Leftover Pale - advice on hops

[void]

G'day all,

Second post to the forums - before I get started, just wanted to say a quick thanks to everyone on the AHB forums. This place is a goldmine for beginners like my mate & I, and it has made our venture into homebrewing much easier than we thought it would be.

Now that the soppy stuff is out of the way...

We're onto our 8th brew and we now have a bunch of various hops in the freezer. We have 60g Hallertau MF and 50g Styrian Goldings leftover from a couple of Belgian brews, and 20g Amarillo and 15g Galaxy from a Pale & an IPA. We'll be brewing an APA tomorrow night and wanted to use up some of these leftovers. My brewing buddy doesn't like super bitter beers, so I'm aiming at around 30IBU. I'm thinking either Hallertau or SG for bittering, Galaxy for flavour, and Amarillo for aroma, so I've planned the following schedule:

20g Hallertauer/SG @ 60m
15g Galaxy @ 25m
20g Amarillo @ 10m

We'll be steeping 200g Crystal 60L, then adding ~500g Light DME, topping up to 5 litres then commencing boil. Then in goes 3kg LLME, the other 500g LDME, top up to 23L, pitch S-04.

Questions:

- Hallertauer or SG for bittering?
- I'll buy more hops to dry hop when fermentation tails out in a week or so. Recommendations?
- Any other suggestions on improving the above?

Cheers,
Rob.

 

[menoetes]

For my 2c it'd be the Goldings for bittering and I'd swap the Amarillo and Galaxy additions. I rarely use Galaxy anywhere over 15 minutes as it's best used late in the brew and you'll get more of that lovely Amarillo flavour at 20 minutes while still getting lots of that Galaxy fruit at 10 minutes.

Otherwise your recipe looks solid, you can dry hop with more Amarillo or Galaxy if you have it otherwise any fruity hop will work well for an APA; Citra or Mosiac for instance. Also they single hop well into any brew if you have any left for another patch.

Keep us posted on how you go.

 

[void]

Thanks Menoetes - you've pretty much confimed my thoughts. Had a feeling I had the Galaxy & Amarillo flavour/aroma round the wrong way. We've done single hop ales with Amarillo and Galaxy so far to get a feel for each hop individually, so I might pick up 100g Citra, dry hop with some and then do another single hop with the rest to familiarise ourselves with it. Much appreciated, will let you know how it goes.

 

[pat86]

you seem to be on a good track. I was going to say save the Hallertau as it is lower AA and the strong later addition hops you are using for an APA would mean you probably couldn't tell too much what you bittered with, save it for something more subtle or an all noble beer, etc.

Citra is awesome. Straight up or combined with Amarillo from my experience

 

[void]

Cheers Pat.

Put this one down on Tuesday night - we ended up with this schedule based on Menoetes advice:

20g Styrian Goldings @ 60m
20g Amarillo @ 25m
15g Galaxy @ 10m

Picked up some Citra and will dry hop 20g towards the end of fermentation. Will then put down another brew using the remaining 80g.

One more question. With our fermentables in a 23L batch - 200g Crystal steeped for 30 mins then sparged, 3kg LLME and 1kg DME, every calculator I've used gave me an OG of 1.055. However our OG came out at 1.066. Sample temperature was about 22°C. We took another sample and was also 1.066. Don't think there's anything wrong with our hydrometer, as we've used it plenty of times previously and generally measured close to the calculator estimates.

What could account for this difference in gravity?

 

[menoetes]

That does sound a bit high, when I punch the basics of your recipe into brewmate it gives me 1.059 as your est. OG and yours seems higher than that. Is there a lot of loose hop matter in the hydrometer sample?

I find that the first pull from the tap is usually full of the crap that has sunk to the bottom of the fermenter (loose hop matter, trub etc.) that might add a little bit more 'body' to the sample then would actually be in the brew itself. Also drop your hydrometer into some clean water as close to 20'c as possible and make sure it is still calibrated, it should read a flat 1.000.

Beyond that I'm not sure. If you were desperate to drop the OG you could add another liter of water (boiled then cooled, it should drop the SG 3 - 4 points) but I'd just be inclined to leave it and mark down as a heavy beer. I'm sure it'll taste great

 

[void]

Cheers Menoetes. Yep, lots of hops in the sample - it was quite murky. So we took another sample & let it settle overnight - still 1.066. From what I've read online, hop particles shouldn't affect gravity anyway. I'm guessing the malt might have sunk to the bottom making the sample gravity higher than the average across the wort - although we did stir like crazy when adding it all.

Might try checking our hydro calibration as well. We have a spare, so I can do a comparison too.

Definitely no issues with a heavier beer!

 

[void]

We kegged this one on Sunday and its a cracker. The SGs are prominent but sit underneath everything with a nice earthy flavour. First use of noble hops in an APA and I reckon we'll do it again. Amarillo is there, resiny up front with a nice bitterness towards the end. We found our single-hop Amarillo ale a bit too full on - a bit like chewing on pine needles - but it's well balanced here. Galaxy and Citra add fruit but combined with the Goldings they become almost floral.

For a first attempt at combining hops, I'm really happy - and looking forward to planning a hop schedule using more than just leftovers.

So, cheers Menoetes and Pat - appreciate the advice!