Hello,
I’m still a rookie home brewer for sure with maybe 12-15, 5 gal extract brews under my belt. I just brewed Kama Citra for the first time and tried the dip hop technique. I dip hopped the flame out and the dry hop additions and followed the supplied instructions. I’ll be leaving it in the primary bucket till it’s time to bottle.
I’m thinking ahead to preparing a game plan for bottling in about 4 weeks. I’m planning to cold crash a couple days before bottling. I also plan to use a couple different hop bags to strain into the bottling bucket to catch some more particles.
Maybe I should strain into bottling bucket first then cold crash that rather than the primary bucket?
Any suggestions would be appreciated to minimize suspended particles in the beer. Thx!
I would cold crash to get as much to settle as possible. When it comes to straining I would place the hop bag on the siphon vs the siphon tubing to limit O2 uptake. This way, if you still find quite a bit of hop debris you could cold crash it again.
And too much racking will lead to off flavors… I realize you’ll be bottling so the secondary fermenting in the bottle might reduce/eliminate oxygen… Things to ponder
Sneezles61
Update: I’ve never brewed Kama Citra before and was excited to tasted a couple from this brew yesterday. I was expecting to experience a strong citra aroma due to dip hopping, but I’d say it was OK to maybe a little weak in my opinion.
Carbonation after two weeks was normal to a little light. Overall its a good IPA and I probably was expecting too much.
But I have a question… I’ve only brewed 5 gal extract kits and I feel like all of the ales I’ve brewed seemed to be lacking a kind of crisp presentation? (I don’t know how to describe it in brewing lingo).
I want to say they seemed… malty? Is that typical of extract brewing? I researched malty beer and found lots of things can contribute to this. On this batch of Kama Citra, I used 1 gallon jugs of store bought spring water. Other times I typically use filtered tap water. The filter has one sediment type filter and two charcoal filters. They do a good job of getting rid of the strong chlorine order of straight tap water.
Anyway, any thoughts or comments are greatly appreciated.
oxidation- hop forward beers are extremely susceptible to this and will mute the hops. Look into ways to successfully rack beer to avoid O2 uptake
partial boils- not sure about your process but higher OG worts will prevent isomerization of hops. When doing partial boil the wort is significantly higher as you then top off to 5gals thus diluting the wort.
FG- it’s well known that extract beers finish with a higher FG as they are produced to reach maximum efficiency, not necessarily fermentability. You could try ‘drying’ out some extract kits by adding some simple sugars to the mix
I recognize you’re a relatively new brewer. Get your process down and produce repeatable results. Then you can start worrying about things like water. In regards to your extract, the water profile is set by the producer. Be careful adding too many ‘salts’ to reach a certain profile. Without knowing that profile things go go awry quickly.
I like your propensity to experiment and all but hit your basics first. Then dabble in ‘experiments’ or ‘advanced’ techniques. Otherwise, it’s difficult for us to pin point if it’s a process issue, an ingredient issue, etc.
