Using Homegrown Hops

[bullsneck]

I have over 100g of Cascade flowers harvested in April from my very backyard.

I thought I'd do an All Homegrown Cascade Pale Ale as an experiment to find the approximate bitterness, as well as flavour and aroma.

I'm still very 'green' with recipe formulation, having only done a handfull of AG batches.

Here is the recipe...

Pale Ale (12L batch)
OG 1049 FG 1011
IBU 33 Balance 0.68

83% Simpsons Marris Otter
7% Weyermann Wheat
5% Weyermann Light Munich
5% Weyermann CaraMunich I

25g Cascade @ 60mins
20g Cascade @ 15mins
20g Cascade @ 0mins
(*note - I approximated the AA% of the homegrown hops to be 5%)

Mash 68deg for 90mins

US-05 yeast


Any thoughts would be appreciated.

 

[fraser_john]

Homegrown hops have an unknown amount of bitterness as you indicate by making an experimental batch.

You can avoid this by doing a small comparison boil of known bitterness hops and a boil of your home grown hops. Boil both at the same time, in same sized pots, for the same period (20 minutes say in 1 litre of water each with 1gm of hops). You should be able to tell how close they are from that.

I did a Australian Old using home grown Pride Of Ringwood and did NOT do this and found that my home grown ones had significantly less bitterness than commercial ones, as such, the beer lacks hop bitterness and POR flavour.

 

[bullsneck]

You can avoid this by doing a small comparison boil of known bitterness hops and a boil of your home grown hops. Boil both at the same time, in same sized pots, for the same period (20 minutes say in 1 litre of water each with 1gm of hops). You should be able to tell how close they are from that.

Thanks for the tip.

Any comments on the malt bill?

 

[under]

I thought you only use home grown hops as flavour/aroma additions because of the unknown AA%.

 

[bullsneck]

I thought you only use home grown hops as flavour/aroma additions because of the unknown AA%.

Yes, that's what I've done in the past.

I thought that I'd give it a go with a small batch. After all, if home brewers had always conformed to what's been done before... you can guess the rest.

As mentioned above, you can crudely test for an approximate AA% by making a hop tea of sorts.

What about the grain bill? Is it okay?

 

[bullsneck]

What do you think of the wheat %? Too high?

 

[under]

What grain do you currently have?

 

[bullsneck]

None, but I'm heading back to Melb on Wednesday (in Albury now) and will pop into Grain and Grape on the way home.

 

[under]

Well I would be keeping it simple.

This would be the grain bill for a 21L batch. You would need to scale it for your batch size -

Grain -

3.6kg Base Malt (JW Trad Ale/BB Ale)
0.9kg Weyermann Vienna
230g Weyermann Carahell

Mash @ 66-67

Hops -

28g Cascade 6.6% at 60 min.
14g Cascade 6.6% at 30 min.
7g Cascade 6.6% at 15 min.
7g Cascade 6.6% at 5 min.

You will need to try and get around 35-39 IBU
OG 1051
US05