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Hi guys,

I am trying to finish off some of the supplies I have before ordering new ingredients and I need some help on formulating a recipe out of this mess!

What I am basically looking for is a session beer on the hoppier side in the 5.5-6% ABV range around 5.5 gallons. I have just been throwing stuff together on my last couple of brews and they have been ok, but I am sure you guys can come up with some suggestions for me. Specially since the hops I have are mostly used for bittering so I assume it is a delicate art to use them as flavor and aroma hops.
This is what I have:

Grains: Malted wheat (50 lbs), Pilsner malt (40 lbs), Pale Ale Malt (14 lbs), Munich (9 lbs) and Caramel Malt (10 lbs).

Hops: Columbus, Galena and Perle (just under a pound each)

Dry yeast: Nottingham, Brewferm Blanche, Safbrew S-33 and T-58

Any suggestions?
 
Pale with a touch of crystal and munich, columbus FWH with perle in the middle and galena to finish

or....50-50 wheat-pilsner and perle at 60 and 15 minutes

ferment the first with Notty, the latter with ....not sure on that :)
 
Good suggestions! The Brewferm Blanche is good for wheat beers so I could use that one.

What about hop amounts? That is what I am most concerned about. I do not want to overdo it with these hops since I want these to be session beers.

Is that perhaps not such a big issue?
 
Then I might be the wrong person to ask, I brew hoppy most of the time! Looking quickly at wheat recipes on this forum I'd say you want your IBUs around 15....maybe .5oz perle at 60 and 15 would get you there, you'd have to check that though.

The other suggestion was more or less a pale ale, maybe shoot for around 30 IBU with about 1/2 to 2/3 of those coming from your colombus FWH (or just a normal bittering addition), then 1 oz Galena at 15 and 1 oz at 5. Ive never used Galena. You could tone that one down to a blonde as well if you prefer.

You have enough stuff there you could do some single hop session beers actually.
 
Odin gave you some great suggestions. FYI, 5.5 - 6.0 % abv is not even close to being a session beer. Session beers are 4% and below.

Galena is citrusy/clean and way more aromatic than Perle--which has subtle floral/spice notes. Columbus would be the most aromatic hop you have here with it's piney, citrusy, dank notes. In my opinion, your concept should be to bitter sparingly (use the lowly aromatic Perle for 20 IBUs @ 60) and then burst it with late additions & dryhops (Galena & Columbus).
 
Good point on the session beer definition bobbrews. I just looked it up and this is what Beer Advocate came up with:
session beer
n.

Any beer that contains no higher than 5 percent ABV, featuring a balance between malt and hop characters (ingredients) and, typically, a clean finish - a combination of which creates a beer with high drinkability. The purpose of a session beer is to allow a beer drinker to have multiple beers, within a reasonable time period or session, without overwhelming the senses or reaching inappropriate levels of intoxication.

I suppose that I am looking for something similar but with an ABV of around 5.5 percent. And those pointers on the hop schedule was exactly what I was looking for. I will throw some stuff into Beersmith and see what I come up with based on your notes.

Thanks guys!
 
Yes. And the more purist definition (more commonly seen in Europe) ranges session beers at about 2-4% abv on average.
 
So, this is what I have come up with so far. I want to try single hopping with Columbus since Beersmith states that it was engineered as a substitute for Centennial. I have adjusted the hop alpha acids based on their age and storage methods so the precentages are a bit lower than you would expect for Columbus (was originally 13,2%).

Btw, I brew BIAB.

Any thoughts?
Code:
Recipe: Semi session Columbus
Brewer: Upstream
Style: American Pale Ale
TYPE: All Grain

Recipe Specifications
--------------------------
Batch Size: 25,00 L      
Boil Size: 31,02 L
Estimated OG: 1,057 SG
Estimated Color: 9,1 SRM
Estimated IBU: 38,7 IBU
Brewhouse Efficiency: 80,00 %
Boil Time: 60 Minutes

Ingredients:
------------
Amount        Item                                      Type         % or IBU      
4,00 kg       Pale Malt (2 Row) UK (3,0 SRM)            Grain        66,67 %       
1,00 kg       Caramel/Crystal Malt - 20L (20,0 SRM)     Grain        16,67 %       
1,00 kg       Munich Malt - 10L (10,0 SRM)              Grain        16,67 %       
20,00 gm      Columbus (Tomahawk) [10,40 %]  (60 min)   Hops         19,5 IBU      
28,30 gm      Columbus (Tomahawk) [10,40 %]  (15 min)   Hops         13,7 IBU      
28,30 gm      Columbus (Tomahawk) [10,40 %]  (5 min)    Hops         5,5 IBU       
0,33 tsp      Irish Moss (Boil 10,0 min)                Misc                       
1 Pkgs        Nottingham (Danstar #-)                   Yeast-Ale
 
