100% Simcoe

[Norsman]

Hi, I plan on doing an APA in the next week, with 100% simcoe. I want that piney aroma in my beer that simcoe has and was wondering what would be an appropriate addition at flame-out to get this. So far my recipe looks like this:

6kg Pale 2-row
14g Simcoe (12%) 60 min
14g Simcoe (12%) 15 min
XXg Simcoe (12%) 0 min
Wyeast 1028

I was thinking of going with 28g at flame out... or should I double this and go with 56g! Any thoughts? I am really trying to get that "camping trip in a bottle" aroma, would 56g be overdoing it?

 

[newguy]

You could add 56g, and it shouldn't be too much. I brewed an APA some time ago but I used a mixture of cascade and columbus pellets instead of simcoe. I heavily dry-hopped it. I must have done something right because it took a gold in a recent competition, which is unusual for me with APAs. Here's the recipe:

[10 gallon batch]
7.73 kg pale 2-row
1.22 kg light caramel

Mashed at 69C (157F) 60 minutes. Temperature ramped to 75C (167F), then drained. Sparged with 75C water after that.

Hops:
34g Columbus (15.1%) 90 minutes (1.2 oz)
85g Cascade (9.1%) 20 minutes (3.0 oz)

Yeast: Wyeast 1028 (I think - I got the yeast from a micro here).

OG: 1.054
FG: 1.008

After 4 days in primary, beer was racked to secondary and dry hopped. The beer was essentially done fermenting at this point because of the amount of yeast I received from the micro (which was a lot). Each carboy (I do 10 gallon batches) had:

14g Columbus (15.1%)
28g Cascade (9.1%)

The beer was kegged 11 days after that. Fermentation temperature 24C - 26C. Not counting the dry hops, the beer is approximately 41 IBU.

 

[Stuster]

I agree with newguy that 56g should be fine. There are so many ways to do an APA. Your way sounds fine, but you could also try doing all late additions (hopbursting) from 30 minutes on to get stacks of flavour and aroma. So you could add say 15g every 5 minutes from 30 onwards, with 30g or more at flame out. Should give you around 45IBUs. If you don't get flavour from that, it's time for a new tongue. :lol:

 

[Norsman]

I just had a thought... does anyone know at what temp the volatile oils boil off??
With my system I am unable to rapidly cool my wort after flame out, I place my boiling pot in my bathtub filled with cold water. It takes about 3 hours to get to pitching temp.

If for example the volatile oils begin to evaporate at 80*C it might be better to add my flame out addtions at around minus 30 min to capture more aroma. So does anyone know the specific boiling point of volatile oils?

 

[newguy]

I just had a quick look through Mark Garetz' book on hops, and it doesn't have any specific information regarding the boiling point of the various hop oils. What you could do is to add the hops at the end of the boil, allow it to cool as you normally do, then pitch the yeast. After a week, withdraw a sample and see if the hop character is to your liking. If it's a little weak, you can always dry hop. If you're concerned about the risk of infection from dry hopping, just soak the pellets in a little hard liquor (vodka, but it's not really important) for a few minutes. Don't add so much liquor that you make a hop tea - just enough to wet everything.

If you do choose to dry hop and you keg your beer, beware of hop pellets. I've had a couple of dry hopped beers in which enough hop particles made it into the keg to eventually clog the keg's dip tube. Finings will help remove the hop particles before you keg, as will a particularly flocculant yeast (like wyeast 1968) if you dry hop before the yeast drops out.