American Pale Ale The Electric APA

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kal

Well-Known Member
Joined
Nov 21, 2006
Messages
2,722
Reaction score
531
Location
Ottawa, Canada
Recipe Type
All Grain
Yeast
Safale US-05
Yeast Starter
N/A
Additional Yeast or Yeast Starter
N/A
Batch Size (Gallons)
6 (post boil)
Original Gravity
1.056
Final Gravity
1.010
Boiling Time (Minutes)
60
IBU
37
Color
5.86 SRM
Primary Fermentation (# of Days & Temp)
Ferment at 66-68F until complete
Secondary Fermentation (# of Days & Temp)
N/A
Additional Fermentation
N/A
Tasting Notes
Dry with extremely smooth hop flavour, very quaffable!
This is an all late-addition APA where hops are only added in the last 20 minutes to give it very smooth bitterness with a massive hop flavour. (More information on late hopping on Jamil's site here).

The Electric APA is one that I've made a few times now and everyone who tries it raves about it. I've made minor changes to the hop bill over the last year or two until until I got it exactly the way I liked it. It's one of my house beers that I like to always have on tap as it's dry and thirst quenching (my preference for APAs).

A large portion of the hop goodness comes from the Citra dry hops - they're essential (IMHO). I've even tried this recipe with 100% Citra hops and it just wasn't the same (it was somewhat one dimensional).

My brewhouse efficiency is 95% so scale as required to suite your setup.
The US-05 dry yeast can be replaced by WYeast 1056 or WLP-001.

The Electric APA

BeerLabel.jpg


Size: 6.0 gal (post boil)
Brewhouse efficiency: 95%
Attenuation: 82.0%

Original Gravity: 1.056
Terminal Gravity: 1.010
Color: 5.86 SRM
Alcohol: 6.0%
Bitterness: 37 IBU

Ingredients:
7.75 lb Standard North American 2-Row (78.5%)
1.75 lb Vienna Malt (17.7%)
0.375 lb Crystal Malt 40°L (3.8%)
0.5 oz Centennial (9.2%) - added during boil, boiled 20 min
0.5 oz Amarillo (8.2%) - added during boil, boiled 20 min
1/2 Whirlfloc Tablets (Irish moss) - added during boil, boiled 15 min
1 oz Centennial (9.2%) - added during boil, boiled 10 min
1 oz Amarillo (8.2%) - added during boil, boiled 10 min
1 oz Centennial (9.2%) - added during boil, boiled 0 min
1 oz Amarillo (8.2%) - added during boil, boiled 0 min
12 g Fermentis Safale US-05
1 oz Citra (11.1%) - added dry to secondary fermenter

Notes:
Add 250mg potassium metabisulphite to 10 gallons water to remove chlorine/chloramine (as required).
Water treated with brewing salts to: Ca=110, Mg=18, Na=16, Cl=50, S04=275
(Basically Randy Mosher's ideal Pale Ale numbers with slightly less Sulphate).
1.25 qt/lb mash thickness. Single infusion mash at 152F for 90 mins. Mashout to 168F.
60-90 min fly sparge with ~6 pH water.
Boil for 60 minutes. Lid on at flameout with 0 minute hops, start chilling immediately.
Cool wort to 66F and aerate well. Ferment at 66-68F until complete.
Add dry hops once fermentation is nearing completion (ie: below 1.015). Dry hop for 7-10 days total.
Rack to brite tank (secondary), crash chill to near freezing (if possible), add gelatine & let clear for 2-3 days.
Package as you would normally. I keg and carb on the low side (6-8 PSI).

IMG_5332new.jpg


IMG_2215.jpg


Enjoy!

Kal
 
Good luck with the brew and let us know how it turns out!

I brewed my last batch on August 13th and it's been the kegs now about two and half weeks and it's perfect!

Kal
 
Made this beer again yesterday... it's been too long since I've had it!

I missed my target gravity: got 1.055/68F (target was 1.056). 94% efficiency instead of 95%. Close enough. ;)

I think it's actually pretty good considering that I'm brewing in the garage temporarily (the major reason why my efficiency varies a bit more than it used to).

I threw in an extra oz of Centennial at flame - out just because I had 5 oz of it packaged up (recipe calls for 4 when doing 10 gallons of finished product).

I love the way this wort smells/tastes. Is it wrong to just drink it as is?

Instead of dry hopping with Citra I've been thinking of trying Ahtanum or NZ Galaxy instead... I think either would go well. Thoughts?

Kal
 
Seems like a fun recipe to try! I have all the ingredients on hand to brew this one, so bonus. The aroma on this must be awesome. 95% efficiency, really?
 
Seems like a fun recipe to try! I have all the ingredients on hand to brew this one, so bonus. The atoma on this must be awesome. 95% efficiency, really?
Thanks. I really like it myself. Many have brewed it and mentioned the same. I do normally get 95% of average ABV beers. 94% when I brewed it yesterday (1.055 instead of 1.056). Close enough.

Kal
 
image-3309599310.jpg

Brewed this for the first time.... After tasting it, it won't be the last. Especially great on a hot afternoon.

