Help converting extract kit to all-grain

[BigDog]

My last extract brew before I switched to all-grain seems to be a tremendous hit with the Mrs. and she's asked for more (which is amazing, she doesn't like beer at all, well.. used to not..)

It was the brewers best altbier kit...

The kit included:

3.3lbs plain lt. malt extract
3.3lbs plain amber malt extract
12oz crushed crystal malt (60L)
1 oz crushed black patent
1 oz cluster for bittering (pellets)
1/2oz hallerteau for finishing (pellets)
And dry brewers yeast (I think it was nottingham ale yeast)

What I'm thinking for an all-grain 5g clone would be:

7lbs 2 row german pils
1.5lbs crystal malt (60L)
1oz american black patent

1 oz cluster (7%AA) 60 minutes
1/2 oz Hallertau Mittelfruh (4.5%) last 5 mins of boil

White labs WLP036 Dusseldorf Alt.

According to beer tools pro, this should give me an OG of 1.045, FG of 1.011, color at 15.6SRM (which looks close to what we got), and about 27.42% IBU

Am I close?? Any changes, recomendations or since she likes the kit, should I just re-brew the extract?

Thanks in advance!

[Pseudolus]

Well, it kinda depends. Your recipe does look like it'll get you in the ballpark at least.

When I enter your original extract recipe into promash, I get an OG of 1.053 for a 5 gallon batch and an SRM of ~14 (I told the program to use Alexanders LME for it's estimate because it was the first one listed - other brands might have slightly different color). If I take out the extract, and bump the crystal to 1.5 lbs as you suggest, I need to add in 8 lbs of pale malt to get the gravity back to 1.053. That's assuming an efficiency of 75% - if you expect to be lower than that you'll need more pale malt, and vice versa. That also puts my estimated color at 15.2, or just a touch darker than my original very rough color estimate of the extract recipe.

The bigger question is that we (or I, at least) don't know exactly what grains were used to make that 3.3 lbs of amber extract that you're trying to replicate, so we don't know what specialty grains to add in. My personal feeling is that 1.5 lbs of crystal sounds like rather a lot for an altbier. If I were you, I'd hunt around for some other all-grain altbier recipes and see what amounts are typical.

http://www.tastybrew.com/brews/view/18

As a start, here^^^'s a link to Denny Conn's "Milo's Alt" recipe, which I think has won a number of awards. It has just half a pound of crystal, a bit of crystal, and a whole lot of Munich malt. I have no idea if this is typical or if Denny's beer is anything like the one you want to replicate.

http://www.beerdujour.com/Recipes/Jamil ... f_Alt.html

Here ^^^'s Jamil's altbier. 3/4 lb of crystal (caramunich, actually), a touch of carafa, and a couple pounds each of vienna and munich. He also uses pilsner as his basemalt instead of pale. Probably for reasons involving the word "biscuity" or "bready".

Hmm. I'm thinking, if I were doing your recipe, I might leave that crystal down at the original 0.5 lb and toss in a couple lbs of munich, then adjust the pale (or pilsner) amount to whatever I needed to get the estimated OG to the low 1.05s.

PS - Can you tell I'm trying to avoid doing my real work tonight? Hope this helps.

[Lars]

I was thinking about adding some munich in place of a bit of the pilsner also. It'll get you a bit more of a malty characteristic.

Your conversion will get you in the ballpark, but more importantly, how did the beer you are trying to replicate taste? Is it dry? malty? etc... This may be more of a guide for tweaking the recipe.

[BigDog]

Thanks guys! It was definitely a big help...

The extract was coopers if I recall correctly (and if it helps). I'll take a loot at Denny's and Jamil's recipes today.

The beer finished with a slightly fruity aroma, light hop smell and taste, and dry ... not a ton of mouth body, but some. Definitely a drinking beer.


Now this is darn interesting, I put into BeerTools Pro the 3.3lbs light and 3.3lbs amber and my base OG is 1.047 (don't ya love how they all don't quite matchup, the software that is...)


I'm hoping that it's the style the LOML likes and not that particular beer...

[Brewby]

Have you read this yet?

http://home.elp.rr.com/brewbeer/extract/pres.pdf

It helped me a lot.

[BigDog]

Thanks a ton, and no I have not read that yet... but will be reading tonight...!

Have you read this yet?

http://home.elp.rr.com/brewbeer/extract/pres.pdf

It helped me a lot.