Citra SMASH advice

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jdoss03

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I plan on doing a Citra SMASH IPA this weekend, here's my plans:

5Gal Batch

11 LBS mariss otter

.5 Citra FWH
.5 Citra @20
.5 Citra@15
.5 Citra @ 10
.5 Citra @ 5
.5 Citra @ 0

That'll leave me with about 3.5 oz to figure out how much I should dry hop with. I'm thinking maybe 2 oz?

I plan on mashing in at 154 for 60 min.

Boil for 60.

I am a little unsure about how much water to strike and sparge with though, any suggestions would help. And also, how much wort to expect to boil off?

Thanks guys, any input on this recipe will be greatly appreciated.
 
First off, boil off is a function of the diameter of the pot/the surface area of the wort, so your boil off rate is unique to your pot.

Second off, my house beer is similar to your recipe, with a simpler hop schedule and a bit of honey malt:

10lbs Maris Otter
1 lb Honey Malt
1.0 oz Citra @ 60
1.0 oz Citra @ 15
1.0 oz Citra @5
1.0 oz Citra dry hop for 7 days before serving.

I'll tell you from experience, that the high AA of Citra makes it so that if you don't balance it quite right with the malt, it can taste really bad. A little goes a long way, and more is definitely not better. If you stick with your hop burst schedule above, you should be fine, but still only dry hop with 1.0 oz.

For your water volume calculation, here's how it works:

Batch Size (i.e., 5.0 gallons)

+

Loss to grain absorbtion (This is only about 0.3 gallons in my process, but I squeeze the daylights out of my BIAB bag..this # is higher in a typical 3 vessel brew process)

+

Loss to boiloff (this is about 1.2 gallons/hr. on my pot, but all pots are different. Boiloff is a function of surface area)

+

Loss to trub (however much hotbreak you leave behind post boil AND however much you leave behind when you rack from primary...on my system this # is about 0.5 gallons total)

+

Loss to contraction (you lose somewhere about 0.2-0.3 gallons during cooldown just due to the hot liquid contracting as it cools)

=

Total water volume.

Once you know that total water volume you are going to use, you mash with 1.25 qts of water/pound of grain, then sparge with the rest.

Hope that helps!
 
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