Am I crazy? Hop schedule for pale ale.

[tre9er]

So, I'm curious where "the line" is, then! IBU is not a good measure, since we are talking about late additions - but - where do you stop?

I have a bunch of hops I should be using up... could I do some kind of crazy English Bitter or something, and hop it with...let's say EKG pellets at 5%.... give it like 1oz at 60 min, 1oz at 10 min, 1oz at 5 min, 1oz at Flameout - or is that overkill?

What if I switch the EKG out for .... Green Bullet 15%? .... Liberty 5% .... In otherwords, I'm asking - for any given hop, how do you calculate the "NO DONT GO THERE!" line, where it crosses from flavor into psychotic hop usage?

I feel like I don't use enough hops. My "hoppy" recipes only use up 2.5oz, 3.0oz at a time. I have like 4# to use up, and just ordered 2# more. I think I have a hop sickness.

Chris, most of these hop bursts are aroma additions anyway. Anything after say 10 minutes is going to be *primarily* aroma, although some flavor. Aroma is hard to maintain in a beer with all of the Co2 involved throughout fermentation and carbonation. The flavor additions are going to be relatively similar to a "normal" beer but increase to get more IBU's.

I always start with IBU's, a target for the style, then I move my additions around and increase/decrease them to keep the IBU's in line.

My suggestion to you is to dry hop more on PA/IPA's. And do it twice, once in fermenter, once in keg. The longer you're going to secondary it, the more dry hops I'd use, too. I drink my PA/IPA's within two weeks. The grain bills are simple, temp control keeps a clean fermentation, and the hops are best fresh.

 

[stamandster]

Ok so I ended up with only 60% efficiency, atten. down to about 1005. I used 2 ounces of carafa 2 and us-05. I cold sparged and mashed in at 150 @ 60 min. Hop at 15 and 5 min had about 1.25 ounces of Apollo. Used gelatin to fine. No head only because it took me forever to get a camera working. Crystal clear and oh so good! Don't mind the crappy cell phone pics it really is clear