Hop flavour, maltyness and recipe critique

[Kahless]

I'm wondering if anyone has any advice on the impact of flavouring hops on out competing (masking) toasty/biscuity(cookie) malty flavours in relation to the recipe I laid out below.

I use calculators to make sure that my IBUs from boiled hops are at the lower range for that beer style if I want a malty beer, or higher If I want a hoppier beer, but I am specifically wondering about hops towards the end of the boil with 5-15 minutes to go being added for flavour more than bittering; will the flavours noticeably reduce or compete with the malt flavours of a beer?

Recipe: Briosgaid Pale Ale
3kg (6.6#) Maris Otter Malt
500g (1.1#) British Caramalt
500g (1.1#) Munich Malt
454g (1#) Golden Syrup
Mash at 153F/67.2C for 70 minutes
Volume of beer to be made: 22.73 L
Targets: 1.043OG 1.009 FG 4.5% ABV

Hops = 26IBU (style range 25-40)
30g (~1oz) First Gold (7.5%aa), boil 45min = 19IBU
20g (0.7oz) First Gold, boil 15min = 7IBU

Yeast & Fermentation:
Safale S-04 (dry, rehydrated) starting at 16/17C then slowly rising to room temperature.

 

[sptaylor70]

This isn't too terribly hoppy, for the OG you list (which is a little bit low for an English Pale Ale, if you care about that).

I don't think that the hop bitterness is going to cover the malt flavor. My local brewpub made the best Scotch ale I've ever had, at >30 IBU. Their bock beers are also high on the IBU for the styles. But they're plenty malty.

If you're concerned about insufficient maltiness, you could add some aromatic malt, maybe 100 g. If you want to bump up the biscuitiness, you could add some Victory malt, again maybe 100 g. There are also yeasts that will emphasize maltiness (e.g. Wyeast 1728 Scottish), if that's a concern.

One thing that you can do to bump the hop flavor, without increasing the bitterness, would be to modify your hop schedule to 30 g first-wort-hopped, 15 g for 60 minutes, and 15 g for 5 minutes.

Post your results.

 

[plumber_bob]

I can't offer much in the way of advise. But I'm subscribing because I'm just getting into SMaSH brewing and want to keep up on any info you get.

So far I've brewed 2 batches of 20lbs base malt and 3 1oz hop additions. (10 gallons batches) The last one hit the fermenter yesterday. And the first does let the malt come through in a good way.
And they seem to make great summer beers.

I'm kinda surprised at how the K.I.S.S. principle works with brewing.

pb

 

[Kahless]

Thanks sptaylor70:
My LHBS are out of biscuit and victory malt, so I was hoping to make up the biscuitness with the Munich malt and british Caramalt.
I'll have another think about my hop schedule; as I said I was looking to see if late additions would still conflict with maltyness due to the flavours and aromas conflicting, (rather than worrying about the bitterness, as I can hopefully use the expected IBU to keep that where I want it).
Thank you for the tip on the Wyeast 1728 Scottish. My LHBS only has dry yeast (safale, danstar, gervin and ... youngs v_v) but I might be able to get some online.

Hi plumber_bob:
Good to hear that the first beer came through malty. I was planning to use a little more hops relatively and a little less grain so I might have to tweak that. Thanks

I'll post my results later; hopefully an amended recipe meets the biscuits of my dreams. If not, then maybe there'll be an obvious solution for anyone else searching for some biscuity beer.

 

[Kahless]

As promised, I'm back to say how it went.
I added 10 grams of Saaz because I had them wrapped up in the freezer and they had to go, and changed my hop schedule to the following(malts were as the first post)
First Gold (Uk) 20 g 45 min.
Saaz (Czech) 10 g 45 min.
First Gold (Uk) 10 g 30 min.
First Gold (Uk) 20 g 15 min.

Based on an error between US quarts and british quarts, my mash was thinner it should have been (23.5% KG/L which is below minimum recommended), which I've heard can thin a beer and reduce its maltyness. The mash also cooled quite low towards the end (152F at start, 148F after 45 minutes, 136F at 70 minutes).

Thankfully, the large amount of malty malts pulled through, and this has turned out somewhat biscuity, and with hop flavour working at the same time as the more bready flavours of the malt but not against it. Hop bitterness is suttle enough to work with the biscuity flavour I was aiming for, and the residual sweet malty flavour seems to work with the flavour from the late hops to produce a fruity edge. It is a thin beer, which is to be expected with the way the mash went, but the moresom bite of the combined flavour of the malt and hops makes up for it (in short, it's beer ).

At 28p per pint, i'm pretty darn happy, and would actually recommend a thin mash for this recipe (though not quite as thin)