Advice on simple APA recipe?

CornyKegs 728
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.
rhys333

rhys333

Supporting Member
HBT Supporter
Joined
May 27, 2013
Messages
3,274
Reaction score
1,693
Location
Edmonton
I recently purchased 1lb of centennial hops and thought I'd brew an all centennial APA. Wondering if you guys and gals can weigh in and let me know your thoughts/suggestions. I'd like it to be medium bodied with a bit of a malt backbone. Recipe below. The weird decimal quantities are because I did a quick conversion from metric. All input appreciated.

Centennial APA

Brew Method: Partial Mash
Style Name: American Pale Ale
Boil Time: 60 min
Batch Size: 6.1 gallons (fermentor volume)
Boil Size: 3.8 gallons
Boil Gravity: 1.050
Efficiency: 73% (brew house)

STATS:
Original Gravity: 1.054
Final Gravity: 1.015
ABV (standard): 5.1%
IBU (tinseth): 43.23

FERMENTABLES:
6.05 lb - American - Pale 2-Row (57.9%)
3.3 lb - Dry Malt Extract - Light - (late addition) (31.6%)
0.55 lb - American - Caramel / Crystal 60L (5.3%)
0.55 lb - American - Munich - Dark 20L (5.3%)

HOPS:
1.1 oz - Centennial, Type: Pellet, AA: 8.2, Use: Boil for 60 min, IBU: 28.08
1.1 oz - Centennial, Type: Pellet, AA: 8.2, Use: Boil for 15 min, IBU: 13.93
1.1 oz - Centennial, Type: Pellet, AA: 8.2, Use: Boil for 1 min, IBU: 1.21

MASH GUIDELINES:
1) Temp: 155 F, Time: 60 min

YEAST:
Fermentis / Safale - American Ale Yeast US-05
 
Ick. It's going to be nasty. Tell you what: Brew it anyway, bottle it, and send it all to me. I can dispose of it properly; I'm a professional.

:fro:

Seriously, I think it looks solid. Simple, solid, and tasty. This is the most attractive recipe I've looked at on HBT in the past few days.

:mug:

Bob
 
Looks good here. More hops!!! Some dry hopping wouldn't be a bad thing.

I'd also like to help dispose of this beverage. Just doing my little bit to help.
 
Solid simple recipe. You could also try splitting the batch in half and ferment one with the US05 and the other with something like US04 or Notty to see the differences. Since you have a pound of Centennial, you could also do some dry hopping. Good luck!
 
Batch Size: 6.1 gallons (fermentor volume)
Boil Size: 3.8 gallons

Your hop utilization will be down from that much top off water.
 
Wow, been hectic the past few days and didn't get a chance to follow up... sooo, a little late, but thanks everyone for the input. Based on the collective input, I think what I'll do is leave the bittering/flavor hops as-is, add one ounce centennial dry-hopping, and reduce the C60/munich just a tad to keep sweetness in balance with bittering.

Btw, special thanks to those willing to help me dispose of it. True martyrs for the cause! ;)
 
dchmela said:
Solid simple recipe. You could also try splitting the batch in half and ferment one with the US05 and the other with something like US04 or Notty to see the differences. Since you have a pound of Centennial, you could also do some dry hopping. Good luck!
Click to expand...

dchmela... I have some ringwood slurry sitting around doing nothing. Maybe I'll ferment half of it with that.
 
rhys333 said:
Based on the collective input, I think what I'll do is leave the bittering/flavor hops as-is, add one ounce centennial dry-hopping, and reduce the C60/munich just a tad to keep sweetness in balance with bittering.
Click to expand...

your crystal & munich amounts are perfectly in line with an APA and won't be that sweet, so no need to reduce them if you don't want. definitely support the addition of a dry hop tho
 
I started my brewing career in a Ringwood brewery. I <3 Ringwood. It can be a ***** to deal with, but once you figure out its peculiarities and habits, it's a FANTASTIC yeast. Nothing else comes close to its flavor profile.

:mug:

Bob
 
Bob said:
I <3 Ringwood. It can be a ***** to deal with, but once you figure out its peculiarities and habits, it's a FANTASTIC yeast. Nothing else comes close to its flavor profile.
Click to expand...
Love to hear what you figured out!
 
It's finicky. ;)

It's highly flocculent so you have to give it the best possible circumstances. Aeration is key. Temp control is paramount - once it gets too cold it'll poop out. But if you let it get too hot it goes really fruity. Rousing is often necessary. That's traditional in the British breweries where it was developed.

More as I remember. ;)
 
Bob said:
It's finicky. ;)

It's highly flocculent so you have to give it the best possible circumstances. Aeration is key. Temp control is paramount - once it gets too cold it'll poop out. But if you let it get too hot it goes really fruity. Rousing is often necessary. That's traditional in the British breweries where it was developed.

More as I remember. ;)
Click to expand...

