Pale Ale BIAB

[SailorJerry]

Thoughts on this? Too basic? Going to do several of these simple grain bill beers with different hops, SMaSH essentially, to get an idea of what each hop brings to the table.

This will be a 5 gallon BIAB brew in a 10 gallon pot. Beersmith didn't kick me out water volumes, which sucks. Any input there? We've also never played with water profile additions, but have successfully made a few good NEIPA's with regular tap water, so I'm not too concerned about that.

Inputs on yeast or other ingredients?

OG: 1.050
Est. FG: 1.015
33.5 IBU
5.1 SRM
4.64% ABV

11# 2row
1# 20L
1oz Galaxy @ 15 min
1oz Galaxy @ Whirlpool
2oz Galaxy dry hop

Wyeast 1272

 

[Northern_Brewer]

Too complicated, more like. My house beer is an endless series of hop trials in a beer quite close to this, somewhere around 1046 100% Maris Otter. The big advantage is that stock control is dead easy - if I've got a part-full sack of Otter, I'm good to go....

However it depends a bit on what hops you're going to test - since I've got quite a few weird European hops in my fridge, my general formula is 25IBU of bittering with something else (I have a house rule of using EKG in every beer, but you could just use alpha extract), and then I split a 100g packet between 15min, 5 min, WP and dry. Obviously if you're only testing things with as much alpha as Galaxy then you can get away without the bittering charge, but you want it for lesser hops. Likewise you can go more on the cold side with Galaxy but for Euro hops you are likely to be using them more in the kettle. As it is, for Galaxy I'd be tempted to nudge it to 10 min rather than 15.

I've moved away from 5 gallons for this kind of thing though - depending how "strong" the hops are I'll just do 3-4 gallons and then split them into gallon buckets with different yeasts.

I'm still playing around with yeasts - depends what sort of thing you want. Very tempting to just have a few packs of US-05 in the fridge and you don't have to worry about it, but I've used all sorts - per my sig, the current batch has a Conan and European relatives of the Chico family. Belgians get a bit weird but not in entirely a bad way, wheat beer yeasts really don't work! At least not for my palate. I go for 100g in a slightly smaller volume for the less flavoursome Euro hops, and dilute it out a bit for the stronger New World ones.

 

[SailorJerry]

The only reason I have it at 15 min was to get the IBU's in the "range" for the style, which is pointless for my purposes. I was thinking of using Maris Otter, haven't used that at all yet but it's highly regarded on here.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

Forget style guidelines, they're not important. What matters here is having a constant test environment, and an initial bittering charge is part of that. If late-copper Galaxy adds 20 IBU and late-copper Strisselspalt adds 2 IBU, then to my mind that's part of their character as much as any tropical aroma etc - and it's something you need to allow for in any recipe that uses the hop. How much background bittering you have will depend on what hops you're testing - if they're all big ones like Galaxy then you can drop it down a bit, but the Euro hops that I'm mostly testing don't contribute much in the late-copper so I use 25 IBU by default.

It helps being based in Britain - we pay a lot for liquid yeasts and US hops, but Otter is <US$0.80/lb so it's swings and roundabouts. And I like it.

 

[SailorJerry]

And the hops I want to test are of the fruitier aroma's
Citra
Amarillo
Galaxy
El Derado
Mosiac
Cascade
Centennial

Plus, I think I'd like all of those beers, even just as a basic ole, extremely drinkable, pale ale. Plus, we don't bottle any more, so 1 gallon batches would defeat the purpose. Unless, of course, we started bottled again.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

So of those Cascade has the lowest alpha at 5-6%, so I'd design a standard recipe that would work for both Cascade and Galaxy at the extremes - so maybe 15-20 IBU from a bittering hop or alpha extract and a 10 min addition of the test hop, which will allow Cascade to come out rather less bitter and Galaxy quite chewy. You're the head brewer, it's your taste.

Fair enough on the bottling point - I mostly bottle anyway, and am on a big yeast kick at the moment so that's the focus of my testing.

 

[SailorJerry]

Interesting! I appreciate the input Northern. We're only a year into brewing, and only 6 or 7 brews into BIAB, so it's still a bit new to us! I liked my two NEIPA's that we've done, and I'd love to do another one. However, I've fallen in love with a local breweries Double Dry Hop series, and while I'm not trying to replicate their recipe, it's piqued my interest in regards to what hops provide certain flavors/aromas.