First Recipe, Is This Hop Schedule/Recipe Good?

[No_Nrg]

This is my first attempt at making my own recipe. I went over to Beer Tools and plugged it in, I'm going for a Pale Ale. I'm a fan of Simcoe and Citra hop flavors thought they would blend well together.

Beer Tools has me estimated IBUs at 43, but am hesitant on the hop schedule. Here's the full recipe I have made, any critique/opinions before I try brewing this would be appreciated.

10.5 lbs 2-Row Brewers Malt; Briess
0.60 lbs American Caramel 20°L
0.60 lbs 2-Row Caramel Malt 40L; Briess
0.5 oz Simcoe® (Pellets, 13.00 %AA) boiled 55 min.
0.4 oz Simcoe® (Pellets, 13.00 %AA) boiled 20 min.
0.5 oz Citra™ (Pellets, 12.00 %AA) boiled 5 min.
1 tsp. Irish Moss
Yeast : White Labs WLP001 California Ale

Planning a 150-155F mash and 60 minute boil

 

[SteveHeff]

Have you thought about moving the simcoe to 1 min and the citra to flameout? How bitter vs how aromatic are you shooting for? I've always had good luck sticking to late hop additions in my IPAs. I almost always have an addition at or around 60 minutes, but the rest of my hops usually come within the last 5 minutes of the boil. Especially when you're using Simcoe and Citra. I really like those two late in the boil.

 

[Skiffy]

I think you are way short on the hop flavor/aroma. With pale ale style (lower abv/lower ibu), and using high alpha acid hops, I find it best to "hop burst", and get the most out of your hops. Adding all of your hops after 20 minutes, you can still achieve plenty of bitterness and also get the most flavor out of them. Right now your first single addition is a bit wasted.

I think you would want 3-5oz of hops in the boil maybe? Maybe 2 oz for dry hop? It depends what you want out of the recipe. I would check out some tried and true examples here or some kit recipes on north brewer or the like

 

[No_Nrg]

I think you are way short on the hop flavor/aroma. With pale ale style (lower abv/lower ibu), and using high alpha acid hops, I find it best to "hop burst", and get the most out of your hops. Adding all of your hops after 20 minutes, you can still achieve plenty of bitterness and also get the most flavor out of them. Right now your first single addition is a bit wasted.

I think you would want 3-5oz of hops in the boil maybe? Maybe 2 oz for dry hop? It depends what you want out of the recipe. I would check out some tried and true examples here or some kit recipes on north brewer or the like

You mean like wait until 20 minutes into the boil and then add all the Simcoe at once for a 40 minute boil?

 

[Skiffy]

You mean like wait until 20 minutes into the boil and then add all the Simcoe at once for a 40 minute boil?

No, add all your hops at 20 minutes or less left in the boil is my suggestion. Hop times are always meant to be read as time spent in the boil, mainly I imagine so that the intent of a hop schedule is independent of total boil time.

I'd maybe put 1oz at 20 min for most of your IBUs. Some at 10 for the rest of your IBUs and some more at knock out. Maybe 2-3oz of hops all together ... 4 or 5oz would be pretty aggressive but certainly not bad, especially if you choose not to dry hop.

 

[inflictor-of-grimness]

Personal opinion: use less caramel malt. Probably around half of what you have now or even less. I do no caramel malt in my pale ales and ipas, but even if you want the caramel, 1.2 lbs is too much.
Also I agree with people saying to do more late hops. Also do more hops in general (keep ibus down though.) You will not make a very good pale ale with less than 2 oz of hops. Use flameout hops and I would say even dry hops.

 

[kh54s10]

Personal opinion: The caramel amount looks good. A little will give some mouthfeel and head. I do agree with making later hop additions, maybe even a little more hops. And/or some as dry hops.

I would lean to a 148 to 150 degree mash..

 

[Skiffy]

I'm also not a huge fan of crystal malts in pale ale, but certainly acceptable and done on the commercial level. 10% is where you are at now and I wouldn't go any higher. ~5% is maybe more typical?
I agree that mashing at 155 and using that much crystal might make the beer too sweet if the ibus are kept down, but I wouldn't go as low as 148 either. You might end up with hop juice using an American yeast like that. Low 150s should suffice.

 

[No_Nrg]

thanks for your tips guys, based on your suggestions I've made some adjustments:

• halved the carmel malts
• upped the hop amount and adjusted timings

10.5 lbs 2-Row Brewers Malt; Briess
0.30 lbs American Caramel 20°L
0.30 lbs 2-Row Caramel Malt 40L; Briess
1.5 oz Simcoe® (Pellets, 13.00 %AA) boiled 20 min.
1 oz Citra™ (Pellets, 12.00 %AA) boiled 5 min.
1 oz Citra™ (Pellets, 12.00 %AA) boiled 1 min.
1 tsp. Irish Moss
Yeast : ???

This puts me at 3.5oz hops and still within the 41 IBU range, should allow for more flavor extraction.

Reading about the the CA Ale yeast I was using it accentuates the hop flavors, could this end bad with the high alpha hops I'm using? Any alternate suggestions?

Thanks again for all the help.

 

[Skiffy]

Looks like a solid recipe to me. It's definitely a good thing to ask for people's opinions to set you in the right direction, but don't forget you also learn a lot from pushing boundaries and messing around! My advice for recipe building is to do your research and then keep it simple so you can actually identify impacts of different components.

