Calypso/galaxy pale recipe questions

Hi guys!

I'm moving to my second beer after a rye hinted mild ale. Was thinking about brewing a pale ale with galaxy and calypso hops, dry hopping with the calypso to see if any of the apple character remains. I'm going to get this going on Saturday with a mate, but before then I have some time to ask questions and look for people's advice )

Currently I was thinking about using 7% of both Munich malts and British crystal malts (L70) to give it a bit of a malty backbone. We'll be aiming for an abv in the 5-6% region (still to fix), and an IBU of 40-60 (again advice is welcome, as it's the first hoppy brew I'm making).

Three main questions: would adding 2-3% of biscuit malts be overkill? would some late addition of cascade for grapefruit character be an asset or a hindrance that would muddle the hop profile? should I aim at a higher proportion of Munich malts?

Cheers!

The last thing you want is a 60IBU beer without any malt character to balance it. I think you would be perfectly fine with the 2-3%. Late addition cascades are a great idea if you are looking for some citrus-grapefruit aroma. I just brewed an all Cascade APA with a FWH and then all late additions 10, 5, and 1 min. The beer is in primary now and smells amazing.

I made a 100% Calypso pale ale to get a good read on these and was terribly disappointed. I had used Warrior for bittering, then 15g additions of Calypso at 15, 7, 0 and 28g of dry hop in 5 gallons. It was very bland. I actually split 10 gallon batch at the 15 minute mark. The other half used identical quantities of a Sorachi/Citra/Centenniel/Cascade blend. You never would have guessed the Calypso had anywhere close to the same levels. I think it would be a good accent to Nelson Sauvin. But it would get run-over by anything packing s punch like Galaxy.

Humm, yeah, calypso doesn't seem to get very good reviews. I was thinking about twice the amount of calypso than galaxy in the late additions and using galaxy for bittering.

I just kegged a ten gallon batch using two ounces of Calypso for bittering. I used ten percent crystal 40 and two ounces of roasted barley in the mash which gave it a nice color but I think the maltiness I was hoping to get was overpowered by the bitterness of Calypso. I also added one ounce of Cascasde at thirty and one ounce of Fuggles at ten. IBU's were close to sixty which in my opinion is overpowering. This was just kegged on Friday so it needs some time to settle down a little. Next batch I did half as much Calypso to see the difference.

After only ten days in the keg the bitterness has calmed way down and this beer tastes much better. I will definetly be using Calypso again

Cool, first two days of fermentation the smell on mine was amazing, reminded me of apples, brandy and apple brandy! It has calmed down a bit now, but once it starts to slow down I'll stick some more calypso to dry hop and see how it does.

This is turning out well. There is a nice sturdy malty base with some refreshing hop on top. There's some nectarine, fig and apple in the flavours, but the hops in general don't feel too 'American', e.g., no grapefruit! Good white head, nice lacing. My only thing is that being my first partial mash (instead of all grain) and my first dry hopped ale it is not as clear as usual. Next time I'll stick a bit less crystal malt, a bit more galaxy in flavouring, put bitterness up a notch.