The beer is being brewed for my personal consumption-- essentially all of it. I’ve been asked by a few of my associates for a sample bottle or two. I’ve found the most pleasure and satisfaction in malty beers with IBU ratings of 50-some all the way up to 90. From that range I’d opine that 60-some would be a good rating. No fruitiness, tropical or mango flavorings, please. I had a six-pack of Juice Force IPA sold by the smiling skull with a gold tooth, and I did not like it. I do like his VooDoo Ranger Imperial IPA at 70 IBU. I like Nierra Sevada Pale Ale and their Torpedo Extra IPA, the latter weighing-in at 65 IBU.
My LHBS has a slew of recipes for over a dozen types of beer. I picked a Pale Ale out yesterday that uses a total of four ounces of hops (2 ounces of Northern Brewer in the 60-minute boil and 2 ounces of Cascade steeped for 20 minutes after the boil) in 7.2 pounds of LME. Four ounces is 113.4 grams; 7.2 pounds is 3266 grams. 113.4 divided by 3266 = 3.47% hops mass versus the LME mass. 3.47% is around double what I had in mind for a Pale I’ll get to working-on after I retire on June 21. I have 8.903 pounds of Pale LME; 4037 grams. 1.75% of 4037g = 70.6 grams of each of the two primary hops I want to use. Without looking back to the previous posts, I believe I wanted to use 1.5% (60.5 g) for bittering and 1.0% (40.4 g) for flavoring. Aroma hops to remain unchanged at 0.25 percent. My recipe calls for 101 or so total grams for bittering and flavoring hops; the LHBS recipe calls for 140 grams between each hop used. The LHBS recipe is almost 39% hoppier than what I think I want. Maybe I need to pump-up my hops percentages? The last thing I want is to wait-around for 60-some days to get something that would make Bud Light look hoppy. Comments, please…
What does your beer software say about it?
Not sure why it would take 60 days, but I guess that’s up to you.
Everybody’s definition of perfect is different. Those amounts don’t seem out of line to me. Anytime I get a kit I make it exactly the way they say at least the first time because I figure they’ve already got some time invested in figuring out the balance. If it was wrong, they probably would have resolved that already.
My definition of the perfect pale ale is Citra session pale ale from Morebeer. I have never tried the Citra pale ale which is slightly higher gravity, I prefer the target ABV of 4.4 on the session beer. The Hop schedules are slightly different, they actually use less hops for a longer time in the bigger gravity beer. My experience with kits from Morebeer is that they are very well balanced right out of the box. The session Pale Ale is no exception. From the first time I made it I’ve kept it on tap ever since. It has in fact basically stopped me from Brewing ipas. I have 10 gallons of it ready for the dry hops to be removed and start the cold crash tomorrow. The Hop schedule on that is a half ounce of Magnum for an hour, 1 oz of Citra for 10 minutes, 2 oz of Citra at flame out, and 1 oz of Citra for dry hops.
I have no beer software. I ain’t smart enough to use it.
Sixty days is 18 to 20 to ferment, then as much as six weeks (42 days) to condition. It’s tough to wait that long, but I believe it’s worth the wait. I’ve never tried mr. beer’s Brewmax Booster foilpacks nor their unflavored softpack LMEs. I see repeatedly that they like to recommend one Booster per 1.87-pound can. I don’t recall how many unflavored LMEs per can they recommend; I think 1:1 ought to be sufficient. I saw one of their kits had two Boosters going into one each 1.87-pound can. I don’t think too deeply very often about too much of any consequence, but I think two Boosters in just one small can is too much.
I’ll get to fooling-around with this stuff once I retire…
I hit upon the idea of using the paper that’s used in tea bags to make a hop tea, which is then added to the fermented wort come bottling time. One or two ounces of a hop good for flavoring, steeped about twenty minutes in simmering PDW (hops are in the tea bag), then the tea thrown into the unprimed beer and stirred-in well. Prime and package as per usual.
Wouldn’t require one of those “Depth Charge” dry-hopping spiders. Wouldn’t require a muslin bag to be immersed after the initial violence of fermentation, then lifted out come Bottling Day.
I did a search for the paper used to make tea bags and found the bags themselves-- pre-made-- in a 4" by 6" size with a tie-off string attached:
Or these: Amazon.com
Ordered the top one July 5; delivery o/a July 10. No idea when I’ll “retire enough” to give 'em a whirl…
If they hold in even one particle of the Hops that’s better than the muslin bags we can buy today. They are positively worthless.
One reviewer wrote that these bags keep even powdered tea inside the bags. I have no idea how tea is packaged. Is it a powder, like is Quik for chocolate milk? Or is it kind of a flake or a granular affair?
We’ll see soon enough what I ordered. I’m tempted to make a bit of the hop tea just to see how well the bags contain the pelletized little dudes. Any opinions on if I make the tea, can I put it in my icebox and keep it for a long period of time, assuming it’s securely safe from airborne contaminants getting into it?
My experiences with hop tea haven’t been good.
I haven’t used those particular tea bags, but if they’re like the ones I have used for loose tea, I expect they will hold the hops in pretty well.
I have never seen tea ground up fine. Usually it’s in pieces big enough you could grab one with a tweezers. It’s definitely not powder. Hops on the other hand is ground up into something so fine it can block liquid better than Saran wrap. It’s just ridiculous how fine that stuff is…
The rest of it I have no idea about. I’ve never made hop tea.
Well, we’re gonna do so and I will report what obtains. I hope I get a zero-sediment product that knocks my socks off. I’m thinking about 500 cc of water good enough for brewing. I’ll throw the whole half-liter into the priming bucket to get all that hoppy deliciousness. Nothing wasted, and I’ll get another bottle out of it.
The tea bags arrived today. I immediately filtered some iced tea that had been setting for several days following a July 4 food drive effort. There was visible puffy sediment on the bottom of the transparent plastic bottle. The bags I ordered filtered-out all that sediment and left behind a beautifully-clear tea. The more tea I filtered, the slower became the process. These things really catch even the tiniest sedimentary particles. It’s my opinion that pelletized hops would NOT get through these bags. Too bad for y’alls that I do not know how to post a picture. If I could, you’d see for yourself the filtering power of these bags. Now that I know how fabulously these bags filter, I’m tempted to make a hop tea and drink it just to taste how powerful would be the flavor of one ounce of pellets in a liter of charcoal-filtered tap water.
Are you planning to make the tea using water hot enough to isomerize the alpha acids? If so, wouldn’t you want to use a hopping rate that matches what you’d do in your beer?
I’m thinking I’d just simmer the hops for maybe fifteen to twenty minutes to sterilize, cool it a bit, then throw the tea into the primed and ready-to-bottle beer, stir it in well and bottle it…
That post was made while the tea sludge was still wet. It’s entirely dried, now. Upon inspection I see that ZERO of the puffy, fluffy tea sediment made it through the tea bags. It’s my opinion that these bags will make for the perfect dry-hopping bag or for the perfect bag in which to make a hop tea. So go ahead and order a hundred. They’re the top ones of the two for which I gave the web addresses on the previous page. I am beyond happy to have helped anyone who has wanted to do with his beer what I will do with mine, regarding these bags…