So this is what I brewed today:
Code:
Style: American Pale Ale
TYPE: All Grain

Recipe Specifications
--------------------------
Batch Size: 25,00 L      
Boil Size: 31,02 L
Estimated OG: 1,057 SG
Estimated Color: 7,3 SRM
Estimated IBU: 37,2 IBU
Brewhouse Efficiency: 80,00 %
Boil Time: 60 Minutes

Ingredients:
------------
Amount        Item                                      Type         % or IBU      
3,00 kg       Pale Malt (2 Row) UK (3,0 SRM)            Grain        50,00 %       
1,50 kg       Pilsner (2 Row) UK (1,0 SRM)              Grain        25,00 %       
1,00 kg       Munich Malt - 10L (10,0 SRM)              Grain        16,67 %       
0,50 kg       Caramel/Crystal Malt - 20L (20,0 SRM)     Grain        8,33 %        
20,00 gm      Columbus (Tomahawk) [10,40 %]  (60 min)   Hops         19,5 IBU      
28,30 gm      Columbus (Tomahawk) [10,40 %]  (15 min)   Hops         13,7 IBU      
33,00 gm      Columbus (Tomahawk) [10,40 %]  (3 min)    Hops         4,0 IBU       
0,33 tsp      Irish Moss (Boil 10,0 min)                Misc                       
1 Pkgs        Nottingham (Danstar #-)                   Yeast-Ale

I cut down the Caramel as suggested but ran out of Pale malt and had to add 1,5 kg of Pilsner malt to the grain bill. I decided just to boil for 60 minutes hoping it wont hurt the finished product. Should I have boiled for 90 minutes because of this modification?

The mash was at 66°C (151°F) and the whole brew day took just 4 hours with clean up! OG was 1.053 so maybe my efficiency is not quite at 80%...

I am thinking about dry hopping with Columbus as well, just for the fun of it. Any thoughts?

Next up will probably be an all wheat beer since I have so much of it and I am BIAB-ing so no mash problems :mug:
 
Sounds good! If I could buy Columbus I'd brew it. Ive never used pilsner but I think you'll be fine with just the 60 minute boil, I think malt today is good enough that the old 90 minute DMS boil for pilsner is perhaps outdated. Kind of depends on how vigorous the boil is etc but I wouldn't worry.

Dry hop with Colombus, why not! Another ounce or Id say. Or split the batch and dry hop half to compare.

As to the all wheat...you don't mean ALL wheat and no other malts do you? cause if you do then you might need to look up some recipes, wheat doesn't have enough diastatic power to convert itself so it's generally mixed 50-50 with pilsner +/- other minor additions.

That recipe looks good I have to say, it makes me want to fire up an evening brew session, too bad all my fermenters are full until I can manage to bottle this weekend.
 
I really liked the smell of Columbus and the wort so I think this one will turn out well! The boil was fairly vigorous but it would be interesting to hear from some of the experts if this 90 min boil for the Pilsner malt is no longer needed? At least this is the first I hear of it..

Regarding the all-wheat beer, it has been done and there are no problems with it. The guys from Basic Brewing did an episode about it:

Once I brew the all-wheat beer I will post the results here since this seems to be something that is not that common for some reason.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
THanks for the link. Interesting stuff. If noone responds directly to the pilsner DMS issue, then Im sure some searching will provide some other info. I can tell you that I brewed a few days with 2 different smaller breweries here in Switzerland making a typical helles lager, pilsner base malt, and they do only a 60 minute boil but I spaced on asking about it.
 
As to the all wheat...you don't mean ALL wheat and no other malts do you? cause if you do then you might need to look up some recipes, wheat doesn't have enough diastatic power to convert itself so it's generally mixed 50-50 with pilsner +/- other minor additions.

Malted wheat has greater diastatic power than any other malt, at 180 DP. 6-row is about 160; 2-row 140. All that is taken from Briess' website, but any North American malter will have very similar numbers. I've used malted wheat in small amounts to raise the overall DP of a mash that would've been lacking otherwise. I have another beer that's almost 90% wheat, with no other diastatic malts.
 
Ive only got access to Weyermann malts, thought the DP would be roughly the same, they are drasctically different! Actually I confused the numbers as well with weyermann dark wheat which has a diastatic power of 10. I might have to look into the rest of their products seeing as it's all I use. Thanks
 
Weyermann is not terribly forthcoming about DP. I'm sure their standard wheat malt has several times the DP needed to self-convert, though probably much less than American malts. Definitely will work as a base malt, with a little help from some rice hulls or BIAB.
 
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