Help me with an APA formulation

All,

I'd like to mess around with cloning New River Brewery's APA which I sampled at a recent beer fest and really enjoyed. Further adding to my clone fever is the fact that the brewer was there and indicated that they posted specifics about their APA on their website and encouraged homebrewers to experiment with it. Well, sure enough:
http://www.newriverbrewing.com/brews.html

So, going by their grain bill and elaborate hops schedule and shooting for 6.5 SRM, 34 IBU I get from screwing around in Promash (sorry about the formatting):

Grains
% Amount Name Origin Potential SRM
66.7 8.00 lbs. Pale Malt(2-row) America 1.036 2
16.7 2.00 lbs. Wheat Malt America 1.038 2
8.3 1.00 lbs. Crystal 20L America 1.035 20
8.3 1.00 lbs. Munich Malt(light) America 1.033 10

Hops
Amount Name Form Alpha IBU Boil Time
0.57 oz. Amarillo Gold Whole 10.00 23.1 60 min.
0.25 oz. Amarillo Gold Whole 10.00 5.2 30 min.
0.50 oz. Cascade Whole 5.75 5.9 30 min.
0.25 oz. Amarillo Gold Whole 10.00 0.0 0 min.
0.50 oz. Cascade Whole 5.75 0.0 0 min.
0.25 oz. Centennial Whole 10.50 0.0 0 min.
0.13 oz. Amarillo Gold Whole 10.00 0.0 Dry Hop
0.13 oz. Cascade Whole 5.75 0.0 Dry Hop
0.13 oz. Centennial Whole 10.50 0.0 Dry Hop
0.13 oz. Columbus Whole 15.00 0.0 Dry Hop

WYeast 1056 Amercan Ale/Chico

34 IBU's seems low from what I remember tasting, but perhaps most of the hoppiness came through from the aroma/dry hopping? It seems like quite a low addition of bittering hops, but if I crank it up much more I wind up with very few flavor hops to maintain 34 IBU's.

In any case, it's not exactly the easiest beer for me to acquire for comparison purposes, so I'm shooting in the dark to some extent and may simplify the hopping just for practicality's sake. I'm interested to hear some criticisms/insights from others!

34 IBU is enough for an APA, looks like it will balance your ABV. Most of your bittering comes from the first addition. The zero boil and dryhopping will dominate the aroma, so you probably don't want to reduce them. Moving them back into the boil will result in losing most of the oils that produce the nose.

Thanks, David. I was thinking I wanted to keep the zero minute additions there and not do anything in the 5 minute range. It would put my IBU's past my target, anyways (as long as I'm aiming at something in particular). The ABV should be around 5-5.25% I'm guessing, assuming a FG of ~1.012.

Guess I'll jump on freshops and fling some $$ at them.

Looks very nice to me! You're right, the IBU's a fairly low, but this beer doesn't appear to be about bitterness. It's about aroma. I think you could bump up your IBU's some, if you want, but that's simply a matter of personal taste.

Yeah, I keep thinking I should use more bittering hops, but I guess I'll let it ride for the first batch and see what I wind up with. I'm all about flavoring/aroma hops, so as long as it doesn't come across too malty I think I'll be okay. I assume that's why NRB used wheat malt, to cut down on the malty body, so I aimed for ~15% wheat.

Why so much wheat malt in that I wonder?
I'd think a pound would do sufficiently for head retention, any more and you are going to have clarity problems.

I was thinking 15% would be a good number for lightening the body, not really thinking about the head retention. Do you think that was the intent of the wheat inclusion? I could reduce the wheat malt to 1# and increase the 2-row to 9# which would give me good even numbers based on how my LHBS packages grains (1# or 3# typically).

BeeGee said:

I was thinking 15% would be a good number for lightening the body, not really thinking about the head retention. Do you think that was the intent of the wheat inclusion? I could reduce the wheat malt to 1# and increase the 2-row to 9# which would give me good even numbers based on how my LHBS packages grains (1# or 3# typically).

Click to expand...

Yeah. Wheat in an APA would only be for head retention, and really, you only need a half pound. I don't think putting in 1# will hurt you, but 2# might give you the clarity problems.

Good deal, thanks for the help. I'll debate a 1/2# vs 1#. The good thing about using the full 1# is that I won't have any laying around looking for another recipe.

BeeGee said:

Good deal, thanks for the help. I'll debate a 1/2# vs 1#. The good thing about using the full 1# is that I won't have any laying around looking for another recipe.

Click to expand...

Yeah, 1# shouldn't hurt. Go with that.

Well, this one is in the books (as far as brewing goes, anyways). Per ORRELSE's suggestion the final grain bill was:
9# 2-row
1# wheat malt
1# light Munich
1# crystal 20L

Hop schedule stayed the same. It is certainly more cloudy than I am used to in a non-wheat beer, as ORRELSE predicted. I might cut back the wheat to 1/2# in v2.0, but I'll wait and see how things settle out in fermentation. The color came out exactly like I wanted it to, a light copper.

Nothing to do now but pitch yeast and then sit around and watch it!

Bottled it last night, so I should know something semi-definitive before I split for the holidays. Sampling thoughts lead me to believe that I definitely need more hop flavoring/aroma and can probably up the Munich, reduce the wheat. It's actually fairly clear now, although we'll see how it is when chilled. It's sort of hard to not start screwing with it before I've properly tasted it.