What's your next brew

Sandy Feet said:
I might try to modify my last Pale Ale experiment for my next batch. I loved the base. I loved the yeast. I just didn't get aggressive enough with the hops. I want to push the IBUs up to the 45 or 50 range, maybe higher if I need to, but I don't want to go crazy. I'm not going to dry hop yet. I want to see if I can get where I want with 60 and 10 minute additions. I want to go 60 on Cascade and 10 on Mosaic. I haven't worked everything out with the software yet.
My base is 63.6% Pale 21.8 Pils, 7.3% Flaked Oats, 3.6% White Wheat, and 3.6% C40. I want to use WLP067 for yeast. I want the alcohol in the upper 5's, or I could go more sessionable. I do not want a full blown 7%er IPA for this one. If y'all have any constructive ideas, I will listen, or in this case, read.
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I’ll double down on the excellent advice above from @J A
If you want the hops to really shine, I would also suggest moving all of your late additions to 0, or whirlpool. I also find that my hoppy aroma and goodness is more pronounced when I use multiple hops late, not just one variety. YMMV on that one though.

This reminds me of when we all brewed @HighVoltageMan! ’s community Pale Ale recipe and we were all a bit unnerved by the total tonnage of late hops he used. The version of his recipe that I ended up brewing was an absolutely glorious success and completely changed my way of thinking on late hops usage. If I think I’m adding enough, I add a little more. :D

Here’s his recipe:
https://www.brewersfriend.com/homebrew/recipe/view/253526/wayner-039-s-pale-ale

And here’s the discussion:
https://www.brewersfriend.com/forum/threads/q1-2021-community-recipe-by-highvoltageman.14178/

Good luck with it, and please keep us posted!
 
I thought there were only a couple of kinds of hops where you could do that, and don't they get really fruity?
 
I was going to do a batch of Brown Ale for bottling but I have been rattling through my cider so will have to replenish the stocks of that first. Think I will do a strong dry pear some point during next fortnight. Temperature just starting to go up now and Daffodil shoots coming through.
 
Megary said:
I’ll double down on the excellent advice above from @J A
If you want the hops to really shine, I would also suggest moving all of your late additions to 0, or whirlpool. I also find that my hoppy aroma and goodness is more pronounced when I use multiple hops late, not just one variety. YMMV on that one though.

This reminds me of when we all brewed @HighVoltageMan! ’s community Pale Ale recipe and we were all a bit unnerved by the total tonnage of late hops he used. The version of his recipe that I ended up brewing was an absolutely glorious success and completely changed my way of thinking on late hops usage. If I think I’m adding enough, I add a little more. :D

Here’s his recipe:
https://www.brewersfriend.com/homebrew/recipe/view/253526/wayner-039-s-pale-ale

And here’s the discussion:
https://www.brewersfriend.com/forum/threads/q1-2021-community-recipe-by-highvoltageman.14178/

Good luck with it, and please keep us posted!
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Stupid question with this: Lets say I throw a shitload of hops in at whirlpool. Are they going to clump too much for me to get all the beer out of the kettle? Are they going to get enough contact during the whirlpool to translate into the beer draining it from the kettle into the Fermonster? Y'all are probably right, but I am trying to get my head around this because I am comfortable with a 10 minute addition. I know I will get something out of it. And, this is probably why the hoppy beers are somewhat of a challenge for me when I love just about everything else that I make. They were just talking about this on the Zoom meeting too. Maybe I need to listen, but everything that I have done tells me to go very late in the boil.
O.k., so what do y'all think would happen if I went 1 oz Cascade at 60, 1 oz Cascade at 10, and another 1.5 oz Mosaic at 10? This gets me right at 50 IBUS. I'm not a huge Citra fan, so I don't want to go that direction, but given what I said above, would you do this and still try to do something else in the whirlpool? If so, how much more? I don't want to go stupid hoppy, but I do want it there.
I
 
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I had no issue throwing all those hops in for a whirlpool. They had enough that this beer was the most hip flavor of any beer I’ve made. Talking about the beer we were talking about on the zoom.
 
I BIAB and have no problems adding a bunch of hops to the kettle, regardless of when. I add the hops loose and give the wort a good stir. Never have any issues with clumping. I’m also not concerned with transferring the clearest wort to the fermenter. Some sludge does not bother me as it all settles out post fermentation. If you’re afraid your transfer might get stuck, well that I can’t answer. I use an auto siphon and if it bogs down, I just dump the kettle into the fermenter until I hit my volume.
If I’m going for a hoppy beer, most, if not all, of my late additions are at 0, or whirlpool. I have found that earlier additions (30, 15, 10 etc.) don’t hold up as well as post-boil additions. YMMV.

Good luck!
 
Megary said:
I BIAB and have no problems adding a bunch of hops to the kettle, regardless of when. I add the hops loose and give the wort a good stir. Never have any issues with clumping. I’m also not concerned with transferring the clearest wort to the fermenter. Some sludge does not bother me as it all settles out post fermentation. If you’re afraid your transfer might get stuck, well that I can’t answer. I use an auto siphon and if it bogs down, I just dump the kettle into the fermenter until I hit my volume.
If I’m going for a hoppy beer, most, if not all, of my late additions are at 0, or whirlpool. I have found that earlier additions (30, 15, 10 etc.) don’t hold up as well as post-boil additions. YMMV.

