Advice needed for APA

Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum

Help Support Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

Bosium

Well-Known Member
Joined
Jul 14, 2008
Messages
96
Reaction score
1
Location
Essex, UK. Formerly Cape Town, ZA
Hi there

I am planning an APA. Having never brewed one before, I could use some advice:

I am starting with Edwort's Haus Pale Ale, with a few mods:

7.5 lbs UK Maris Otter pale malt (I'm in the UK, this is the cheapest pale malt)
2 lbs Vienna malt
0.5 lbs Cara-munich (crystal 45)
0.5 lbs Flaked Barley

I will aim for the 1.051 and about 37 IBUs, mashed at 152.F

Now my questions are as follows:

Hops:
I would like the brew mainly cascade-driven, but I have some east kent goldings lying around (about an ounce), and it
would be nice if I could use them too. I was thinking of perhaps splitting the last flavour addition half-half cascade
and EKG, or perhaps sticking to edwort's schedule and then dry-hopping the beer with the EKG, or maybe even just replacing
the cascade bittering charge with EKG. Would these flavours complement each other? My feeling is yes, but perhaps someone
with more experience could give me their £0.02 (or $0.02).

Yeast:
I have a big batch of english brown that I've fermented with Wyeast 1098 British Ale, which seems to be a pretty clean
tasting strain and flocculates well. Could I use this instead? I do have notty as well, but it would be nice to re-use
the 1098 yeast cake if it doesn't adversely affect the flavour. Again, my feeling is yes, but other points of view would
be appreciated.

Any suggestions / advice would be welcome.

Thanks!
G
 
Your recipe looks good to me. Although according to ProMash if you want to get SG 1.051 you need another .5 pounds of base malt (with 65% efficiency).
I think Wyeast 1098 will do just fine.
For hops you could do something like this:

Cascade 1 oz. 60 min
EKG 1 oz. 25 min
Cascade 0.75 oz. 5 min
Cascade 0.25 oz. 0 min
That will give you 37 IBU's, according to ProMash at least.
 
I've used Cascade and EKG in a pale ale, and they go just fine together. I think my balance was more towards the Cascade, though, with the EKG lending a supporting role.

Are you using pale malt or pale ale malt? If it's pale ale malt, then I think the Vienna may be too much since it already has a fair amount of maltiness to it.

For me, I think Wyeast 1098 is going to give the beer more fruitiness and tartness than a typical APA would have. If you can go with something without those characteristics, it would be better.

Those are my $0.02. (Can't figure out where the British Pound symbol is on my U.S. keyboard!)

-Steve
 
Hi, thank for the replies, I guess I really posted this in the wrong forum.

Part of me wants to use the EKG as a bittering charge as I know they are very smooth bittering hops. Never having used Cascade before, I'm not sure if they are. I would have liked to use Magnum like in SNPA but they are impossible to find here. I do like the floral aroma of the EKG though so it would be nice to incorporate some later in the boil or in the dry hop schedule to achieve that.

As for needing more base malt, what I usually do is aim for 75% efficiency and then just adjust the batch size and boil length to achieve my target gravity using a pre-boil gravity calculation. Works like a charm, I'm never more than a point or two off this way.

Thanks again
G
 
Back
Top