Chubby Cherub Recipe Advice

[Arthur Twosheds]

Hi Y'all,

 

Hope everyone is doing well and looking forward to another year of brewing?

 

I am after a bit of advice on the above recipe posted in the Coopers Ale recipes section.

 

The last 5 or so brews I have put down all contained a mini mash, or steeped speciality grains to add a flavour and richness that I have found is lacking in kit brews I had started with.

 

Looking at the recipe for the Chubby Cherub brew, it calls for 1.5k of LME and 1.5k of AME, plus 500g of LDME (to use in the hop boil / steep). I was thinking of switching out the LDME for steeped real grains (basically doing a mini mash).

 

I have 800g of Cara Malt left over from the last brew that I was considering using. Just wondering if there is a guideline to switching out LDME for real grains i.e. Use 700g Cara Pils steeped at 60c for 60 mins will replace 500g LDME.

 

Your thoughts and suggestions are welcomed.

[Otto Von Blotto]

If you're going to replace the light DME with grains, you need to use base malt grains, not specialty grains, as that (base malt) is what the DME is made from. Just a standard pale ale malt would be fine, but you will have to mash these grains, which is essentially a controlled temperature steep. I'd probably go for 60-90 minutes at around 64-65C. I'm not sure of the conversion rate from dry malt to actual malt grains, though, as I went straight from extracts to all grain. Probably use something like 800g-1kg of the pale malt grains in about 3L water to replace the 500g dry malt, then remove the grains and rinse them with another 2L of hot water, and boil the resultant wort for the hop additions. Someone will be able to either confirm or correct that figure I stated, though.

 

800g of Caramalt would be far too sweet given there's already amber extract in there, in fact, it would be far too sweet regardless really. Probably a similar result with Carapils. Plus these won't really ferment so you'll end up with a very chewy beer with a rather high FG.

[Arthur Twosheds]

Spot on Otto, thanks mate. The base malt was exactly what I needed to know. I will steep 800g of pale malt as you suggest then sparge & boil for the hop additions, I can't see much going wrong here, should still be a nice little drop! I will let you all know in about 4 weeks.

 

Pete.