Single hop ale experiment and questions

So I just made the switch to all grain 2 weeks ago. My goal is to brew a minimum of 2 batches a month. I'm doing my 3rd batch of the month on Sunday and I want to start my single hop experiment. One of my batches each month is going to be a single hop pale ale or ipa. I brew 5 gal batches. Here are my questions:

1) What will give me a better learning experience in terms of understanding what each strain of hop has to offer, Pale Ales or IPAs?
2) What is a good grain and mash base recipe that I can use every time? I want the same wort for each batch and ll I want to change is the hops so I understand what each hop has to offer.
3) What is a good schedule for boiling? I want to learn about hop bitter, hop flavor, and hop aroma. I was thinking 1 oz at 60 min, 1 oz at 15, 1 oz at flame out, 1 oz dry hop 7 days before keg/bottle - not sure if this counts as a pale ale or an IPA.
4) any suggestions on what hops I should check out?
5) lastly what is a good yeast to use? One that will let the the hops be the forward taste of the beer?

1. I love a good IPA, and using a massive amount of a particular hop would certainly show you what that strain is made of. That being said, I'm thinking a solid PA would show you more from the standpoint of how that hop works "with" a malt flavor instead of just using it as a delivery system...

2. I'd keep it fairly simple. Maybe something like 10lb 2 row, 1 lb or less of crystal ? (choose your poison. 20, 40,....,120) This would give you a simple base in the 5.5% AVB rang based on 5.5gal into fermenter (~5gal bottled) and 75% efficiency. 5.5% ABV is middle of the road for an IPA and upper end for a PA.

3. Hard to say as the alpha acids are going to be dramatically different between some hops (guess thats what your looking to find out though hu?) ie using a centennial at 10% with that schedule would put you at about 52IBU which is about mid for an American IPA, but something like Saaz at 4% would give you around 20IBU which is under the 30IBU min for a PA.......

4. all of em!

5. something like a US-05 thats clean and repeatable....

I'm doing the same type of experiment currently and using a recipe similar to this recipe for zombie dust: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f12/3-floyds-zombie-dust-attempt-help-info-requested-245456/. Just pulled the dry hops for my Mosaic pale ale and my citra/amarillo pale ale tonight actually.

1) I would brew whichever style of beer you like more IPA or pale ale. Pale ale might be a better choice because there is less of a chance of the single hop becoming overpowering.

2) Same suggestions for the recipe. Brew something that you like to drink but a simple recipe. Do a quick google search of your favorite IPA/pale ale.

3) I would suggest doing a first wort addition then all late additions 15 or 20 min and down then dry hop as well. I wouldn't use a 60 min addition because some hops just aren't great as bittering. If you want a 60 min addition use something like magnum that is very clean and use the same bittering hop for each batch. You'll want to keep the IBU's the same for each batch not necessarily base each recipe on a certain amount of hops. I usually dry hop for 7-14 days with 1-2 oz.

4) Depends on what you are looking for again. Citrus - Amarillo and Citra are great. Piney - Simcoe or Chinoook. If you can get a hold of them or want to spend the money, those are some of my more favorite hops.

5) Wyeast 1056 and WLP001 are go to yeast for clean american hoppy beers. I'm using WLP007 for my single hop experiment currently. It's clean but adds a bit of English character.

Best advice I can give you is to take detailed notes on your process and tasting. I'm sure everyone would like to read about your results here as well. Hope that was helpful and good luck!

With IPAs being generally dry hopped that will give you another element of that individual hop character to enjoy. . Then again nothing wrong with dry hopping a pale ale either!

As for the hop choice if your looking for a cleaner finish make sure you grab a lower cohumulone hop like Simcoe or something under 25% cohumulone

Awesome info thanks

Since I tarted this tread late Sunday night, I figured I'd see if anyone else had any more suggestions considering its early Monday morning now...

branCHEs said:

Since I tarted this tread late Sunday night, I figured I'd see if anyone else had any more suggestions considering its early Monday morning now...

Click to expand...

A little late on this post, but I've been tinkering around with single hopped IPA's as well. One of my absolute favorites is an all Columbus IPA.

I agree with one of the posters from above who mentioned that he wouldn't use the same amount of hops in every experiment. I'd target a certain IBU (whatever you prefer) and achieve that same IBU using your different hops. I think that would give you a much better flavor/aroma profile for each hop variety given some varieties like Columbus have very high alpha acid (15-17) as opposed to say Cascade (4-6) and using the same amount of each in the 60 min boil would have HUGE bitterness differences.