Palmer's Cincinnati Pale Ale

My first batch is bottle conditioning. I was going to try Palmer's Cincinnati Pale Ale recipe for my second batch this weekend.

I imagine that many posters have brewed this recipe. I'm looking for a hoppy beer (say 4 on a scale of 1 to 5). Palmer suggests that you can optionally add more hops with 5 mins to go or dry hop. Would previous brewers recommend doing one or both of these options ? In your opinion would doing both be over powering ?

Entirely depends on your taste. There are some members of the forum that seem to be in a competition as to how much hops they can put in one beer. Without knowing the recipe, I don't know exactly what you started with, but it is not unheard of to finish hop AND dry hop a pale ale. I have done it before to great results and I would rate myself a "7" on a 1-10 hop-head scale.

Keep in mind that the late addition and dry hoping will add almost no additional bitterness... only flavor and aroma.

I went ahead and added an additional 2.5AAUs of Cascade at knockout. Original recipe had 2.5 at 30 mins and 2.5 at 15 mins. Haven't decided on dry hopping yet but I don't intend using a secondary which seems to be recommended for dry hopping.

Stuff I learnt in my second batch:

How big do those little hops get when they fill with water!

I need to find a better way to get an OG sample. After aeration, the wort had a good 7-8 inches of foam on top. I had nothing to take a sample that didn't involve me putting my hands in the foam so I decided not to take a sample as it was the lesser of two evils.

Also because of the foam I'm really glad I rehydrated the yeast. I think the powder would have just got suspended in the foam if I had sprinkled it straight on to the wort.


24 hours later it's bubbling away with a pleasant hoppy aroma coming from the airlock.

That recipe was one of the first I ever made, and I seem to recall it being fairly hoppy, but not overly so. I fyou really like hops, I'd say adding some more would be perfect.

I have a dedicated brewing turkey baster that I sanitize to address your OG foam problem. I draw enough wort out to take a reading.

Bert said:

Keep in mind that the late addition and dry hoping will add almost no additional bitterness... only flavor and aroma.

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I just read an older article from Mr Malty that disagrees with this philosophey.

boydak said:

I just read an older article from Mr Malty that disagrees with this philosophey.

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I question the notion that dry-hopping and knockout additions add no AAU's, too. Everytime I have dry-hopped a pale or an IPA, the bitterness, or atleast the 'perceived' bitterness, seems to increase as well as come to the front of the beer with the hop flavor. You may not be able to detect a change in AAU's in a lab, but you can sure detect some bitterness from those types of additions on your palette.

Diablo said:

24 hours later it's bubbling away with a pleasant hoppy aroma coming from the airlock.

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FWIW, that pleasantly hoppy aroma coming out of the airlock is pleasantly hoppy aroma that won't be in your beer (any aromas coming out are aroma compounds that you're losing). dryhopping is probably the best way to get it back in (and you don't need to use a secondary)