Thanks for the recipe.
 
Glad you liked it! I just kegged another batch myself last week... waiting for a slot to clear up in the keezer so that I can put it on tap...

Kal
 
how did the batch with the extra oz of centennial turn out? did you end up experimenting with different dry hops? i have some galaxy and citra. hmm. need to brew this soon, been on a fizzy yellow beer kick but this will break things up nicely i think.
 
how did the batch with the extra oz of centennial turn out? did you end up experimenting with different dry hops? i have some galaxy and citra.
I made 10 gallons and did end up dry hopping with Ahtanum in half and NZ Galaxy in the other half.

I haven't tapped either keg yet but samples show a lot of promise. They're pretty similar to the original. I really do like the original recipe as is.

The extra oz of Centennial at flameout probably won't be noticed much given all the other hop goodness going on. I only added it because it was there and easier then repacking it up...

Kal
 
Kal,
I am curious about brewing this but in a 3 gallon scale. Any suggestion on the grain amounts for a 3 gallons post boil?
 
The amount of grain to use depends on not only batch size but also efficiency, so nobody can tell you how much grain to use as it depends on your system's efficiency (which nobody but you knows).

Plug the numbers into whatever brewing software you use and it'll convert for you.

Your software and then scale up or down depending on how much you want to make. All brewing software lets you put in your system efficiency too.

Kal
 
Kal,

I forgot to mention, when I made my batch, I followed your recipe but I had a pound of Dark Belgian Candi laying around so I added it in the last 15 mins of boil. Didn't do much flavor wise but it did add a very nice caramel aroma.

Thanks again for the recipe.
 
Finally going to brew this up tomorrow, my starter of wlp001 is stirring on the counter right now. When i plugged this recipe into beersmith i was in the 40's for ibus, aa content was almost the same, what did you use to calculate ibus kal? I switched the 20 minutes to 15 to get around 39, im wondering if i should have stuck to 20. Im excited for this brew, been the first batch in about 4 months and all my kegs are empty!
 
I use Beer Tools Pro with their "basic" (standard) IBU calculator (the one that's used by default).

Beer Tools Pro by default doesn't use Rager or Tinseth. You can select from a number of curves and even edit them yourself if you want. There's also gravity and pellet hop correction graphs that can be loaded/edited. Neither is used by default.

Here's the window where you select what to use:

Fowler.jpg


If you wan to manually edit the curve or create your own it looks like this:

Curveedit.jpg


More details here: http://www.beertoolspro.com/wiki/Utilization

So the "basic" curve which is their default gives gives me 36.9 IBU.
Changing to the "Rager" curve gives gives me 40.5 IBU.
Changing to the "Tinseth" curve gives gives me 31.4 IBU.

There's also Mosher (24.4 IBU), Garetz (13.2 IBU), Daniels (52 IBU), and Fowler (22.3 IBU). You can create your own too.

As you can see, the IBU will vary greatly depending on which expert you want to believe as they all have different curves as they how "they" think hop bitterness is absorbed based on boil time. A range of 13.2 to 52 is massive!

I take them all with a grain of salt as there's a lot of variables involved including hop age too. I basically feel there's no such thing as too much hops near the end of the boil (last 0-5 minutes). ;) One of these days instead of adding all these hops at various times, I'd to try plopping in a full pound of hops at flameout and nowhere else and let it sit for 5 mins before chilling. I think that would be an interesting APA. I know some commercial beers only hop through a hop-back (basically the same thing) but then they have longer contact time usually and due to the large volumes the beer is often still (technically) boiling.

The only thing these experts have in common is that if you boil long enough, you'll extract all of the hop bitterness. They argue a bit as to how much bitterness is extracted total but they're fairly close. Where they disagree with each other is how fast hop bitterness is extracted over the first 20-40 minutes (the early part). That's where an all-late-addition recipe like this falls apart when it comes to IBU calculations and you'll see widely varying IBU numbers. Most beers have a bittering addition at 60 minutes which gives the beer most of its bitterness so most curves will give similar results.

So long story short: Don't put too much stock on IBUs. There are a dozen different ways to calculate depending on who you believe. The only way to truly know is to have the final beer analyzed.

Kal
 
wow. thanks for the awesome replay kal. i think BS uses tinseth by default iirc, strange because that makes me even higher yet. ill double check my aa content and make sure i didnt bone something up. but otherwise i think ill wing it and toss them in at 15 for the first addition
 
fermentation is pretty much complete and i am a few days into the dry hop. i cracked the lid to see how things were going, krausen has dropped and i was floored by the smells coming from the primary! very tropical, peachy and citrusy smells. best smelling fermentation yet, hopefully it tastes just as good.

oh and kal, i just found your basement build thread on your website, amazing!
 
Hey Kal! I'm slowly building a kegerator setup and I think your Electric APA will be the first brew on tap in my house. Just added gelatine and cold-crashed last night, and it smells amazing.

I love making labels for my beer, and I think what I'm going to do now that I'm kegging is make a 5x7 photo label and frame the current beer label on the front of the kegerator.

