Hoppy apa

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Matthew james

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Hi guys im reasonably new to brewing and would like some advice on my next brew as so far i have found my beers not to be as hoppy as i like them. (My fav brew would be beechworth pale ale) I do extract brews with steeping grains and have a 20l mangrove jacks pot for boiling.
Recipe
3kg light malt
500g dextrose
300g crystal malt
60g chinook
80g citra
120g amarillo
Add 11l water then add crystal malt steeped at 65c for 30mins in grain bag.
Add light malt and bring to a boil.
Add 30g chinook (60 min)
Add dextrose after 50 minutes
Add 25g citra and amarillo after 50 min
Add 25g citra amarillo and 30g chinook at FO.
Cool wort straight away in ice bath until it reaches 50c then strain and pour into fermentation vessel and then add 10l chilled water until reaching a temp between 20-24c stir thoroughly with sanitised paddle and add m36 liberty bell yeast seal and add airlock.
After roughly 5 days dry hop 30g citra and 60g amarillo for around 5 days and then proceed to bottling. All hops are pellets i think the chinook is around 13% aa citra around 8% and amarillo around 9%. All hops are in pellet form
Any feedback would be greatly appreciated!
Cheers homebrewers!
 
I think that's going to be a lot more bitter than you want for an APA with 30g of 13% chinook for bittering at 60 mins. Chinook to me has a semi harsh bitterness as well, i'd use the amarillo or citra as the bittering charge (lower cohumulone %).

Have you put the numbers into a brewing calculator to work out the bitterness and OG?

I just chucked some numbers into Beersmith and you have an OG of 1.071 (that's big IPA territory...) if you are using dry extract or 1.061 for liquid extract so you could drop the dry malt or dextrose a bit from there.

Your 30g of chinook at 13% aa is around 44 IBU, pretty high just for bittering, normal target for an IPA should be 35-45 total IBU. Then the amarillo at 10m will give you about 9 IBU and the citra 12 IBU. So already up at 65 IBU (IPA territory).

90g dry hop is going to be pretty full on, i'd start with about 15g each of citra and amarillo once you reach about 1020 SG, then if you need more after a couple of days add some more.

Why not a little pared back:

3kg light malt
no dextrose
200g crystal steeped

15g amarillo 60 mins (14 IBU)
25g citra 10mins
25g amarillo 10mins
25g each chinook amarillo and citra at flameout or once temp of wort gets below 80C (hop oils dissolve for aroma/flavour but no bitterness added)

should be about 35IBU

Alternatively just save all the hops for 20mins onwards additions and leave out the 60mins for massive hop flavour/aroma

A brewing calculator software is definitely worth it, i use beersmith mobile it's a good product and not too $$$
 
Cheers djr for your advice! will definitely be installing some brewing calculator to help. I forgot to mention the light malt is liquid extract. I do enjoy hoppy ipa's so maybe need to change to that haha. Although by going from what youve mentioned it still is going to be up there in ibus! Yeah maybe ill remove the chinook as the bittering hop. Just from what ive read its better to use a higher % aa hop for bittering but because of all my other additions maybe not needed. Might go with the amarillo as i have a lot more of it.
Cheers!
 
You'll need to adjust your calculations to factor in your smaller boil size (11L). Your boiling your hops in quite a syruppy solution, which I assume would affect what you're getting out of them.
 
Brewtoad.com is good for some quick calcs. And it's free.
 
Cheers for the advice brad. Would you increase boil size to perhaps 15l of water then add malt from there? Still very new at this. I tried a mg partial mash kit apa and have more or less copied what that did and changed my hop additions. Thanks
 
No idea sorry. Hopefully someone more qualified will comment. Increasing bould size will help, but I don't know by how much. I'd add the malt right at the end as there is no need to boil it. That, and a slightly higher volume, should help a little.

What exactly are you looking for more of? More bitterness, flavour, aroma?
 
Yeah it's been a while since i brewed extract so i forgot about the effect of concentration on hop utilisation. More concentrated = less hop bitterness extraction.

What i used to do when i was only doing partial boils was just put about half the extract in the boil and then warm up the rest of the extract to the fermenter and mix it after the boil was complete.

Wouldn't worry about its effect on aroma/flavour if you're going to dry hop anyway.

Maybe just go with the original plan and call it an IPA but swap the bittering hops like i suggested to have a "smoother" bitterness, it should work. I like a bit of Cara-aroma or other dark crystal in IPAs, just don't go overboard, 100-150g is enough along with a lighter crystal like CaraRed or Caramalt.
 
Cheers for your advice! Will brew on weekend and fingers crossed will make a nice hoppy beer! From what i can gather then if iam to be boiling around 11l mark my ibus will be roughly halved when i add the remaining 12l water to the fermentation tank. Ipas i suppose go up to 70 ibus so might punch in around the 100-120 ibu mark on the ibu calculator?
 
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