1st AG - American Pale Ale - grain mix-up, problem?

eko · Oct 11, 2014

Doing my first AG tomorrow. I pulled out what I hoped would be a simple recipe, but I had a mix-up with the grain.

Recipe is below. While at LHBS, I got distracted and ended up with the wrong bucket. Instead of Pale malt, I grabbed mild 2-row malt (munton british). The label says it produces a wort with higher dextrin content than pale malt resulting in a sweeter beer. Do I need to make any other adjustments to the recipe to compensate? Or prepare for a different style beer?

Also, the recipe calls for Cascade 5.5%aa, the only Cascade I could find was alpha 6.9%. Any concern or adjustment there?

5 gallons:
10.5' Pale malt (but I grabbed mild 2-row instead)
0.75' Caramel 40L malt
3 oz biscuit malt

Mash 90 mins 151-152F. Boil 60 mins.
2 oz Cascade hops (60 mins)
1 oz Cascade (15 mins)
1 tsp Irish moss (15 mins)
1 oz Cascade (1 min)
White Labs WLP001 California Ale yeast
1 oz Cascade (secondary/dry hop)

OG 1.058 estimated FG 1.012; 55 IBUs; 5.5% ABV

Thanks.

ericbw · Oct 11, 2014

To keep the bitterness the same, you could reduce your hops by about 20% for the first addition. Maybe on the second addition, but the you're losing flavor, too.

As for the grains, they're already mixed together? If not, you COULD leave out or reduce the biscuit so it's not overly bready.

I say dial down the hops and don't worry about the grain.

jfr1111 · Oct 11, 2014

It'll make a fine beer, just reduce your bittering addition to compensate for the higher IBU and keep the flavour addition the same. Next time, brew it with regular american 2-row and compare.

eko · Oct 12, 2014

Thanks. The hops adjustment - is this something one of the software packages helps with (BeerSmith, etc.)? I've considered looking into that, but so far my attention, and my $, has been focused on building my AG equipment.

brewguyver · Oct 12, 2014

Beersmith would do it. There might be other tools for less as well. At < $30, I've found it pay off nicely.

If you reduce the hops and it ends up a little too sweet, you can always do another round of dry hop to balance it out.

Sent from my iPhone using Home Brew

jfr1111 · Oct 12, 2014

eko said:
Thanks. The hops adjustment - is this something one of the software packages helps with (BeerSmith, etc.)? I've considered looking into that, but so far my attention, and my $, has been focused on building my AG equipment.

How to brew by John Palmer has a whole chapter devoted to recipe building and hop utilization/IBU calculations are covered in great detail. The book is free. I personally use Beersmith and it does that and a lot more.