Good luck!
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I have a screen on my funnel when I drain the kettle. Would you leave the screen on, or let everything flow into the fermenter without filtering anything?
 
I came up with another schedule based on the above: What would y'all think of 2 oz Cascade @10, 1.5 oz Mosaic at 10, AND an oz of EACH as soon as I carry the kettle over to the faucet and put in my wort chiller? My IBUs come out at 39.5, but I'm using 5.5 oz of hops.
This is something that I wouldn't do without advice, so I am enjoying the feedback. Do I need to go even more aggressive than that just for a Pale Ale and not a full blown IPA?
 
Sandy Feet said:
I have a screen on my funnel when I drain the kettle. Would you leave the screen on, or let everything flow into the fermenter without filtering anything?
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I do not filter from the kettle and didnt on that brew. Everything should settle by the time you keg it. Of course depends on how you rack it to a keg. I have a fermzilla so it has a filter on the floating dip tube.
 
I rack to the keg the same way I did for the bottling bucket (with an auto syphon). My liquid post in the keg is almost on the bottom. I'm ok getting some crud in the first couple of pours as I check my carbonation by that.
I liked using the funnel screen for the lagers, but it does make sense to leave it off for something hazy and hoppy.
Thanks.
Do you think that is enough hops to get me close to where I should be?
 
I’d probably use the screen in the funnel as long as it’s not a PITA to clean it or remove it altogether if it gets blocked. I guess what I’m saying is, if you can keep some gunk out of the fermenter, great. If not, no worries.

As far as your hops schedule, just go for it. If you’re moving more hops towards the end of the boil than you have in the past, then you will notice a difference.
 
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Thanks, y'all. I have something to work with now. This beer will be another experiment as is life in general these days:)
 
Sandy Feet said:
I came up with another schedule based on the above: What would y'all think of 2 oz Cascade @10, 1.5 oz Mosaic at 10, AND an oz of EACH as soon as I carry the kettle over to the faucet and put in my wort chiller? My IBUs come out at 39.5, but I'm using 5.5 oz of hops.
This is something that I wouldn't do without advice, so I am enjoying the feedback. Do I need to go even more aggressive than that just for a Pale Ale and not a full blown IPA?
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If I understood correctly that you aren’t particularly fond of the tropical fruit flavors of Citra, I think you’ll find the Mosaic is still tropical, but probably a little more bitey. At least that’s what my tongue tells me. I like both for flavoring. I’ve always used Warrior for the boil because any grassy taste goes away leaving only the bitterness. Only once have I used too much Warrior, and just like everything I’ve read, it was like standing in a hay field right after cutting. A quarter ounce less in the next batch completely removed the grassy smell and flavor. I can’t count the times I’ve forgotten my late additions and just dropped them in while I was connecting the water for cooling. 10 times out of 9 it made the beer taste better, but silly me and my OCD (CDO, actually to get the letters in the right order) never connected the dots that I was making better beer with my “mistakes” It always made me wonder why one would boil hops so long when it wipes out everything the hop was intended to do, then adding more hops later to replace what got cooked off.
 
I don't hate tropical flavors. Citra is just too much and grapefruity unless used in small amounts. Usually, I don't like the very Citra forward hoppy beers in the breweries. I'm fine if it is muted and mixed in with other things. With mine, I wanted to leave it out and see how the other hops that I like shine. I liked Mosaic the last time I used it, and I very much liked the Mosaic Cascade combination. I just didn't go far enough the last time.
Citra, at least to me, at times, is just too much in your face. That is the only way I know how to explain it.
 
Sandy Feet said:
I have a screen on my funnel when I drain the kettle. Would you leave the screen on, or let everything flow into the fermenter without filtering anything?
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I always drain the boil kettle through a double-mesh strainer, sitting in a funnel, and into the fermentor. I dump the whole contents of the kettle. If the beer is hoppy I'll need to pause at least once to empty the strainer of the hop debris. I'm not worried about kettle hops making their way into the fermenter. I mainly strain out hop debris because I used to push my fermentor volume to its limit and didn't need the hops taking up fermentor space.
 
BarbarianBrewer said:
I always drain the boil kettle through a double-mesh strainer, sitting in a funnel, and into the fermentor. I dump the whole contents of the kettle. If the beer is hoppy I'll need to pause at least once to empty the strainer of the hop debris. I'm not worried about kettle hops making their way into the fermenter. I mainly strain out hop debris because I used to push my fermentor volume to its limit and didn't need the hops taking up fermentor space.
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Hoppy beers always yield less, it seems. also, pressure transfer becomes a pain and even serving from the keg can be problematic because leftover hop bits want to clog the poppets. I picked up one of these in my last transaction and I'm going to see about straining out of the kettle.
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I used my keg-hop spider/tube for dryhopping in my fermenters so that's not as much of a problem but last time I brewed I had to use carboys and my dry-hopped pale took a while to clear and unclog the outlet connector.
 
I brew more volume so that when I t/f to the fermenter, I leave the .5 gallons or so of debris in the boil kettle and don’t add it to the fermenter. I still get some through the spigot strainer, but nowhere near as much as dumping the whole volume in.
 
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