Basic APA recipe question

[anteup02]

So I am trying to really get a feel for what ingredients give what characteristics to beer. My plan is to first experiment with an APA, and I have what I think is a good base recipe to start with.


About 6 lbs of light LME
3 oz cascade hops
1 lb Crystal 20L
Safale US-05 Yeast

In my first round of test batches (doing 4 small ones, going to scale the above down accordingly) I am going to play around with switching out hops and as well as adding some DME to see what the additional malt does to the beer.....

I am really just wondering if 1 lb Crystal 20L sounds reasonable, or should I use 40L, a different grain, or what?? This is something else I want to play around with eventually, but at first I want to get a feel for the hops and the extracts...Any suggestions for typical APA as far as this specialty grain?

 

[bknifefight]

The LME and DME will do the same thing, unless of course you are using a hopped malt extract. I would pick whichever type you like better and use that (I prefer DME) The Crystal Malts will give you a darker color the higher the number. If you go from 20 to 40 you will have a stronger amber color in your beer. As far as your recipe, for an APA it looks fine but I think your IBUs may be a little low for the style guidelines, which is fine since I rarely follow them.

Oh, and to answer your question, I always use 1 lb of Crystal malt for a 5 gallon batch of a pale ale.

 

[Sedge]

1 lb of crystal is about right. You might also considering a smaller amount of a darker grain like Crystal 40L, and add a little of another malt like Victory for some breadiness.

What is your hopping schedule like?

 

[anteup02]

Thanks for the advice - for hopping schedule i was going to try a few different things - 2 oz cascade at 60 min and 1 at 1 minute for one batch - i have a book at home where i noted some other combos i was going to try but cant remember them off the top of my head. I'm open to any suggestions though. My goal is just to understand better what the different ingredients contribute to the beer