I'm no graphic designer, but here's what I made for your beer if you're interested (I had to make some adjustments to the recipe based on time and hop availability).

Electric.jpg

Confession: I drool over your setup on a weekly basis. The basement is looking great!
 
Nice work! I love the disco ball! I have to figure out a way to include one in the new basement. They're so retro.

Kal
 
Just had my first taste of this and it's amazing. LHBS was out of Amarillo and true Centennial, so I was stuck adding only Centennial Type during the boil. Fortunately I was able to pick up the very last Citra for the dry hop and WOW. Awesome citrusy aroma and flavor.

I picked up some bulk Centennial, Amarillo, and Citra this month as the new harvest was coming out, specifically to continue making this brew. Looking forward to making many more batches of this! :mug:
 
Did this as my first AG batch tonight!

I way underestimated my efficiency... OG hit 1.062. Luckily I had extra cooled water to top off at the end, brought it to 1.056 exactly.

Smells amazing so far.
 
Drinking this after 4 weeks, and mine is far too bitter for an APA. I'm sure it will mellow out.

Did you make it to 37 IBU as the recipe calls for? The BJCP style guidlines say APAs are 30-45 IBU so this one's right smack dap in the middle.

Maybe you prefer less bitter beers?

Kal
 
Oh no, I'm a hophead. I can just tell it's more like 50-60 Ibus, but just doesn't have the sweetness from the alcohol to balance it out. I'll have to double check the AA on my hops.. Not a bad beer at all, just too bitter for an APA. More like an IPA.
 
Strange. I like very hoppy beers myself too and actually 3 IPAs kegged now that are in the 57-63 IBU range and they're definitely a lot more bitter than my Electric Pale Ale (also on tap).

What hops did you at a what times and what AA%?

Kal
 
Just drank a sample of this before dry hopping it tonight (was at 1.014 after 8 days) and damn is it tasty! Can't wait for the final product.

It actually tastes (and looks! -- and smells!) VERY similar to the 512 IPA from 512 Brewing, except very toned down hop-wise obviously. I imagine if we scale up the hops, you've got a pretty spot-on clone. (I was in Austin this weekend so I have a good recent experience to compare!)
 
After having this sit in the bottles for just over a week, I found a flaw with this recipe: The beer seems to magically disappear. I just started drinking it a few days ago and a quarter of the batch is gone.

Fantastic recipe. Everyone who's tried it can't believe it's home made. This will definitely be a regular on the brew circuit. I think I need better equipment so I can brew larger batches...
 
Brewing this one now. In Mash Tun. Only change I am doing is subbing last amarillo addition with Glacier. Also going to split into two batches and pitch one with northern ale (1332) and the other with american ale (1056). Might also dry hop with glacier for 3 days.
 
Hey...
Hope to try this recepie... my second time brewing
But the problem is in my home country we don't have available all the hops recepie calls for... so was wondering if I use some other hops will I get at least something that is close?

I would use instead
Centennial (9.2%) - Columbus (12,7 %)
Amarillo (8.2%) - Cascade (6,7 %)
Citra (11%) - Citra (13,5%)

This is what I have available in online shop... also there are some others you can check:
http://svezapivo.hr/kategorija.php?kategorija=2

Advice?
 
Hey...
Hope to try this recepie... my second time brewing
But the problem is in my home country we don't have available all the hops recepie calls for... so was wondering if I use some other hops will I get at least something that is close?

I would use instead
Centennial (9.2%) - Columbus (12,7 %)
Amarillo (8.2%) - Cascade (6,7 %)
Citra (11%) - Citra (13,5%)

This is what I have available in online shop... also there are some others you can check:
http://svezapivo.hr/kategorija.php?kategorija=2

Advice?

Use cascade in place of the centennial (adjust for AA% differences). The citra AA% doesn't matter because it's dry hop only. Replacing Amarillo is difficult; you could use cascade, but will significantly change the beer (it will still be good though). IME, if you use Columbus, it will overpower all the other hops (with a really nice piney dankness that I enjoy).

Edit: Just had a look at your link. You could use Mosaic instead of Amarillo. They are quite different, but both give nice fruity flavours so it is in the same 'style'.
 
Thanks... Just have to look into how to adjust AA % differences

It's quite easy to work out with brewing software. I can plug it into beersmith for you if you don't have it. I'd need to know roughly your pre-boil and post-boil volumes, which hops you plan to use, and the AA% for each hop.
 
The hops are all late boil (in the last 20 mins) so I wouldn't worry too much about subtle AA% differences, especially with the 10 and 0 minute ones. If the AA%'s are double or half then you may want to adjust the 20 min one.

Good luck!

Kal

P.S. A lower ABV 'sessionable' version of this beer is available too - see here. This is the one I keep on tap all the time now. At only 4.3% ABV it's more approachable and doesn't give anything up in terms of flavour.

P.P.S. Agreed with Gnomebrewer on the hop substitutions. While I love Columbus, it's a bit out of place here and will overpower. If you want to use it, I'd recommend my Green Flash West Coast IPA clone instead.
 
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