I ordered 7 pounds of hops from hopsdirect not too long ago, and thought I'd conduct a little experiment or two with some of the proceeds.
What I'm doing is brewing a "base" pale ale recipe and then dry hopping with different hop varieties to see what the outcome is. I'm basically making a half batch and then splitting it into 4 six-pack sized batches for the later experimentation.
First, let's start out with the recipe I came up with for the base:
Batch Size: 2.5 gallons
Boil time: 60 minutes
Grains:
1.00 lbs. 2-row
0.25 lbs. Crystal 35L
0.25 lbs. Wheat
Extracts:
2.00 lbs. Light DME
Hops:
0.75 oz Centennial 8% AA (60 min)
Yeast: Safale S-04
Ended up with OG of 1.051, .001 over my target.
Once I was done with the boil and cooled it down, I split the batch into four different fermenters:
So, my plan is to let this ferment out for the time being. It's currently sitting in a swamp cooler at around 65F after approximately 24 hours and I'm letting the temp come up slowly. I'm going to be headed to Vegas for a long weekend next week, so I figure when I get back it should be pretty much done fermenting and then I will rack to secondaries and start the dry hop additions.
I have several different varieties available, so I'm going to pick four and let those work their thing. Unless I hear some compelling arguments saying I should be adding multiple varieties per fermenter, I plan to stick with one each.
My current plan is to use the following hops:
Centennial (this is my "control" batch, so to speak)
Willamette
US Golding
Undecided*
So, one question I have is, how much hops should I add to each? Should I do an equal weight for each fermenter, or should I scale each based on the AA% (which I am led to believe, is going to be a proportional indicator of essential oil content)?
Second question, how long should I dry hop each one?
Third, help me pick a variety for the Undecided fermenter.
*For the Undecided category, I have the following other hops available:
Columbus
Saaz
Hallertauer
Tettnenger
What I'm doing is brewing a "base" pale ale recipe and then dry hopping with different hop varieties to see what the outcome is. I'm basically making a half batch and then splitting it into 4 six-pack sized batches for the later experimentation.
First, let's start out with the recipe I came up with for the base:
Batch Size: 2.5 gallons
Boil time: 60 minutes
Grains:
1.00 lbs. 2-row
0.25 lbs. Crystal 35L
0.25 lbs. Wheat
Extracts:
2.00 lbs. Light DME
Hops:
0.75 oz Centennial 8% AA (60 min)
Yeast: Safale S-04
Ended up with OG of 1.051, .001 over my target.
Once I was done with the boil and cooled it down, I split the batch into four different fermenters:
So, my plan is to let this ferment out for the time being. It's currently sitting in a swamp cooler at around 65F after approximately 24 hours and I'm letting the temp come up slowly. I'm going to be headed to Vegas for a long weekend next week, so I figure when I get back it should be pretty much done fermenting and then I will rack to secondaries and start the dry hop additions.
I have several different varieties available, so I'm going to pick four and let those work their thing. Unless I hear some compelling arguments saying I should be adding multiple varieties per fermenter, I plan to stick with one each.
My current plan is to use the following hops:
Centennial (this is my "control" batch, so to speak)
Willamette
US Golding
Undecided*
So, one question I have is, how much hops should I add to each? Should I do an equal weight for each fermenter, or should I scale each based on the AA% (which I am led to believe, is going to be a proportional indicator of essential oil content)?
Second question, how long should I dry hop each one?
Third, help me pick a variety for the Undecided fermenter.
*For the Undecided category, I have the following other hops available:
Columbus
Saaz
Hallertauer
Tettnenger