A bit of general recipe advice please

[oliver tate]

Hi, not sure if this is in the right place but here goes....

I am starting to get the hang of designing my own recipes and I am enjoying the beers I am brewing, but need some general advice.

Recently I had a pint of brew dog punk IPA. It was ok, but what struck me was it was all hops when you first taste it but then with a clear malt aftertaste. Not long after I had a pint of 13 guns (Daniel thwaites brewery) which was incredible, all malty at first but then a hoppy aftertaste (a kind of floral hopppyness, not bitter). These 2 probably aren't the best examples of what I mean but I hope you get the point.

My question is, what factors do I need to consider in order to get such a clear, neat distinction between malt and hops in my brews? In the beers I have made so far, the malt and hops always seem to combine into a singular taste sensation and so I find it difficult to distinguish the tastes. In the 2 beers described above, I found the hops and malt are easy separate, and it is this I am looking for!

Secondly, how do you get the hoppyness to come in as an after taste without the beer being overly bitter?

Sorry my questions are a bit vague, I hope I have explained myself ! thanks for any advice

[raiderman]

There are better qualified people on here to reply but as no one has here's my starter for ten. I'd start experimenting with hop balance. I rarely add bittering hops and you ought to try getting all you IBUs from late additions plus chucking a load more in at 80c and again in the cornie. I'm missing out the FV simply to give you the chance to taste before kegging and adjust. Don't use less than 50g in the cornie. I like blondes. They show off the hops well. I'd play with a 5:/: blonde beer all late hopped as a starting point. But go for a reasonably well bodied blonde. I hate thin aromatic beers. Some of the worst commercial citra are thin and astringic. Add 200g carapils to a 23l with 5kg of pale or sub in 1kg wheat if you like
What you will get is an appreciation of just how much aroma you can generate with bitterness from all late hopping.
That's where I'd start then based on the carapils body equation I'd start thinking how to introduce more malt into the blend. I'm not into brewing malty as in darker soupy brews but 2 thoughts are to try crystal wheat, malted oats or a touch of aromatic malt. The second is to add some cascade delta et al to the hop mix as they link really well with malt flavours. I particularly like delta for late hopping as it has less AA and you can chuck more in late on. You really need Seymour on amerikan hops though.

[Barley Water]

Could be wrong I guess but I think your getting confused between hop bitterness and hop flavor. You can make a beer that is not particularly bitter but has massive hop flavor by late hopping and dry hopping. On the other hand, you can make a bitter beer with little hop flavor by hopping early and not late. Your comments about flavors not being melded together in a beer are interesting. Generally speaking, if a beer is aged for awhile the flavors will tend to meld together where a beer consumed young will not. Many American IPA hop bombs are ment to be consumed young and so the flavors are not necessarily melded by the time they are consumed. Hopefully that helps?

[oliver tate]

Hi, many thanks for the replies, they have given me some food for thought.