Recipe adjustments - comments welcome!

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secinarot

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I brewed a SNPA clone from a kit a while back. The beer turned out pretty well, but there are some things I would like to change if I brew it again. Not having much experience with recipe formulation, I am hoping that you can help me understand what changes I can make to achieve the flavor that I want.

Here is the recipe:

Recipe Specifications
--------------------------
OG: Estimated 1.046, Actual 1.046
FG: Estimated 1.011, Actual 1.013
Estimated Color: 5.1 SRM
Estimated IBU: 43.2 IBU

Ingredients:
------------
4 lbs 8.0 oz LME Golden Light (Briess) Boil for 15 min
1 lbs 8.0 oz LME Golden Light (Briess) Full boil
8.0 oz Cara-Pils/Dextrine
8.0 oz Caramel/Crystal Malt - 10L
1.00 oz Pearle [8.20 %] (60 min)
1.00 oz Cascade [5.40 %] (5 min)
1.00 oz Cascade [5.40 %] (1 min)
1.00 tsp Irish Moss (Boil 10.0 min)
1 Pkgs American Ale (Wyeast Labs #1056)

Here are some of the things I would like to change:
1) The beer has more of a bitter “bite” than I want. I would like to round out the bitterness a bit.
2) The Cascade aroma and flavor is fairly subtle for my taste. I would like to make it more pronounced
3) The beer fermented out fairly dry. I would like a little more malt flavor/sweetness in the finish.

I have some ideas of what I may want do (e.g. use less bittering hops, dry hop, etc.) but I would really like to hear some ideas from the voices of experience.

Thanks in advance!
 
Dry hopping tih an oz or two of cascades is where I would start. As far as the bitterness/sweetness ration, I think lowering the amount of bittering hops (or adding at 45min) may take care of both. I may also look into Light LME and DME instead of Golden.
 
You can really jack up the aroma by dry hopping. 1 oz of Cascades in the secondary about a week before you rack should do it. To make it less bitter well I'll bet that you know what needs to be done.
 
For that "bitter" taste you don't want, use a different bittering hop than perle. Perle sucks, it is very harsh. I'd suggest Columbus or centennial or even more cascade.

With those you can keep the recipe the way it is as far as boil times.

For the aroma, do another late addition at flame-out and definitely dry hop!

As far as being too dry, use a different extract. If you search you can find some that don't turn out so dry. Another alternative is using a less attenuative yeast, like wlp065 or wyeast 1272. Similar characteristics to the Cali ale but will finish maltier. Yet another suggestion would be switch crystal 10 to a crystal 40, a higher lovibond crystal malt can give a better sense of malt character.
 
If it were me, I'd boil more of the extract for the full length, since that could help with both 1 & 3, but I'm generally opposed to late extract addition, so take that for what you will!

As Parker mentioned, I'd maybe shift some of the bittering hops down to a later addition. Somebody had a chart that showed the ideal times for aroma, flavor, and bittering additions, I forget where it was. I think for flavor the ideal time was around 14-17 minutes til the end of the boil.
 
If it were me, I'd boil more of the extract for the full length, since that could help with both 1 & 3, but I'm generally opposed to late extract addition...

I've not seen any arguments against late extract add but I would be interested to hear why you don't like it. What are some of the negatives?
 
If you want it sweeter you can also add more LME or DME to boost the OG, which will give you a higher FG, which of course will give you a higher ABV.

As you can see from all the responses, there is more than one way to skin a beer.
 
I've not seen any arguments against late extract add but I would be interested to hear why you don't like it. What are some of the negatives?
I'm not really interested in starting a big debate about it. I don't think it's bad, I just think it's largely unnecessary and if you're using a recipe that was formulated without the late addition method, using it can throw off your bittering due to increased utilization.

Mostly, I just think it's unnecessary, and I prefer to get it all in the kettle and move on. A personal preference thing.
 
Watch your Crystal-malt amounts. Remember, CaraPils is a crystal malt, too! With the grains as is, you're over 14% Crystal malt. Combine that with the fact that Briess mashed CaraPils with the 2-row pale malt when they made your extract, you've got even more.

What I'm getting at is that your proposed grist ought to end up fairly full-bodied. Sweet, maybe not; full-bodied, yes.

Cheers,

Bob
 
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