AG11 Dr StrangeHop Pale Ale - Brew to Pint Pics

[phatboytall]

This was my very first attempt at creating my own recipe rather than using one from here or doing a clone.

Dr StrangeHop Pale Ale
23l
Target OG 1.045, Target FG 1.010 78% efficiency
IBU 34

Malt
3800g Maris Otter
200g Munich
200g Crystal

Hops
10g Pacific Gem 14%aa 60min
12g Cascade 6%aa 20min
8g Pacific Gem 14%aa 20min
15g Cascade 6%aa 10min
10g Pacific Gem 14%aa 10min
20g Cascade 6%aa 0min
20g Pacific Gem 14%aa 0min

US-05 Fermented at 20c for 2 weeks.

Mango Chuntey boiler and hop filer, works great


Mash at 67c


Sparging at 80c


hops at the ready


Homemade chiller, works a treat! just microbore wrapped round a demi john with 2 cable ties!


Nice foamy run off at about 25c


Tons of hops left at the end, maybe i'm too froogle but i cant help giving them a mash with the paddle to get the last out!


Slightly over target gravity, not bad at all


The Label this is the best bit!


The finished pint, one month old, slightly too chilled so hazey



So what does it taste like?
Well the smell is awesome, nuclear hop aroma, big cascade, but an nice almost blackcurrent bitterness off the gem, very potent. The taste, lovely sweet malt to start but then what follows is a detonation of bitterness, slightly too bitter if i'm honest, not really a pale ale, more like Brewdog Hardcore IPA. Its only a month old, so hoping it will mellow a bit with time?

Feedback, thoughts, questions or if you think i'm doing anything wrong please let me know!!

Only so much knowledge you can get from reading books...

[Swoonara]

Brilliant label

[WishboneBrewery]

34 IBU isn't that bitter, looks like you had a pretty easy brewday

[phatboytall]

34 IBU isn't that bitter, looks like you had a pretty easy brewday

Agree, but it seems to tastes much more bitter than that. Thats what Brewpal on my iphone calculates it at (tinseth).

I wonder if i'm getting much more from the 0minutes addition. I put the lid on and gently stir every 5mins for 20mins, THEN i turn the wort chiller on.

[WishboneBrewery]

You will get a bit more bitterness but not much with those amount of hops.

[Hogarth]

You will get a bit more bitterness but not much with those amount of hops.

I don't know, pdtnc ... if the hops are sitting at nearly 100°C and being stirred every few minutes, aren't you going to extract a fair amount of bitterness from them?

Put it this way: you'd get 23IBU from those final hops if the boiler was still on. Turn if off, and the wort temperature will drop perhaps two or three degrees over the 20 minutes. Does this make such a difference to the extraction rate, I wonder?

When I say 'wonder' I mean it literally, I should add ... I've honestly no idea. Boffins might know...

[WishboneBrewery]

I was just thinking what I get brewing in my garage, even putting double that amount of hops in my copper (of a higher AA) and doing a 30min steep with the occasional stir. Though the more agitation the more bitterness, especially from the Pacific Gem at 14%
I've never taken into account gaining extra bitterness in my homebrewing from the Steep, maybe an experiment is needed.

[gnutz2]

I'm drinking a simalar brew, but its more like an IPA with 6.5 ABV, loads of cascade in the boil and dry hopped with 50g of pacific gem.

And WOW Pacific gem rocks, mega flavor and aroma i've never used a hop quite like this one.

Also @pdtnc i allways thought a steep gave a fair bit more bitterness.

Cheers Baz

[llannige]

Top stuff.well done

[phatboytall]

Had one of these last night, it had mellowed hugely! Much smoother, more balanced, the hop bitterness was much less aggressive.

The missus even upgraded it from the initial "thats too bitter, i can't drink it" to last night "thats really nice, can i have one?"

Just need to work out a way to stop myself from drinking my beer before its had time to age!

[critch]

youd get a fair bit of utilisation at that steep, graham very kindly posted a post boil hop utilisation chart for long steeps . with my system its sitting at 95-97.c for up to an hour, you do get a fair old amount of extra utilisation with the amount of hops we add

found it,heres the linkviewtopic.php?f=16&t=39452&p=419407#p419407

[Hogarth]

Thanks for the link, Critch. Interesting stuff.

So, according to those graphs, a 20-minute steep at 94°C gives you roughly half the IBUs that you'd get from a 20-minute boil. Which is quite a lot. And I bet the average boiler doesn't fall to 94°C in 20 minutes, so you're looking at an even higher percentage.

So if Phatboy would have got 23IBU from those hops by boiling them, it's possible he got 16 or 17IBU from his post-boil steep. (I'm just guessing here.) It's certainly worth taking that into account when planning a recipe.