New brewer, need help w/ recipe

[uofmguy]

So, I want to brew the Whitey's Gone Fishin' Pale Ale from the Joy of Home Brewing book. Recipe is as follows:

6.6 lbs light LME
1oz Amarillo hops (60min)
.75oz French Strisselspalt hops(10min)
.50oz Sterling Hops (0min)
English yeast (I'm thinking WL013)

So what I was wondering is, should I add any specialty grains to make the flavor a bit more complex? And if so any suggestions?

Should I add any salts to it?

Any thoughts of changing the hops a bit to gain some nice piney flavor?

And I'm doing a full boil rather than a partial so I should use .85ishoz of the Amarillo because of the better utilization % of the full boil, correct?

 

[uofmguy]

Also, should I build a starter for the yeast?

 

[DSorenson]

You could always do a 1 lb caramel malt steep before beginning the boil. That adds some great flavor for pales and IPAs. It's an easy step that will improve the beer dramatically.

A yeast starter for anything other than dry yeast is ideal. Go for it!

The utilization will increase, you are correct. You can adjust for it, but keep in mind that a few ibu's difference isn't that big of a deal. You will also be adding more gravity with the caramel malt, which will drive down the utilization. Run a few calculations and see if it's worth decreasing the amarillo addition.

 

[Pie_Man]

I'll try to answer some of your questions.

For a yeast starter, you should use a yeast pitching calculator like yeastcalculator.com or mrmalty.com.

I would not add salts unless you know what you are adding them for and you know your base water profile. Just remove any chlorine or chloromine and you should be fine. If you're dead set on it, gypsum will add calcium and sulfate. The sulfate helps accentuate hops.

You don't need to add any character malts, but if choose to, I would steep a light crystal malt, probably C20, or so.

I like Simcoe hops for a little piney essence.

I hope this helps. Let us know what you end up brewing.

 

[rodwha]

I prefer to mix crystal malts. I generally use 20 and 40 or 60 for pales and IPA's. No more than 10%, though I have used near 20%.

Certainly make a starter. I made 1 qt using 1/4 lb of light DME to get me into the ballpark.

You could use a free online brew calculator to get an idea of what alterations will produce. I've been using Brewtoad.

 

[uofmguy]

Cool. Thanks guys. Went with 1lbs caramalt and 1/4lbs biscuit and a small packet of burton salts (gypsum and papain sold in a convenient little single-use bag) and a bit of Irish moss in addition to the recipe.

Made a few mistakes (forgot to crush grains before steeping, might have a bit too low og, etc) nothing too bad (hopefully), but should turn out ok. I'll keep updates on this