I used ringwood for the first time recently on a porter (still conditioning in primary). Wyeast says its a top-cropper that starts and ferments slow. In my experience, its near impossible to top-crop and fermented out in 2 days! I aerated and kept it around 68F... not sure if I did something wrong.
 
rhys333 said:
I used ringwood for the first time recently on a porter (still conditioning in primary). Wyeast says its a top-cropper that starts and ferments slow. In my experience, its near impossible to top-crop and fermented out in 2 days! I aerated and kept it around 68F... not sure if I did something wrong.
Click to expand...

I doubt you did anything wrong. Pitch enough yeast into the right environment and it'll do its job quickly. 48 hours is about what I'd expect. Give it a week to finish those last few gravity points and clean up some of its massive diacetyl. :)
 
rhys333 said:
My dad is looking for a decent 15 minute extract recipe. I'll recommend this one. Did you boil all the extract for 15 minutes, or leave it for flameout? I've experienced cooked extract twang if I boil it too long.
Click to expand...

I added about 1/4 of the extract at the beginning of the boil and the rest at flameout. I also did a full boil so I had to adjust the hop amounts a little bit. It's a good tasting beer for how simple it is. I used 10L instead of 60L to keep it lighter, not sure what effect this had on taste. Skim through that thread and there's many variations of the same recipe. It's almost a SMaSH recipe too.
 
Bob - I did underpitch the ringwood slightly, with a 1.5L starter in a 6gal batch (30-40B cells short). The calculator told me I needed a 2.5L starter (shake method), which just seemed huge to me. Looking forward to sampling the finished beer though! If all goes well maybe i'll do the entire APA batch with the ringwood slurry.

petrolSpice - I'll pass along your recommendation for 3/4 @ FO.
 
In future, don't pitch the whole starter. That's nuts. Chill the starter, decant the spent starter wort, and pitch an appropriate amount of slurry. You can harvest plenty of Ringwood from that fermenter to pitch in your APA.
 
Bob said:
In future, don't pitch the whole starter. That's nuts. Chill the starter, decant the spent starter wort, and pitch an appropriate amount of slurry. You can harvest plenty of Ringwood from that fermenter to pitch in your APA.
Click to expand...

If I do pitch the ringwood from my porter into the APA, what's the best technique? Since I'm going dark to light, should I rinse the slurry and then just pitch 100% of the clean yeast thats left? I expect to brew the APA one day after bottling the porter. Sorry for all the questions... I'm familiar with top-cropping, but have minimal experience with rinsing.
 
Nah. Just pitch the slurry. It's a decent rule of thumb to not pitch slurry from a "dark" beer to a "light" beer. But you're pitching THAT much slurry. Go to Mr Malty, figure out how much slurry to pitch, and have at it. It ain't rocket science. ;)
 
It tells me I need about 110ml of slurry for repitching. Just so I have this staight... I simply scoop an amount of trub into a sanitized jar (no rinsing), let it rest a few hours, estimate 110ml worth, swirl and repitch? Tha is awesome indeed.
 
I'd homogenize the slurry and harvest more than you need. Fill up a mason jar then slap 'er in the fridge. It'll keep for a week or so at full strength. It loses vitality at an ever-increasing rate thereafter, though, so use it up quickly.

When you're ready to pitch, swirl it to homogenize, err on the plus side of what Mr Malty tells you when you measure, and pitch.

It really is that simple. ;)
 
Bob said:
I'd homogenize the slurry and harvest more than you need. Fill up a mason jar then slap 'er in the fridge. It'll keep for a week or so at full strength. It loses vitality at an ever-increasing rate thereafter, though, so use it up quickly.

When you're ready to pitch, swirl it to homogenize, err on the plus side of what Mr Malty tells you when you measure, and pitch.

It really is that simple. ;)
Click to expand...

Fantastic. Thanks for all the advice on this Bob. Will try this next week.
 
I'll be brewing this tomorrow with the Ringwood slurry. I'm undecided yet, but considering going all late addition hops (20, 10, 0 min). If I do this, I'll add 1 to 2 ounces and possibly skip dry hop. Will see though... may just stick with the KISS approach.
 
Here are the results...

1405813478747.jpg
 
Pictured here 1 week after bottling. I ended up adding an extra ounce to the boil, pushing much of it to late addition. Results are a smooth 45 ibu's. I also dry-hopped 1 ounce centennial for 7 days. The Ringwood slurry I used mutated a bit, resulting in higer attenuation something more like US05. Tastes great and I'm really happy with the results. Thanks Bob and others for your input on this.
 
It's tasty! Hazy yet, making it look a bit darker than actual... but another couple weeks conditioning and cold storage will take care of that.
 

Similar threads

Rob2010SS
Amber Ale thoughts...
Replies
21
Views
2K
AmarikinBrew
AmarikinBrew
H
Citrusy Pale Ale to clean out the freezer
Replies
7
Views
878
lumpher
lumpher
Rob2010SS
British Golden Ale
2
Replies
50
Views
3K
Deadalus
Deadalus
M
Feedback/Critique for my "Kitchen Sink" IPA - Empty my fridge
Replies
14
Views
946
Matheos
M
Zippy123
Feedback on recipe to split mash for two different beers
Replies
2
Views
513
Zippy123
Zippy123
Brewer's Friend 300

Latest posts

Back
Top