Please help tweak my IPA SMaSH (recipe incl.)

[T23]

Hi,

I've been brewing AG for about 5 brews now (went straight to AG).

I recently made a pretty damn good IPA
The balance is really great, and I can drink this ALL day long ...

Now I want to make it again with the following tweaks:

Slightly more taste-hops/bitterness
Slightly more sweetness/body.

The recipe is as follows:

4600g Weyerman Pale Ale (MO substitute)
Cascade 6.9% 15g at 15m
Cascade 6.9% 110g at 10m
Cascade 6.9% 40g at 1m
Cascade 6.9% 28g dryhopped
WLP004 Irish Ale

Mash at 65C for 60min
Mash at 78C for 10min

Boiled for 100min (due to calculation error, oops).

Ferment 1 week at 21C + 2 week dryhop (ended up this long due to business).
ABV: 5.2%
IBU: 41
BU/GU: 0.77

SO, the question is:

If I want more sweetness/body but still clean/crisp finish, I'm thinking higher mash temp. Should I add a second step, like 10min at 68C? or should I just raise the single step to 67C?

Regarding bitterness/taste-hops. It works really great to use it all in late hopping, but I'm divided if I should add a bit for 60 mins, or if I should simply increase the amounts in the other steps.
Also, what difference makes the 15mins addition vs. the 10mins vs. the 1min? if any?


Thanks for any and all input.
Cheers!

 

[T23]

Bump.

Really? Nobody able to help with a recipe?

To sum up:

I want to make it slightly sweeter. But how long should I do a alpha-stop for? 10 mins at 69-70C? 15 mins? 30 mins?

What is the difference in the hops flavour between 15 mins, 10 mins a, 5 mins and 1 mins hops?

And additionally: If I want to make it more orange in colour, what should I do? Ideally I want to keep the recipe simple. But can I make it more orange with the current ingredients? or should I add something like 500g of CaraRed? and what will that do to the flavour?

Thanks!

 

[mclamb6]

As a "pure" SMaSH, there isn't a lot you can do to effect color. I don't know if adding sugar would take it out of a proper SMaSH brew, but using turbinado or light brown sugar would add a bit of color. It would also thin out the beer/increase fermentability.

I couldn't give too much detail on the difference in flavor at the various hop additions other than you'll get more isomerization the longer the hop is boiled and therefore a greater contribution to bitterness.

In terms of increasing sweetness, mashing higher would help. Your current mash temp is fairly low and will give you a pretty fermentable wort. Rather than step mashing, just going to 67 or so would probably help. Another option would be to try a different yeast. English ale yeast tends to have a sweet note to my palate. A Scottish ale yeast may also have the same effect (although I haven't yet brewed with Scottish ale yeast).

 

[thisisbeer]

Instead of mashing higher I would try changing the yeast. A good English yeast would work. It's hard to put sweeter and crisp in the same beer.

Alternatively you could add some crystal malt to change the color and add sweetness. That's what I would do.

But most of all just tweak one thing at a time if you really like this recipe. See how the small tweaks change the beer.

Many people recommend moving all the hops to the end. Keep exactly what you have. I have found it to work much better. I have done a few all late hops IPA's but I prefer to add something for a bittering addition. It makes the beer taste more well rounded to me. But that's just my opinion and taste.