Hello everyone,
So I'm about to start on my 4th and 5th one gallon batches. My first batch was BBS's Everyday IPA kit, and my second and third were a Honey Grapefruit Ale and Peach Cobbler Ale, which I got the recipes for out of Brooklyn Brew Shop's "Beer Making Book", and then just purchased all of the raw ingredients to make them. For my next two batches I decided to purchase two pre-assembled 1 gallon kits from one of the only homebrew stores within 10 hours of my home. One is a Honey Porter, and the other is a Blonde Ale. However, upon opening up the kits, I found that the "instructions / recipes" included with them are pretty much the most worthless things I have ever seen, giving no specific amounts of hops to add at any of the hop additions, no expected OG or FG readings, and are just all around terrible. They came with 1 oz bags of hops, however I know from reading through a lot of 1 gallon recipes that you should only ever be using 0.2 - 0.5 oz of hops for that small of a batch.
So instead of contacting the homebrew store and asking them to give me better specifics for these kits, I decided this would be my first foray into customizing existing recipes to make my own (hopefully with some helpful suggestions).
So the Honey Porter came with a 1 oz bag of East Kent Golding hops and a Nottingham Ale yeast, and the Blonde came with a 1 oz bag of Cascades and a Safale US-05 dry ale yeast. I also still have a couple of different packages of hops left over from my last couple brews, with almost full ounce packages of Centennial, Columbus, and Saaz hops to work with if I choose.
So my question is, does anyone have any suggestions for what types of hops I should use, how much per addition, and when I should do the additions for either both or one of these two beers? I will do my own research into this as well, and try to find some other similar recipes that will help me in making a decision, but you guys' input on this would be awesome as well!
Thanks!
So I'm about to start on my 4th and 5th one gallon batches. My first batch was BBS's Everyday IPA kit, and my second and third were a Honey Grapefruit Ale and Peach Cobbler Ale, which I got the recipes for out of Brooklyn Brew Shop's "Beer Making Book", and then just purchased all of the raw ingredients to make them. For my next two batches I decided to purchase two pre-assembled 1 gallon kits from one of the only homebrew stores within 10 hours of my home. One is a Honey Porter, and the other is a Blonde Ale. However, upon opening up the kits, I found that the "instructions / recipes" included with them are pretty much the most worthless things I have ever seen, giving no specific amounts of hops to add at any of the hop additions, no expected OG or FG readings, and are just all around terrible. They came with 1 oz bags of hops, however I know from reading through a lot of 1 gallon recipes that you should only ever be using 0.2 - 0.5 oz of hops for that small of a batch.
So instead of contacting the homebrew store and asking them to give me better specifics for these kits, I decided this would be my first foray into customizing existing recipes to make my own (hopefully with some helpful suggestions).
So the Honey Porter came with a 1 oz bag of East Kent Golding hops and a Nottingham Ale yeast, and the Blonde came with a 1 oz bag of Cascades and a Safale US-05 dry ale yeast. I also still have a couple of different packages of hops left over from my last couple brews, with almost full ounce packages of Centennial, Columbus, and Saaz hops to work with if I choose.
So my question is, does anyone have any suggestions for what types of hops I should use, how much per addition, and when I should do the additions for either both or one of these two beers? I will do my own research into this as well, and try to find some other similar recipes that will help me in making a decision, but you guys' input on this would be awesome as well!
Thanks!