hops are in the boil, the more they isomerize and therefore the more bitterness is extracted. Also, aroma is the most volatile, so it boils out first, then flavor, so that's why you add early hops to get bitterness, medium term hops to get flavor, and short term hops to get aroma.
As far as moving this recipe to AG, the pale malt extract will become 2 row, but the wheat extract will be replaced by a combo of wheat malt and pilsner malt. You have to cbeck the manufacturer for their mix. Briess, for example, mixes 60% wheat and 40% pilsner. Others may be 50/50, but those are the 2 most common mixes. In all honesty, you won't be able to tell the difference between a 60/40 or 50/50 mix, but it's just good to know for sure so that you can be precise.

HTH-

[spiderwrangler]

Keep in mind that Bdawg was initially suggesting that you use pale EXTRACT instead of the dark (which already contains highly kilned malts), and use your own specialty malts (the highly kilned, caramel, etc). Don't worry about converting to all grain until you are ready for that step. His point is well taken that if you are formulating extract recipes based on lighter extracts as the majority of your fermentables, this can often be straight converted to some form of base malt, but that a dark extract would convert to base plus some unknown amount of chocolate, roasted, or black malts.

Isomerization just refers to a rearrangement of a molecule. It will still have all the same parts, just be shaped differently... you can kind of think of it like Transformersâ„¢ changing from car to robot... nothing got added or removed, it just got rearranged. In beer, we are talking about the isomerization of the alpha acids that contribute to bitterness. The isomerization comes about through the heating during the boil, and as you said, the longer you boil, the more you will isomerize. Isomerization of alpha acids will make the more more soluble in the wort, and may affect the way we perceive them.

As far as Bdawgs advice on switching around the hop additions, Columbus is often used as a bittering hop, and is not as highly valued for the flavor and aroma contributions (which are separate molecules from the alpha acids that give bitterness), where Centennial is more commonly used to add hop flavors and aromas.

[menace2sobriety]

Cheers guys thanks for helping make sense of all this. Spierwrangler love the transformer comparison. So as I read the hops section of my book again I see where it states that the alpha acids and Hop oils that contribute to auroma and flavor are two different things. As I was re reading I also noticed it says you can get a better auroma charachter from whole hops. So I was thinking of using whole hops for amarillo and pellets for Columbus and Centenial. Also should I add a first wort hop addition of amarillo when I initially put water on burner or is this something reserved for all grain?

[spiderwrangler]

First wort hopping is typically reserved for all grain, but if you are steeping specialty grains, I think you could go ahead and toss some in...

[madchemist83]

Just want to add that u want to add ur extracts towards the end of boil with 15 min left so flame doesn't scorch it. Also consider using only one type of extract for now, I mixed wheat and light dme and beer came out tasting weird, like it was something between styles. Not that it tasted weird but I might have liked it better with just one type of dme