Hello and questions...for a newb

[merc82]

Hello all,

First post here and I have got many questions.... I am sorry if I didn't search hard enough on a few things but could use a little help. A little backstory... been an avid craft beer drinker for a few years and woke up one Sunday a couple of weeks back and decided I wanted to try my hand at brewing my own beer. My girlfriend and I decided to do a little field trip to the Funky Buddha brewery store in Boca Raton that day to pick some homebrew supplies and gain a little knowledge. Ended up picking up a starter kit and some base ingredients to make an extract mango ipa. Funny thing is... I ended up talking to a few folks there coming in to buy things and have a breakfast beer that I never got an actual recipe...and left. The ingredients I picked up are as follows:

6.6 Lbs of Breiss CBW Pilsen light extract
1/2 of grains... to steep..
2 oz altogether of CTZ hops all seperated to boil at deferrent times for flavor and finish
1.5 oz of centenial hops for bittering

A yeast packet and some other odds and ends

I have a good bit of mango from this year's mango season in my freezer I would like to ferment for a bit as well.

Now, I had picked up and have been reading "how to brew" by John J. Palmer, it seems to be a pretty good resource and I haven't finished it, but have learned a good bit. But still need a little advice... my main question being, what is the shelf life of these hop pellets? I am a bit concerened, the guy at the store said they would be ok to keep in the fridge until I got to them. Unfortunately, I just went though hurricane Irma, being in South Florida. I lost power for a few days. My fridge also didn't seal 100% a couple of weeks ago. I have read if you can smell the hops when you open your fridge if they are stored in there, they are not stored properly... well it has been well over a month now. Should I ditch them and start new? Is there anything I should do to change the recipe as well? Thanks for the advice.

 

[PADave]

If sealed up, your hops should be fine. In the future, keep them in the freezer.

 

[magno]

Ditto what PADave said... If you cannot smell your hops they should be fine, but keeping them in the freezer (assuming the power is on ) is your best bet.

As far as changing the recipe... you mention that the hops that you have are already portioned out for the various additions, but you also mention that you left without a real recipe. Do you know which portion of your hops are intended for which part of the boil? If not, post the weights that you have them broken up into, and we can probably figure out something that will work well.

I haven't ever used mango in a beer, but my experience with fruit in general is to let the grains ferment out first, and then add the fruit. I do it that way in order to keep as much fruit flavor from blowing off with a vigorous fermentation.

It might not be what you want to hear, but I would save the mangoes for a less hop-forward brew than the IPA. This would make the mango flavor more prominent, and would also allow you to go through a fermentation cycle to get the hang of things a bit before adding in extra variables. Just a suggestion.

 

[merc82]

Cool, thanks for the input. Next time I will keep them in the freezer. They sure made my fridge smell great!!!

The breakdown of the bags are as follows

1.5 oz cetennial hops - labeled at 60 minutes
.5 oz of ctz - labeled at 30 minutes
.5 oz of ctz- labeled at 15 minutes
1 oz of ctz- labeled at 5 minutes

Fella said it would create a more "session style" pale ale.

 

[Lefou]

Usually the "session" reference is made toward ABV level and not your hop perception. Session beers are supposedly more drinkable when they have a comparatively lower alcohol content.
I might be wrong, but less fermentables can yield a less alcoholic brew that is independent of your hopping rate. Hops, in my opinion, has less to do with sessionability than your grain choices.
Not trying to be a beer prig, but the context threw me off a bit. Can't link to the prig reference but if you do a Wiki search on the term, you'll get my point and maybe a chuckle or two.

 

[merc82]

So I brewed this a few weeks back. I based most of the process off what I learned out of the book and Youtube. Bought a "Brew Bag" since I was keeping it in my apartment, great piece of equiptment BTW. I am now three weeks in. I bottled last week and they have been conditioning for a week. ABW came in around 5%. I was a lttle leary of the carbonation, after reading a little about some failures. Decided to put one in the fridge yesterday and have a sneek peek at the end of the day. What I found was fantastic... for me, lol! My beer had great carbonation, a nice caramel color, it smelled of caramel and faint essence of ctz hops. It kind of tasted like an english bitter/pale ale. Very refreshing. Interesting to see what another week of conditioning will do. Definetly not the most mind blowing beer, but it was exiting for me, who doubted everything from the get go. I got a good crash course for this and am now just trying to figure out what I want to do next.

Oh... I forgot to add, I did not add the mango, decided to keep it simple.

 

[seatazzz]

Sounds like your first attempt was a success, congratulations! There are some great beginner recipes in How to Brew, you may want to try one of them. Watch out though, this hobby is highly addicting!

 

[RM-MN]

Sounds like your first attempt was a success, congratulations! There are some great beginner recipes in How to Brew, you may want to try one of them. Watch out though, this hobby is highly addicting!

There are even more recipes to try in the HomeBrewTalk database. Warning: Trying new recipes is addictive.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/forumdisplay.php?f=54

 

[merc82]

Thanks guys! Appreciate all the input. The whole hobby is turning out to be addictive!