Hop Help Please

[megadave5000]

Hello everyone, my wife is just starting her third trimester of our first child, and as such I am trying to get in as many brew days as possible between now and our due date. I've been throwing together recipes here and there, most of them smaller batches, and I have wound up with the following list of pretty random hops. I would love it if anyone could suggest a good hop schedule and malt bill for 3 to 5 gallons:

1.25 centennial
1 east kent
.75 galena
.6 willamette
.6 Ahtanum
.6 summit
.5 warrior
.25 hersbrucker

I am thinking that I shouldn't "over think" this and just mix these all up in a bowl and add 1 oz at 60 min, 1 oz at 20 min, 2 oz at 5 min and dry hop with the remaining in secondary. Does this sound totally ridiculous? I would like to use all of them up so as to not have to throw away good ingredients. To figure the IBUs you would just take the weighted average of the hops and use that in the hop addition calculations, yes?

also, I didn't have a lot of ideas on the malt bill using this mix em up strategy. Anyone want to take a shot at a suggestion? I am not trying to enter and win any competitions but was thinking about a simple, dry malt bill to showcase the totally random hop assortment. Oh yes, I am an all-grain brewer.

I really appreciate your suggestions, thanks in advance!!

 

[Pappers_]

What styles of beer do you want to make?

 

[megadave5000]

What styles of beer do you want to make?

Hi,

Well probably just some kind of pale ale or IPA. I am totally open to suggestions. Earlier today I calculated the weighted average AA of all the hops to be 9.5% if I mixed then together if that helps.

Dave

 

[kingwood-kid]

Mix the Galena & Warrior; that will give you enough IBUs to make a 5 gallon IPA or two 3.5G Pales. For the IPA, you can mix the rest in a bowl and use 1/2 at flameout and 1/2 in a dry-hop. If you want 2 beers, I'd Americanize one with the centennial, ahtanum, summit and hersbrucker, and English-ize the other with the EKG and willamette. A grain bill along the lines of 6.5 lbs 2-row and 6oz Victory would accomplish your goals (for the pale ale, I'd go around 14lb and 8-10oz for the IPA.

 

[megadave5000]

Mix the Galena & Warrior; that will give you enough IBUs to make a 5 gallon IPA or two 3.5G Pales. For the IPA, you can mix the rest in a bowl and use 1/2 at flameout and 1/2 in a dry-hop. If you want 2 beers, I'd Americanize one with the centennial, ahtanum, summit and hersbrucker, and English-ize the other with the EKG and willamette. A grain bill along the lines of 6.5 lbs 2-row and 6oz Victory would accomplish your goals (for the pale ale, I'd go around 14lb and 8-10oz for the IPA.

Kingwood,

Thanks a ton I think that suggestion helped me out. I will use the warrior and galena for bittering in a 5 gallon batch, mix up the rest, toss half at 0 min and the rest in secondary. Definitely going with the 14 lbs plus victory malt bill. I will brew this in April looks like and post how it turned out.

 

[aiptasia]

Check the recipes section for the Sculpin IPA clone. A lot of the hops you have there would work for a similar beer. I'd use your:

• galena, summit and warrior as bittering additions
• ahtanum, centennial and EKG for flavoring additions and
• centennial, EKG, wilamette and hallertau for a hops steep or dry hop

 

[megadave5000]

I want to follow up on this. After doing some more thinking, I decided to brew a big, barleywine style ale instead of an IPA. My wife is due with our first in a week so my thinking was that I should brew something that could be left alone for some time. My IPAs always taste a bit better to me when they're between 8-10 weeks old, but that's just me. I didn't want to feel pressure to guzzle down 5 gallons with a new infant in the house.

I used the same hops as above, but I brewed up a 4 gallon batch with the following malt bill:
15 lbs 2-row
0.5 lbs Crystal 80
0.4 lbs Victory
0.2 lbs Special B
0.2 lbs Flaked Wheat

Mash 60 min at 150 (should have probably gone longer)

Used the Galena, Warrior, and Summit at 60 min - everything else at flameout.

I was shooting for 1.110 OG and 1.03-ish for FG using WLP051 for a change of pace. I missed by a lot, hit 1.103 OG. The fermentation stalled out around 1.040 after two weeks so I dumped in some Nottingham and got it down to 1.030 after another two. After two weeks it also smelled pretty...umm...bad and didn't taste all that good either.

I decided to bottle it anyway last night after 3.5 weeks in primary. Man, what a disaster. Since I have new baby stuff everywhere around my house, I had to bottle in a different location than normal. This caused me to forget some things like the proper tube, the spare paper towels, etc. so I was constantly walking back n forth to fetch the right equipment.

I also am 100% sure that I saw bubbles going through the siphon and tubing when racking from the fermentor to the bottling bucket. I have no idea why - unless there's a leak in the auto-siphon because I've never seen that before, so I probably somehow oxidized the entire batch.

I also broke my bottling wand just as I was starting to bottle by accidentally dropping and stepping on it. So I had just under 4 gallons of disgusting smelling/tasting beer sitting in a bottling bucket with no wand. I was close to calling it quits and sending it all down the drain, but I pressed onward. I just stuck the tube into the empty bottles and used the valve on my bottling bucket to stop/start the flow of beer, being as careful as I could not to overfill. It took a couple of bottles but I got the hang of it, I won't lie I had a few overflows. Also some of my bottles are over filled and some are under filled, not much I could do at 9pm on a Wednesday with freshly primed ale in a bucket in my basement with no wand. Either finish the job or pour it. I was close to quitting but you never know, right?

We'll see what happens, I'll post an update later in the summer/fall when I crack one open. Honestly I'm not expecting much at all - the aroma was undoubtedly the worst beer I've ever smelled and the taste wasn't far behind. I'm 100% sure that I oxidized the beer at various points. I forgot to stir the bottling bucket after filling up a couple six-packs, but resumed towards the end, so maybe some beers will be gushers and others will be flat. It's sure to be a surprise all around. Normally my bottling sessions go like clockwork but this one was the biggest pain that I can possibly imagine.

Thanks for the posters above with their recipe suggestions, I know I went in my own direction but thought this deserved a response. It was a complete comedy of errors!!

Dave