For the yeast, CA yeast is def a good choice as would any standard English yeast. American ale yeast will finish drier (lower fg), cleaner yeast flavor which favors hop flavors over malt flavors. An English yeast will finish with a higher fg, accentuate the malt slightly more and will provide some fruity esters that could work with (or perhaps even detract from) the fruity hop flavors. They will make slightly different beers and both should be tastey as the hops are the focus here. I wouldn't shy away from the CA yeast, most commercial IPAs are using something similar.

 

[Foosier]

You might want to hop stand that 1 minute addition. especially if you let the wort cool to 180 first. Adds quite a bit of aroma and flavor with little bitterness.

I did this on an IPA and the effect was very nice. (Granted, I also dropped about 4 ounces in for the flameout addition.)

 

[No_Nrg]

Looks like a solid recipe to me. It's definitely a good thing to ask for people's opinions to set you in the right direction, but don't forget you also learn a lot from pushing boundaries and messing around! My advice for recipe building is to do your research and then keep it simple so you can actually identify impacts of different components.

For the yeast, CA yeast is def a good choice as would any standard English yeast. American ale yeast will finish drier (lower fg), cleaner yeast flavor which favors hop flavors over malt flavors. An English yeast will finish with a higher fg, accentuate the malt slightly more and will provide some fruity esters that could work with (or perhaps even detract from) the fruity hop flavors. They will make slightly different beers and both should be tastey as the hops are the focus here. I wouldn't shy away from the CA yeast, most commercial IPAs are using something similar.

For sure, being my first recipe I just wanted to be sure. I've brewed other people's tried and true recipes, but never made one myself. I'm going to brew as above with the American Ale yeast and take a 5 gallon chance.

Thanks again for the help! :rockin:

 

[No_Nrg]

You might want to hop stand that 1 minute addition. especially if you let the wort cool to 180 first. Adds quite a bit of aroma and flavor with little bitterness.

I did this on an IPA and the effect was very nice. (Granted, I also dropped about 4 ounces in for the flameout addition.)

By "hop stand" do you mean leave the 1 minute addition in as a flameout? I was thinking of trying something like that, BeerTools just didn't have a flameout option I could find.

 

[m00ps]

hopstanding/whirpooling is when you add the hops after flameout and let it steep for a while at just below boiling temps. IME this is the key to making great hoppy beers as a homebrewer. For a 5gal batch I routinely use 10oz or more after flameout with fantastic results. Online tools dont really have a calculation for the IBUs contributed, but I find it nearly negligible. I never bother with IBUs though. You get a hint of bitterness from these hops, but ive found it pretty much impossible to overdo it.

 

[No_Nrg]

I need to revive this thread with a new question.

I recently started using Brewers Friend Recipe Generator. I plugged the recipe I had made using Beertools and I'm getting a variation in my final IBU rating between the two:

Beertools: 40.8 IBU (using the Beertools Hop Utilization Algorithm)
Brewers Friend: 67.85 IBU (using Tinseth Hop Utilization Algorithm)

If they were within 5-10 IBU of each other I wouldn't worry, but that is the difference between a Pale Ale, which is my target, and an IPA. Do the algorithms differ that much or am I using Brewers Friend wrong?

Here's the recipe for reference:
10.5 lbs 2-Row Brewers Malt; Briess
0.30 lbs American Caramel 20°L
0.30 lbs 2-Row Caramel Malt 40L; Briess
1.5 oz Simcoe® (Pellets, 13.00 %AA) boiled 20 min.
2 oz Citra™ (Pellets, 12.00 %AA) boiled 5 min.
2 oz Citra™ (Pellets, 12.00 %AA) boiled 1 min.

 

[Bosh]

Remember even if you`re not boiling the hops for an hour you still want to boil the wort for an hour to boil off nasty stuff like DMS precursors or you`ll have a cooked corn taste to the beer.

 

[No_Nrg]

Remember even if you`re not boiling the hops for an hour you still want to boil the wort for an hour to boil off nasty stuff like DMS precursors or you`ll have a cooked corn taste to the beer.

Noted, boil time was planned for standard 60 minutes.

 

[Skiffy]

No something is wrong. I'm not home to verify but assuming you input the boil times and alpha acids correctly the only other variable would be gravity of the wort, which could be trickier to figure out. Also there is a ten percent boost (I think) if you are using pellets over cone, which could account for some of the difference depending on how the calcs are set up.

 

[Soyben]

I have gotten a wide range in the IBU calculation of the free online calculators as well. I suggest to plug in one of the previous tried and true recipes you have done before and see how the calculations compare.

 

[m00ps]

Personally I dont fret about IBUs. There's no way of knowing how much the %aa labeled on the hops you got has diminished or how accurate it is. Plus the whole argument over how much IBUs you get from hopstands. Also there's so much more than IBUs to characterize the actual perceived bitterness by your tongue. The malt character, yeast character, last thing you ate, and even if you like have a cold all effect it

 

[Skiffy]

That all may be true, but I have to disagree with your suggestion. IBUs are quantifiable and until you have lots of experience, it's all you have to go by. It's his first recipe. What if he likes the bitterness and grain bill but wants to change up the hop schedule to include different hops or whatever? He should be shooting for a similar IBU range and tweaking from there. Most people would say 40 and 70 IBUs is quite different.