MO/Cascade Smash help

[DigB]

Hey, I'm looking at doing a Maris Otter Cascade smash in the next few weeks and I'm looking for opinions on my recipe. This will be my first smash and my 6th AG brew, all of them have been BIAB and unfortunately I'm only getting about 65% Eff. right now, I'm working on getting better by adjusting my crush but thats another topic.

Anyway

I hope for roughly 5.5 g into packaging

Brewers Friend estimates OG 1.059, 5.6% ABV, 69 IBU, 6.75 SRM with,

13.25lbs MO

.4oz Cascade every 10 min from 80 min to 0 min (9 additions total and 3.6 oz total)

2oz Cascade Dry hopped for 7-14 days

I'm just playing around with the Dogfish head idea of continuous hopping but to make it easy I'm going with every 10 min during a 90 min boil.

Thoughts?

 

[Black Island Brewer]

I've done two Smash recipes, and while I like to be able to really get a feel for the hop, I've found the single malt to be easy too one dimensional. I'm moving on to single hop IPAs where I keep the malt bill the same and just change the hop.

I'm getting about 75% mash/lauter efficiency with BIAB using a .032 gap double milled, with soft water, calcium chloride and 2% acid malt. Some day I'll get a pH meter and get the water thing really figured out.

 

[DigB]

Yea, I'll probably go that route eventually but for now I want to figure out what the base malt tastes like while making a decent IPA.

 

[stevedasleeve]

I've done a number of continuously hopped IPAs. I've come to the conclusion that any hop addition 30 mins or later does not really add much beyond general bitterness. It's also a bit of a pain...!

My current all cascade ales have around 5 oz - 1 oz at 20, 15, 10, 5, and 0. I add a high alpha hop at 60 mins (currently Apollo,) and maybe 30 mins calculated to get IBUs to my target - usually something like 50 IBUS for a 1.056 beer.

I also dislike cascade as a dry hop fwiw...

Cheers,
Steve da sleeve

 

[DigB]

I've done a number of continuously hopped IPAs. I've come to the conclusion that any hop addition 30 mins or later does not really add much beyond general bitterness. It's also a bit of a pain...!



My current all cascade ales have around 5 oz - 1 oz at 20, 15, 10, 5, and 0. I add a high alpha hop at 60 mins (currently Apollo,) and maybe 30 mins calculated to get IBUs to my target - usually something like 50 IBUS for a 1.056 beer.



I also dislike cascade as a dry hop fwiw...



Cheers,

Steve da sleeve

So would you recommend dropping the Dry hop addition and re working the additions so that they start at the 60 min point?

 

[ArkotRamathorn]

I've done a number of continuously hopped IPAs. I've come to the conclusion that any hop addition 30 mins or later does not really add much beyond general bitterness. It's also a bit of a pain...!

My current all cascade ales have around 5 oz - 1 oz at 20, 15, 10, 5, and 0. I add a high alpha hop at 60 mins (currently Apollo,) and maybe 30 mins calculated to get IBUs to my target - usually something like 50 IBUS for a 1.056 beer.

I also dislike cascade as a dry hop fwiw...

Cheers,
Steve da sleeve

I currently have like 5oz of commercial pellet cascades and 34.5oz of whole leaf home grown so obviously I'm looking at some cascade IPAs, pale ales, and black IPAs in my future. What do you find unenjoyable about cascade dry hops since I figure I would use the pellets for dry hopping?

 

[Oginme]

I find smashes interesting to help define the hop flavors, but not interesting enough in most cases to drink a lot of it. I've gone to making 8 gal of wort and dividing it up to yield six 1 gallon batches. I reduce the boil to 40 minutes and add hops at 30 min, 15 min, 10 min, 5 min and whirlpool for 20 minutes. I calculate the bitterness from each addition to be about the same (10 IBU, Tinseth) so that the amount added is increasing with each addition. Finished is about 8 bottles of each hop type which gives me plenty to try out without getting overwhelmed with mediocre tasting beer. Great hop presence, aroma and flavor.

 

[stevedasleeve]

Off the top of me head my recipe is (for 8.5 gallons):

17 lbs grain
0.75 oz Apollo (17.something AA) @ 60
1 oz Cascade (7. Something) @ 20
1 oz Cascade @ 15
1 oz Cascade @ 10
1 oz Cascade @ 5
1 oz Cascade @ 0

OG 1.057ish
IBUS 50ish

I'll mash at 152

You can scale it down or up of course

I find cascade grassy as a dry hop so I prefer Amarillo, Simcoe or Citra - 3 oz for 5 days.

Cheers!
Steve da sleeve

 

[DigB]

So I finally settled on a recipe. 6kg MO with 4 roughly 40g additions of Cascade at 60, 30, 10 and 0. The bitterness ratio comes out at about 1.02 so it should be pretty balanced, if what I know about that ratio is true.
Should be 1.059 OG 1.017 final, 5.5% ABV going to get brewing asap. The only problem is I'll have to wait a couple days to pitch the yeast as I'm going with a starter and today is the only day I can brew and I haven't been able to get out till this morning to get my supplies.
Should ensure a proper pitch temp though. And I won't be dry hopping it should have enough late addition hops to do the trick.

 

[masscarriers]

About your efficiency, it reminds me when I started and had a similar problem and didn't know where to fix it. I also use a bag to mash and batch sparge in a rectangular cooler (serves the purpose of a false bottom). A finer crushed helped, but my efficiency really climbed up to 80 when I started stirring the grain like a madman at mashout/sparge temp. I'd vigorously stir every 5 minutes or so for ~30 min before squeezing the bag, and for some reasons that alone helped my efficiency way more than my troubleshooting attempts at sparge temperature/grain crush/etc...

Good luck!

 

[DigB]

Thanks, I'm about 30 min from mashout, I'll have to give that a try!

 

[DigB]

So I stirred while bumping up to mash out temp and I squeezed like crazy. I had my brew house efficiency set to 65% and I pretty much hit my OG. I was aiming for 1.059 and I got 1.058.

 

[masscarriers]

Yeah some of my friends who use very similar equipment (at the same place and same time as me) only manage to hit 55-60% while I consistently get 78-80%. Same crush, same technique... I guess it's very brewer-dependent.

 

[nimboden]

Made a MO/cascade smash a while back, I mashed on the lower side around 148, had great body and I think maris otter is a great malt that can be used as a stand alone. Did a 60, 30, 2 minute hop schedule to produce about 40ibus also dry hopped. I really enjoyed this beer.