American Pale Ale

[dmonbeer]

Mash - 1 hour 30 mins, 20 litres, 50°c for 30 mins, 15 mins to reach 67°C & held there for 45 mins

2 teaspoons of citric acid
4 Kg pale malt

Boil 1 hour 20 mins

Amarillo hops 35g at start, Cacade hops 35g at start
Amarillo hops 20g after 40 mins, Cacade hops 20g after 40 mins
Amarillo hops 3g after 1 hour 10 mins, Cacade hops 27g after 1 hour 10 mins

650g sucrose as boil ended

Verdict on bottling: Wow! Stereotypical grapefruitiness of Cascade hops in spades but not overwhelmingly so. Good bitterness but the hoppiness is the biggest factor. Eagerly anticipating the settled product.

Verdict after 1 week in bottle: Initially a little musty with some DMS, but aftertaste is wonderfully fresh with citrus hoppiness. After leaving the beer to air for a few hours (the DMS flavour vents away with the realeased CO2) in the fridge I am left with an extremely pale, superbly clean tasting, easy drinking, hoppy beer.

Verdict after 4 weeks in the bottle: A very citrussy, lemony-grapefruity, hoppy beer. Still not cleared perfectly. This beer is very dry now & wonderfully thirst quenching.

[Whorst]

You've got roughly 22% sucrose?? You didn't notice any cidery flavors?? That's a lot of sugar.

[Garth]

more like 13.5% sucrose

it is a fair bit still though

[6470zzy]

I am a bit puzzled also as to your use of sucrose in a APA? Not something that I would think of doing myself............I can understand why you comment on it being dry, it must be a tad thin too?

Cheers

[escapizm]

I like the sound of that, very descriptive and sounds tasty.

When you add citric acid is that the powder you add to the grist before mashing (can i ask why ytou add this) All my beers thus far have been quite dark and a little bitter (not by choice just picking it up!) yet when i buy ale I always buy much lighter hoppy ales like abbot ale.

Could i add more grain to get the ABV or do i need to add the sugar/sucrose. As bit of a purist i tend to shy away from sugar additions

EDIT

Ive just ran this through GW Beer engine for 23 litre, what do you think

American Pale Ale
Date:
Gyle Number:
Fermentable Colour lb: oz Grams Ratio
Pale Malt 5 EBC 9 lbs. 14.6 oz 4500 grams 100%


Hop Variety Type Alpha Time lb: oz grams Ratio
Amarillo Whole 9.5 % 90 mins 0 lbs. 1.4 oz 40 grams 24.7%
Cascade Whole 5.7 % 90 mins 0 lbs. 1.4 oz 40 grams 24.7%
Cascade Whole 5.7 % 50 mins 0 lbs. 0.8 oz 23 grams 14.2%
Amarillo Whole 9.5 % 50 mins 0 lbs. 0.8 oz 23 grams 14.2%
Cascade Whole 5.7 % 20 mins 0 lbs. 1.1 oz 32 grams 19.8%
Amarillo Whole 9.5 % 20 mins 0 lbs. 0.1 oz 4 grams 2.5%


Final Volume: 23 Litres
Original Gravity: 1.044
Final Gravity: 1.010
Alcohol Content: 4.4% ABV
Total Liquor: 36.1 Litres
Mash Liquor: 11.3 Litres
Mash Efficiency: 75 %
Bitterness: 118.256293649649 EBU
Colour: 7 EBC


Thanks

[jubby]

If i were brewing it, i would remove the 50 min additions and add them at 10-15 mins. Replace the FWH with a high alpha Simco/Chinook and use a low amount, you can then add the Amarillo and Cascade at the end to steep. It's a bit of a waste of those hops in a full boil (in my opinion) This will bring the final IBU down a bit also, 40 would be good for me although you can increase it. If you like the highly hopped APA's, then you will like this. If you decide to go with a higher IBU, it would be worth adding a little low colour crystal malt or 5% munich to add body and offset the bitterness.

All of that is to suit my taste, you can experiment (as i have) and come up with something that you like, but with those ingredients, it's going to be good

[quiff]

That sounds really nice, I think I will have a go at that but with that kind of bitterness I am tempted to up the grain bill even more.

[escapizm]

Hi Jubby (FWH - just goolged that) First Wort Hops. I was little confused as this is the hops added later i think.

