Picaroon's Dark and Stormy Night

[fakr]

No offense taken at all Matt and you're more than welcome to post anytime, like everyone else is.

Back to your grain bill...

Have you ever calculated your mash efficiency to get a rough idea of how much grain you need to hit a certain gravity at a certain volume?

To hit 1.051 at the grain mass you specified, you'd only be getting 41% efficiency....that's pretty darn low.
If you're really unsure, you might want to start with 60% as a guess and calculate your grain bill from that...if it's higher, it's always easier to dilute your boil down to the gravity you're aiming for.

There are a ton of efficiency calculators out there, but here's one just in case:

http://www.brewersfriend.com/brewhouse-efficiency/

[Jake]

All I can say is that if you want that picaroons twang, you gota use ringwood ... either way this looks like it would be a great beer with any of the 3 yeasts mentioned, but I'd suggest ringwood if you're looking to clone

[matt_wolf]

To be perfectly honest, I could do without the Ringwood twang in this one. I'll have fresh s-04 slurry, so I think I'll use that.
I promise to post results- I'm looking forward to being able to contribute here, rather than just keep asking newbie questions.

If the stars align, I should be able to brew this one on the 28th.



I havn't calculated efficiency. I'm sure I'm way low. Brewing once or twice a year, a couple sacks of malt lasts quite a while, so I havn't been too concerned with the finer points- more with just trying to make good beer.  Hoping to change all this in the next little while.

[fakr]

I'd recommend taking the 3-4 minutes it takes to fill out the efficiency form on the link I sent you before doing brews.  It really helps you hit close to your mark on original gravity.  before I started using it, I would literally hit anywhere between 10 points above or below what I was aiming for.

I remember my buddies used to watch me brew and ask what the alcohol % was going to be in this batch, and I'd say "oh, somewhere between 5% and 7%...hehe!    Now I'm pretty much bang on my targets as I know what my typical efficiency is.

To keep things even more on target, I will go as far as to add water to the boil to lower a gravity that is too high, or add a portion of light dry malt extract to add to gravity that is too low.

[HappyHax0r]

Wow, I'm filin that link away for later Fakr, thanks .

[fakr]

No problem!

[matt_wolf]

thanks for the link- lots of useful stuff there!

[Ian Grant]

Even if you use ringwood you won't have the picaroons flavor.  I've brewed with ringwood many time even using 3-4 generations still no pics flavor.

[Richard]

Theirs does seem to have a stronger diacetyl signature, in addition to being a little bit twangy. It's possible that their profile is due to the pitching rates involved, nutrients, oxygenation, or a dozen other factors that govern the way a yeast spits out flavour.

If I recall from the tour - they use a 30 micron filter. So long as he didn't mean point-30, that means there should still be yeast in the bottles. Hell if someone were to surreptitiously take a sample from the next cask fermented batch we could get it into the library and settle this once and for all

[Chris Craig]

Didn't Kyle culture yeast from a bottle of Best Bitter?

[Richard]

I assume that never made it to the yeast library, as I've not heard any mention of it being there.

[Kyle]

it was actually fairly easy to culture the yeast from the best bitter, so I / we can do it again, I'm sure. That one never made it to the library due to me forgetting about it. Pic's uses a 30micron filter, so culturing is certainy achievable again.