Hop Opinions To Save A Bland Pale Ale

[Hefty]

I recently brewed a very basic pale ale. I used only a single bittering addition, knowing that overly hop-flavoured beers sometimes scare off some of my megaswill drinking mates.
I kegged it and tried it the other day and it's too bland.

4.50 kg Pale Malt (2 Row) UK (5.9 EBC)

0.35 kg Caramel/Crystal Malt - 40L (78.8 EBC)

0.05 kg Caramel/Crystal Malt -120L (236.4 EBC)

20.00 gm Galena [12.00 %] (60 min) 25 IBU


0.50 items Whirlfloc Tablet (Boil 15.0 min)

1 Pkgs American Ale (Wyeast Labs #1056)


Long story short - I'm going to add some hop flavour/aroma.
My two questions are:

1. from the following list of hops in my inventory, which would you recommend (and how much)?
Galena
POR
EKG
Fuggles
(I know it's not a very big list of choices)

2. Should I dry hop the keg or make a hop tea and add it to it?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. I don't think I can make it to the bottom of this keg without giving it a little something else.

Cheers!
Jono.

 

[megs80]

Try making a hop tea with 50g of POR in 500mls water for 5mins. You should get all the nice lemony aspects of POR which should go well with galena

 

[QldKev]

That list makes it fairly hard

Galena - great bittering but not sure about a late hop addition
POR - some ppl like it if they are fresh, same thing I would not use it for a late addition, keep them for bittering, maybe flavour hopping
Fuggles - would be worried if as a dry hopping / tea hop would end up a bit too grassy. If you use this don't get too heavy with it.

EKG - althought completely wrong for your aussie pale ale style, from this selection I would go this in a hop tea.

QldKev

 

[Hefty]

QLDKev, I agree, it's a difficult list. That's why I put the question on the forum, I was scratching my head with this one.
I would go and buy some sort of American hop and convert it to more of an APA style but I opened my wallet the other day and a moth flew out so I figured I should just use something I already have.

Any other opinions on variety, amount or method?

Cheers!
Jono.

 

[Ross]

Straight dry hop with EKG if you really want to select one of those.

Otherwise get yourself some Citra - great little hop for spicing up a bland ale - the one we have in the shop is very popular with the commercial beer crowd.

Cheers Ross

 

[gjhansford]

Straight dry hop with EKG if you really want to select one of those.

I dry hopped a keg ... once ... and ended up with hop bits in the beer out thingee ... had to pull it all apart, clean it and reassemble before I could get any flow. I'd love to dry hop another keg but I've been shy to do so since I had the blockage ... you know the old saying ... "once blocked twice shy".

Any comments or ideas ...

 

[Hefty]

Ghhb, you can get a Hop Ball to hold the hop flowers or pellets for dry hopping a keg. They are mesh or SS with little punched holes, like those tea infusion spoon gizmos only without the handle and a bit bigger. Craftbrewer sell them, just ask Ross from the post above yours.
I don't have one yet but I've got one of the tea infusion gizmos. I was just going to sanitize the whole thing, fill it and drop it in but I had second thoughts last night and just did a hop tea with the last of my EKG and POR. I had less of each than I thought, 25g of EKG and 15g of POR. But a combined total of 40g made a very noticeable difference. Really helped to balance this one a bit more.

The head dissipated really quickly to a thin layer of slightly larger but "feeble" looking bubbles. I assume this is from all the extra hop oils now in the beer. Is this likely to continue or will the head retention improve as the extra hop goodness mixes more completely with the rest of the keg?
(I don't really mind for this keg because it tastes that much better now, but everyone likes to see a good bit of head on their beer!)

HABAHAGD! :icon_cheers:
Jono.