All Cascade Pale Ale w/homegrown hops

[Conman13]

I recently brewed an all cascade Pale Ale with 6oz of homegrown whole leaf hops that my friend from San Diego grew and shipped to me in vacuum sealed bags. I did use store bought pellet cascade for bittering, but 6 oz. of the homegrown for everything else. I thought I would post the experience with a description and photos.

There are a couple things I would do differently, but overall it is a pretty great beer. It's very drinkable, but has quite the hop punch in flavor, aroma, and bitterness. I mashed a little high in order to respect the attenuation of the Dry English Ale Yeast.

I used golden promise as a base malt, and WLP007 dry english ale yeast, so you might call this a hybrid english/american pale ale.

The Recipe I Actually Made:
All-Grain 5 Gallon Recipe @ 70% brewhouse efficiency
8.75lb Golden Promise
.25lb Honey Malt
.25lb Munich (light or dark, I used light)
.15 acidulated malt (for mash pH)

Single infusion, batch sparge
Mash at 155


1 oz Pellet cascade 60'
.5oz Cascade 30'
.5oz Cascade 20'
.5oz Cascade 10'
.5oz Cascade 5'
.5 oz Cascade 1'
1.5oz Cascade Hop steep at 180F for 10 min

2.0 oz Cascade Dry Hop 7 days

WLP 007 no starter

Ferment at 65F for 1-2 weeks.
Dry hop for 1 week. I did it in primary.

Water Profile:
Used Ozarka Spring Water, added 1 tsp gypsum and 1 tsp calcium chloride.

After sipping a few of these and some deep contemplation, I decided that I really liked the malt bill and yeast, but would change the hop additions as follows if I was to try this one again:

1 oz Pellet cascade 60'
.5oz Cascade 5'
.5 oz Cascade 1'
2.0oz Cascade Hop steep at 180F for 10 min

3.0 oz Cascade Dry Hop 7 days

 

[kpr121]

Sounds like a good recipe and looks great! I would probably agree with your assessment to move more hops to steep/dry hop additions. How was the bitterness? You'll end up losing some of that with your suggested revisions so consider upping your 60 min addition abit if you dont want that to go away.

 

[Conman13]

Sounds like a good recipe and looks great! I would probably agree with your assessment to move more hops to steep/dry hop additions. How was the bitterness? You'll end up losing some of that with your suggested revisions so consider upping your 60 min addition abit if you dont want that to go away.

The bitterness was actually quite strong. Of course YMMV with homegrown hops. I was surprised to find how much bitterness they contributed, which I had not planned for. This, coupled with the fact that it was only a 4.7% beer. If I had to use the exact same hops and ingredients, I would probably still stick to the modified hop schedule above even with the loss of bitterness in mind. The recipe as I brewed it is missing some aroma, and is probably a little too bitter.

I will say that the combination of golden promise, WLP007, and cascade hops is really damn good. It's a super clean tasting beer when fermented in the low temperature range for the yeast, and has a great malt and hop punch.