Tips for Balancing Malt vs Hops?

[phatboytall]

I mainly brew US style Pale Ales, Seirra Nevada PA and Topedo IPA style beers.

Mine always seem to end up on the hoppy side and a bit too bitter, obviously this is a lot down to slowly fine tuneing and understanding my utilization more.

Are their any good tips or formula's for balancing malt vs hops?

[Madbrewer]

Are the recipe's your own design? If so then for getting the bitterness right, I would suggest you look at a few tried and tested recipes, work out the acceptable IBU range for the rough strength you are trying to hit & calculate your recipe to put THAT leven of bitterness back in. The 'hoppiness' is the late/dry hops I'm not sure how much of the hoppiness is a perceived problem, verses a real problem. I expect that it would take alot to make a beer too hoppy for me for example.

Anyway any hops that go in after 10 minutes from the end/ steeping or dry hopping (rather than those used for the rigorous boil) I would probably 'halve' if you are THAT concerned. However it might be the type of hops you are late hopping with, make sure they are aroma hops as opposed to something like Target which is a bittering hop.

The hoppiness will probably mellow if you age it in a cask, providing you don't have dry hops sitting in the cask?

hope this helps?

Phil

p.s.

My APA recipe is for 40 IBU's. 25 IBU's first gold (90 min boil), Challenger 15 IBU's (60 min), Cascade (10 min) 5 IBU's & Cascade 'Steep' 10g. This if for an OG of 1.043 & A Grist bill Comprising of 4000g Pale, 200g Crystal & 200g Flaked Maize. Funnily enough I received some good feedback about this one Saturday Night!

[boingy]

I'm not sure that a balance between malt and hops is a very big part of that style! Hops on top of more hops seems to be the name of that particular game. How long are you maturing the beers for before you drink them? Do they get better with time?

Post up a recipe or two so we can see what you have been doing.

[EoinMag]

I'm not sure that a balance between malt and hops is a very big part of that style! Hops on top of more hops seems to be the name of that particular game. How long are you maturing the beers for before you drink them? Do they get better with time?

Post up a recipe or two so we can see what you have been doing.

+1 This style is a totally unbalanced style with none of the hop subtlety or balance that you would get in a UK Pale Ale or bitter. I think you are possibly brewing the wrong style for your tastes.

I did a few APA's until I discovered I really didn't like them all that much, my wife loves them, so now I'll do one or two a year for her, but they're not something I get on with at all really.

All the cool kids are doing them though so it's easy to see why it's becoming a very popular style, but hopefully it's a fad which fades.

[196osh]

Imo, the biggest thing that balences malt and hops is the fg vs the hopping rate. Higher the hopping rate the higher fg for 'balence', so if you want it to finish higher then up your mash temp, and or use a less attenuative yeast.

Lots of good US breweries use English ale yeast at low temps and make great IPAs. I also think that a regular IPA whillst tending towards hops in a big way do need body to back the hops up, not sweetness.

[GARYSMIFF]

Are their any good tips or formula's for balancing malt vs hops?

1st I like to think that market research is done by trying many many beers to understand what I am looking for in a beer, then if I remember, try to understand whats in that beer

[WishboneBrewery]

There is a ratio or something, something like a third-off your OG should be a balanced beer so if you had a 1060 OG your bitterness would be about 40 EBU.
Don't quote me on this, I'm pretty sure I've got the idea right but I know I'm not quite right! And its not going to work for all styles.

[196osh]

I have heard that before pdtnc, but man. I think it is more about the FG, if that 1060 beer was to finish at 1008, its going to taste much more bitter and less balenced than if it was to finish at 1015. I have had beers at that OG finish at wildly different gravity's. Just like that and the bitterness is less balenced with body and mouthfeel at the lower one (which I like).

[BigEd]

I mainly brew US style Pale Ales, Seirra Nevada PA and Topedo IPA style beers.

Mine always seem to end up on the hoppy side and a bit too bitter, obviously this is a lot down to slowly fine tuneing and understanding my utilization more.

Are their any good tips or formula's for balancing malt vs hops?

boingy has called it precisely. The US APA/IPA style is not balanced as it tends to be tilted in the direction of the hops. The popular US hops are usually on the aggressive side and the US pale malt is bland in flavor which in simple terms is the cause of your situation. If you like the hop side of these beers subbing UK pale for the US pale will help bring up the flavor & body of the beer to something more resembling balance but again balance isn't what the style is about. As has already been mentioned above the yeast is another factor. The standard California/Chico/WY1056/WL001/US05 strain is fairly attenuative as well as low in esters. Choosing a different yeast can get you a softer edge to the beer. London Ale WY1028/WL013 for instance would do a nice job on those ales, leaving a bit more malt but not morphing them into something unrecognizable.

