i’ve grown fond of and perhaps comfortable with the 3 C’s in my pale ale-bittering with centennial, finishing with mostly cascade and a little citra…about 48IBU in total.
Sierra uses magnum and perle to bitter, and cascade for finishing and 38IBU.
Curious about some other combinations you’ve used or like in pale ales you’ve had, and recommend trying.
90.3% avangard pale ale malt
8.2% weyermann carared
1.5% melanoiden
WLP 090
OG 1.060
FG 1.012
IBU 48
Ahtanum/Cascade
Centennial/Azacca
Amarillo/Mandarina Bavaria
Lemon Drop/Cascade
These are the last 4 I’ve done, and loved them all. I’ve backed off to using a cleaner bittering hop for APA like Warrior or Magnum. As you can see, I’ve been using Cascade, Centennial or Amarillo (ie., medium intensity hops) blended with other new ‘medium’ type hops. I’ve been saving the intense stuff for IPA. I’d brew any of these again.
I use Warrior to bitter, unless I FWH, in which case it’s been Simcoe, CTZ or Centennial lately. For finishing, I’ve always loved the Simcoe/Amarillo combo. Sometimes I’ll add Citra and Centennial to those two as well. Also the new fruity German hops are great for finishing, but I’ve never tried combining those with American hops.
I love Amirillo, Simcoe, Mosaic lately and I’ve been bittering with FWH CTZ or a hop shot
been thinking about trying mosaic in something.
+1 to Mosaic, great hop. It actually works pretty well in a single hop pale ale.
wondered about that. the description of being citra on steroids made me think it could become overpowering…especially all by itself in higher concentrations. it doesn’t end up a passion fruit bomb?
It’s fairly strong, but not Citra strong to me. It’s piney too, though - I used it in a single hop pale ale and thought it worked and I don’t like the ‘fruit bomb’ beers a lot.
Be careful if you use an oily hop like Mosaic or Citra. They have the tendency to turn every beer into an IPA if you’re not careful.
Amarillo is a great pale ale hop. I haven’t used Meridian in an APA yet, but it has a great nectarine flavor that would work very well. Motueka is another nice one, but you might want to pair it with something fruity to enhance the citrus and play down the herbal character. The three of them together would actually be a really nice combo I bet.
You beat me to it. But even though Mosaic is less “fruit-bomby” than Citra, I find it to get overpowering a lot more easily. It could be because Citra is just straight-up mango, but Mosaic has more sticky/piny “IPA” flavor to it.
yeah I like the citra -.25-.5 oz at the end just for a little contribution. i had used an ounce a while back and it was overwhelming to me.
i start to get the jitters when someone describes a hop as piney…not one of my favorite smells or tastes.
Tom Schmidlin brewed a very nice Mosaic APA for Stan Heironymus’s talk at the Seattle NHC. That used the Hop 2 It recipe from Russian River, which is how Vinnie sees what a new hop brings to the party. I have been using that to evaluate new hops such as Empire and Mandarina Bavaria.
You can fin the recipe in a slide at the end of Stans talk in 2012.
It does not have the oil content that Citra does. It has a different character.
I think the pine serves only to balance the fruitiness in Mosaic - it’s not as piney (to me) as Simcoe. I think it’s why it’s one of the hops that can stand on its own. But Eric is right, it can get IPA-like if you use too much.
I use Brewer’s Gold with a ton of different hops. When fresh, it is a phenomenal. For Mosaic, I really like to pair it with Nugget as a late addition, which is the only time I like Nugget late in the kettle.
I remember reading that about the Mosaic beers there. BTW, have you tried your Mandarina Bavaria beer yet ?. Very nice hop. It’s another good medium intensity hop that’s great for pale ale . Or a few other styles for that matter.
I have not-cascade like hop?
EDIT: save someone the trouble-here’s a great spec sheet on mandarina bavaria
http://www.baywa.eu/fileadmin/media/relaunch/Downloads/.EU/Hopfenvertrieb/14384_Flyer_Mandarina_eng_DIN_A5_k1.pdf
Had a sip the other night, it need to finish carbing and drop bright. It has potential.
It’s a Cascade offshoot, but it has a nice tangerine/citrus flavor and aroma. And it’s kind of herbal and resiny in the background. I think it’s gonna do really well. Quite a few breweries are supposedly using it already.
I like the Galaxy/Citra combo. I use it in a golden ale and recently in an APA. I like it. Here shortly I’m going to revisit mosaic. I have not liked it in the past and picked up garlic/onion with it. I found an unopened pound of it in the freezer. So, I’m hoping that this was from a different harvest and is as great as everybody else says it is. It’s going to go 50/50 with Azzaca in a session IPA… Not a pale ale, but I’ll be using that combo. I’ve not used Azzaca yet either.
I use a bittering charge of Centennial (FWH), then flavor and aroma charges of Galaxy - love the fruitiness of the Galaxy. In fact, I may try dry hopping with it for my next Pale Ale batch.