Typo in Palmer's How to Brew, a Revised Recipe or am I just wrong?

Hello all, I'm about to brew my first batch of beer this weekend and, needless to say, I am really excited. I picked up Palmer's "How to Brew" and have been reading and taking notes over the last few days. The beginning recipe that Palmer suggests is, as many of you know, a cincinnati pale ale. The recipe in the book calls for 6 AAUs of bittering hops and 5 AAUs of finishing hops. In searching the web (this forum included) almost every cincinnati pale ale recipe I found (Palmer's included) calls for about 12 AAUs of bittering hops and 5 AAUs of finishing hops. That seems like a huge difference, am I missing something here? Can someone point me in the direction of the more correct recipe or point out how I am reading the recipe completely wrong?:cross:

Thanks in advance!

Where are you finding this recipe in How to Brew? On the website?

he says this style is like Anchor Liberty Ale™ and Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. I'm making a Sierra Nevada Pale Ale 7.5 AAU (0.2oz Magnum and 0.7oz Perle for bittering so I'm halfway in between.

I think this is all a matter of taste aand the malts used and the amount will not dramatically make a difference. Bittering is not an exact science. Aroma andflavoring is much more important.

SO - the answer is - it SEEMS like a big difference but for bittering it's not.

I pulled the 6AAU bittering out of the book (pg 80), every web recipe says to use 12 AAU bittering. It's comforting knowing it won't make a huge difference, i just wouldn't want to ruin the batch from the get-go. I think I'll go half way in-between and see how it goes.

Thanks for the insight!

You won't ruin anything. Biyyering is just a minor addition to offset the malt. Flavor is not at risk. More like balance is the thing here.

Not a concern. If worried go inbetween. It'll be fine.

whitefishbrewer said:

I pulled the 6AAU bittering out of the book (pg 80), every web recipe says to use 12 AAU bittering. It's comforting knowing it won't make a huge difference, i just wouldn't want to ruin the batch from the get-go. I think I'll go half way in-between and see how it goes.

Thanks for the insight!

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I have the book. He's doing a late extract addition. Do the other recipes have it written the same way?

I just ran it through Beersmith, as written in the book, and got 34 IBUs. Here's the recipe:

2 lbs 8.0 oz Amber Dry Extract
3 lbs 4.8 oz Pale Liquid Extract [Boil for 5 min]

0.75 oz Northern Brewer [8.00 %] (60 min) Hops 16.4 IBU
0.50 oz Cascade [5.00 %] (30 min) Hops 4.7 IBU
0.50 oz Cascade [5.00 %] (15 min) Hops 3.4 IBU

Beer Profile
Est Original Gravity: 1.046 SG
Est Final Gravity: 1.012 SG

He has the three hops additions as written, and adding the pale LME at 5 minutes left in the boil, just to sanitize it.

YooperBrew said:

I have the book. He's doing a late extract addition. Do the other recipes have it written the same way?

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Yep, this is the difference between Palmer's book and website. The website recipes are targeted for much higher boil gravities, and ask for more hops accordingly.

Although from the sound of things the differences in the recipes won't affect the taste too much, out of curiosity how do you all think the taste would change between the two recipes? Will the higher boil gravity counteract the added AAUs making the taste differences between the 2 recipes negligible? Or will the 12 AAU recipe be bolder with the added hoppiness and higher boil gravity? Since my brew skills are still in their infancy I couldn't begin to speculate how the differences would manifest themselves, but am still curious.

A lower boil gravity increases utilization of your hops. So a smaller amount of hops in a low gravity boil can give you the same bittering as a larger amount of hops in a higher gravity boil.

Hmmm. So in essence Palmer was able to reduce the bittering AAUs used in the receipe from 12 down to 6 while obtaining the same hoppiness in the beer by using a late extract addition, which tends to increase the hoppiness of the beer ( I can feel how imprecise I'm being and it drives me crazy but I 'm still in the steep part of the brewing learning curve). Is there a downside to increasing the hoppiness of your beer using this technique (less bittering AAUs when using late extraction addition)? Do you lose some of the other flavors that hops impart on the beer since you are using less of them?

as far as gravity effecting utilization, the way I understood it, is the high gravity beers are more acidic than lower weak worts, which is a major factor(probably the largest) in hop utilization(or in this case it's really effecting solubility which then effects isomerization because not all the a-acids are available to be isomerized.).

I'd be really interested to see how (the science behind) high gravity worts do not impede hop utilization.

I did find that an IBU is defined by the EBC as 50 * absorbance of the isooctane layer read at 275 nm in a 1 cm cell against an isooctane blank. (after centrifugation.)

z987k said:

as far as gravity effecting utilization, the way I understood it, is the high gravity beers are more acidic than lower weak worts, which is a major factor in hop utilization.

I'm really interested in how (the science behind) high gravity worts do not impede hop utilization.

I did find that an IBU is defined by the EBC as 50 * absorbance of the isooctane layer read at 275 nm in a 1 cm cell against an isooctane blank. (after centrifugation.)

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If you listen to the podcast linked to, it's very unscientific and just basically explains that the isomerization occurs, and that then due to kinetics, they "cling" to everything. This carries the isomerized acids out of solution, and affects the IBUs. So, what he's saying is that spectromometry is the only accurate way to determine the IBUs.

Still, he concedes that using the current formulas are a very good guestimate.

z987k said:

On the utilization thing though, I'd really like to see more to the contrary of the generally accepted knowledge.

Click to expand...

Yes, he talks about the conference where he learned this, and how it flies in the face of what has been thought in the last 30 years, including the info in his book!

Now, because we've derailed the current thread long enough, I'm going to break this off into a new thread in the brew science forum. Maybe one of our resident geeks can explain further.