I really like your sugestion, thus far my brews have been a bit "bitter" so ill go with you first sugestion and the lower IBU's, as a newbie could i ask you to be bit more specific with your recipe

As a side note I was a beer festival Saturday and tried a Captain Cook Brewery beer called Slipway, very nice, lightly colored and hoppy, refreshing with a tight white head and it had a quality I really enjoy in beer and this is generally only found IMHO in hand pulled ales, all the same if I can get close to it I’d like to try. Notably it had excellent body and a creamy texture and the bubbles took an age to stop rising up.

Is there a particular grain I can add that will give this quality?

[jubby]

Yes First wort hops are your 90 min hops. I wouldn't use the Cascade and Amarillo here. My recipe would be:

10-15g of Simcoe/Chinook or any other high alpha American Hop for the full boil. (90min/FWH )
30g each of Cascade & Amarillo at 10 min
30g of each at 0min.

You can adjust the bitterness to what you want by varying the 90min hops or moving the 10min hops to 15min, but as i said, if it's going to be a high IBU, it's best to balance it out with a little crystal or munich malt. I would use 200g of a light crystal like German carapils or add 3-5% of your total grain weight as Munich malt if you go over 40IBU. For a first attempt i would stick to 40 IBU without the crystal/Munich and see how you like it. 200g of Wheat malt is good for head retention if you have any.

Put the above into your beer engine and have a fiddle

Take a look here for info on this type of late hopping: http://www.mrmalty.com/late_hopping.htm

[quiff]

That's really interesting, thanks for that Jubby
When late hopping at flameout or at 80 deg, how does this effect cooling?
What I mean is, I understood that it is desirable to chill as soon as poss to assist the cold break but this is not possible when late hopping....or is it?

[escapizm]

Thanks Jubby, ive re-jigged recipe below (sound OK?), i supect IBU differ because of alpha acid values, this isnt something i ever question when buying hops i just get whats there Ive added wheat for body/head.

I found interesting link on FWH here http://www.brewery.org/library/1stwort.html

American Pale Ale Rev A
Date:
Gyle Number:
Fermentable Colour lb: oz Grams Ratio
Pale Malt 5 EBC 9 lbs. 14.6 oz 4500 grams 95.7%
Wheat Malt 3.5 EBC 0 lbs. 7.0 oz 200 grams 4.3%


Hop Variety Type Alpha Time lb: oz grams Ratio
Chinook Whole 11.5 % 90 mins 0 lbs. 0.4 oz 10 grams 7.7%
Cascade Whole 5.7 % 10 mins 0 lbs. 1.1 oz 30 grams 23.1%
Amarillo Whole 9.5 % 10 mins 0 lbs. 1.1 oz 30 grams 23.1%
Amarillo Whole 9.5 % 0 mins 0 lbs. 1.1 oz 30 grams 23.1%
Cascade Whole 5.7 % 0 mins 0 lbs. 1.1 oz 30 grams 23.1%


Final Volume: 23 Litres
Original Gravity: 1.046
Final Gravity: 1.011
Alcohol Content: 4.5% ABV
Total Liquor: 36.3 Litres
Mash Liquor: 11.8 Litres
Mash Efficiency: 75 %
Bitterness: 30.0086430226096 EBU
Colour: 8 EBC

[jubby]

Yup, that looks good to me You could add a small handful of each at 20 mins to bring it up to about 36 IBU and you would have something along the lines of Oakham Ales Bishops Farewell (but with added Amarillo & Chinook) I would go for US-05 yeast.

Edit: Apologies to dmonbeer, we seem to have hijacked your thread

[escapizm]

+1 on the appology dmonbeer

[dmonbeer]

You've got roughly 22% sucrose?? You didn't notice any cidery flavors?? That's a lot of sugar.

I used the sugar as I wanted a dry beer. It didn't notice any thinness in the beer. Admittedly, I was experimenting with the sugar addition a little & would just use more pale malt in future.

[dmonbeer]

I like the sound of that, very descriptive and sounds tasty.

When you add citric acid is that the powder you add to the grist before mashing (can i ask why ytou add this)...

Could i add more grain to get the ABV or do i need to add the sugar/sucrose. As bit of a purist i tend to shy away from sugar additions...

The citric acid was used for 2 reasons; I wanted to try and enhance the citrus taste of my beer (I would have to try the beer again without the citric acid to really see what the effect was) & it just happened to be lying around. Yes it was the powder.

I usually don't add sucrose, but I was experimenting to try & make the final beer good & dry. In hindsight I probably wouldn't do this again.