Or you could do what I do and get some nice Maris-Otter pale, Goldings hops, London yeast and make a hell of a good bitter.

[critch]

All the cool kids are doing them though so it's easy to see why it's becoming a very popular style, but hopefully it's a fad which fades.

never been called a cool kid before!

compared to the way they sell to a stock english bitter id be suprised if it did.........

i do a couple of stock english bitters that although are nice beers they dont sell anywhere near as good as some of my uber hoppy pales. if ican sell twenty firkins of a 4.2%hop bomb to every 1 firkin of my rather pleasant well balanced fuggles laced brew guess what ill concentrate on selling

[boingy]

Critch, mate, you've accidentally attributed that quote to me instead of EoinMag.

I certainly don't want the APA style to fade away. It's not my favourite style but that doesn't make it any less valid.
All I was saying is that the OP seems to be wanting a less-hoppy APA, which is a bit like wanting a stout to be a bit less dark...

[critch]

oops, didnt get rid of all the quote tags, appologies boingy

hmmm blond stouts maybe we can sell it next to the black ipa's

[Bobba]

A great IPA I've brewed is Lagunitus IPA, which does an excellent job at addressing the lack of balance in a lot of the APA's.
There's a Brewing Network 'Can You Brew It' podcast at http://www.thebrewingnetwork.com/shows/507 where they interview the brewer and he reveals all! One of the most informative BN podcast i've come across

As 196osh points out, it's the FG that's the key player here in balancing out the bitterness, so upping the mash temp and using a low attenuating yeast are the tricks here. Lagunitus go full hog on that, mashing in at 72C (yes mash temp, not strike temp!), using Fullers very low attenuating yeast (also extremely flocculent so a good yeast to work with), and using lots of crystal to increase body.
My best interpretation with the hops available was delicious, and nicely balanced. viewtopic.php?f=24&t=34101&hilit=lagunitus

[EoinMag]

All the cool kids are doing them though so it's easy to see why it's becoming a very popular style, but hopefully it's a fad which fades.

never been called a cool kid before!

compared to the way they sell to a stock english bitter id be suprised if it did.........

i do a couple of stock english bitters that although are nice beers they dont sell anywhere near as good as some of my uber hoppy pales. if ican sell twenty firkins of a 4.2%hop bomb to every 1 firkin of my rather pleasant well balanced fuggles laced brew guess what ill concentrate on selling

Horses for courses, but I don't like them so it's a taste thing.

I did notice while in the grey horse in Consett that their best seller as the landlady put it was full of US hops, but it was still well balanced and more like a UK bitter just hopped with distinctly US hops, I'd not have called it an APA though, cos the main characteristic of them is too much hoppage.

Anyway, if it's selling well for you then let's hope that once they all get jaded pallets from too much hops that they come back to the tried and true English styles ( and this from an Irish man;))

[Barley Water]

Well the way I go about all this is I first look at the ratio of bitterness in IBU's to original gravity. Some beers are extremely low, for instance German wheat biers come in around .25 or less. On the other hand, we have IPA's over here that exceed 1.00. When I'm looking at a potential forumulations, I look at that ratio to ensure I am at least getting in the right ballpark stylewise. I personally think hopping is a very complex subject and bitterness is just but one aspect of it. There is an interplay between gravity and bitterness however it also makes a lot of difference what your brewing water is like. For instance, my water is medium hard with both temporary as well a permanant hardness and some hops come off very harsh and unplesantly bitter while others provide a smooth bitterness. Another thing I think about is the amount of hop material in the boil for a given level of expected bitterness. Everything else being equal, I would rather use a higher alpha bittering hop just to keep the amount of vegital material lower in the wort because sometimes that comes out in the taste. Also, if you are dry hopping, I don't usually let the contact time exceed around 10 days or so as I have had problems in the past. Hop varieties also seem to make a difference, I find some of the high alpha pacific northwest hops very course while others seem to inpart a much more refined bitterness, for instance I don't ever use Chinook but have had good luck with Warrior. Naturally, all this is a matter of personal preference. At the end of the day what I do is make my beer the first time using my first best guess at what will work. I then evaluate it myself, feed it to friends and put it into contests to get feedback. I keep decent notes and then mess with things to move the taste where I want it. A good example of this approach is the Alt Bier I have on tap right now. The first time I made the stuff, I really liked the beer but thought that it needed to be much more bitter (and score sheets from contest bore that opinion out). The batch I am currently drinking is much more agressive in that department and I will again subject the beer to my usual testing, I do think that I a zeroing in on the target though (by the way, I used German Magnum in the beer and am happy with the results).