Recipe to experiment with new hops

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rack04

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I have several varieties of hops that I have yet to brew with.

Amarillo
Citra
Falconers Flight
Simcoe
Zythos

Does anyone have a base recipe or style that would be suited to experiment with these hops? I was thinking about a pale ale grist with 2-row, vienna, crystal, and carapils similar to ed worts pale ale and pick a common hop schedule, ie 60 min, 15 min, and flameout. I would be bittering with magnum to keep consistent through the batches and I don't want to dry hop.
 
There are lots of popular pale ale recipes on here; search for Yooper's pale ale or Bee Cave Brewery's House ale. When I play with different hops I use a simple, basic pale recipe:

10 lb Two Row
1lb Vienna
I lb wheat
1/2 lb Caramel 40

You can drop the wheat and add more vienna or two row if you like; but I like a touch of wheat in my beers. Wyeast 1056 has always worked well in this recipe. My favorite hops with this was 1 oz Warrior (60 min), 1 oz Willamette (15 min) and dry hop 2 oz Willamette (whole leaf) for 1 week.
 
I was thinking of of something like this:

Code:
BeerSmith 2 Recipe Printout - http://www.beersmith.com
Recipe: Racked Pale Ale
Brewer:
Asst Brewer:
Style: American Pale Ale
TYPE: All Grain
Taste: (0.0)

Recipe Specifications
--------------------------
Boil Size: 7.29 gal
Post Boil Volume: 5.99 gal
Batch Size (fermenter): 5.25 gal
Bottling Volume: 4.75 gal
Estimated OG: 1.054 SG
Estimated Color: 5.9 SRM
Estimated IBU: 39.6 IBUs
Brewhouse Efficiency: 75.00 %
Est Mash Efficiency: 82.1 %
Boil Time: 60 Minutes

Ingredients:
------------
Amt                   Name                                     Type          #        %/IBU         
8 lbs                 Great Western 2-Row Pale Malt (2.0 SRM)  Grain         1        76.2 %        
2 lbs                 Weyermann Vienna Malt  (3.5 SRM)         Grain         2        19.0 %        
8.0 oz                Briess Crystal 40L (40.0 SRM)            Grain         3        4.8 %         
0.50 oz               Magnum [13.60 %] - Boil 60.0 min         Hop           4        23.9 IBUs     
0.25 oz               Simcoe [12.20 %] - Boil 30.0 min         Hop           5        8.2 IBUs      
0.25 oz               Simcoe [12.20 %] - Boil 15.0 min         Hop           6        5.3 IBUs      
1.00 Items            Whirlfloc Tablet (Boil 10.0 mins)        Fining        7        -             
0.50 tsp              Yeast Nutrient (Boil 10.0 mins)          Other         8        -             
0.25 oz               Simcoe [12.20 %] - Boil 5.0 min          Hop           9        2.1 IBUs      
1.0 pkg               Danstar Nottingham Ale [23.66 ml]        Yeast         10       -             

Mash Schedule: Single Infusion, Medium Body, Equal Batch Sparge
Total Grain Weight: 10 lbs 8.0 oz
----------------------------
Name              Description                             Step Temp     Step Time     
Mash In           Add 13.13 qt of water at 168.0 F        152.0 F       60 min        

Sparge: Batch sparge with 3 steps (Drain mash tun, 2.71 gal, 2.71 gal) of 168.0 F water

Notes:
------

Created with BeerSmith 2 - http://www.beersmith.com
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Basically I would just replace the simcoe with:

Amarillo
Citra
Falconers Flight
Zythos

After 5 batches I hope to have a good idea of the flavor of these hops. I would keep the quantities the same so the resultant bitterness for each batch will be different.
 
If you just want to see what the different hops taste like make a simple pale ale maybe in small amounts then do a similar hop schedule with each hop.

Maybe you could take the base recipe and run it through a calculator and adjust the hop amounts and addition times to keep the IBU's the same.
 
If you really want to strip it down to the hops, then a SMaSH with 2-row is probably the best, maybe 60, 15 and 5 for hop additions, with a dry hop.
 
Ramitt said:
If you really want to strip it down to the hops, then a SMaSH with 2-row is probably the best, maybe 60, 15 and 5 for hop additions, with a dry hop.

This.

5 gal of wort, boil one gal at a time w/ different hops, ferment with same yeast.
 
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