Pale Ale Question

Beer Recipes
1

So thanks to Steve in TX, I made this one gallon recipe recently. I didn’t dry hop 1/4 oz each hop as he suggested though. I tasted it last night (18 days bottled) and it was certainly drinkable, but kinda meh. I ended up drinking a Jai Alai instead and after looking at some clone recipes online I’m curious why the Jai Alai tastes and smells so much better. Is it the higher ABV and increased hops, the amount of secondary hops, or maybe just the amount of different hops? I also noticed that the predicted IBU’s were around 50 for my recipe and only 25 for the Jai Alai IPA. Both are posted below and I’d appreciate any insights.

My Pale Ale (4.4% ABV)
2.2 oz Caramel/Crystal Malt - 40L (40.0 SRM) Grain 1 9.7 %
1 lbs 5.0 oz Light Dry Extract (8.0 SRM) Dry Extract 2 90.3 %
1.00 oz Amarillo Gold [7.50 %] - Boil 15.0 min Hop 3 52.5 IBUs
0.25 oz Amarillo Gold [7.50 %] - Boil 0.0 min Hop 4 0.0 IBUs
0.25 oz Cascade [5.50 %] - Boil 0.0 min Hop 5 0.0 IBUs
0.25 oz Centennial [10.00 %] - Boil 0.0 min Hop 6 0.0 IBUs

Jai Alai Clone (7.6% ABV)
2.5 oz Caramel/Crystal Malt - 60L (60.0 SRM) Grain 1 6.7 %
0.2 oz Caramel/Crystal Malt - 30L (30.0 SRM) Grain 2 0.5 %
0.03 oz Ahtanum [6.00 %] - First Wort 60.0 min Hop 3 1.9 IBUs
0.03 oz Columbus (Tomahawk) [14.00 %] - First Wort 60.0 min Hop 4 4.4 IBUs
2 lbs 0.7 oz Extra Light Dry Extract (3.0 SRM) Dry Extract 5 88.2 %
1.7 oz Amber Liquid Extract (12.5 SRM) Extract 6 4.6 %
0.06 oz Amarillo Gold [8.50 %] - Boil 60.0 min Hop 7 4.9 IBUs
0.05 oz Ahtanum [6.00 %] - Boil 60.0 min Hop 8 2.8 IBUs
0.02 oz Columbus (Tomahawk) [14.00 %] - Boil 60.0 min Hop 9 2.8 IBUs
0.05 oz Cascade [5.50 %] - Boil 15.0 min Hop 10 1.5 IBUs
0.03 oz Centennial [10.00 %] - Boil 15.0 min Hop 11 1.4 IBUs
0.02 oz Columbus (Tomahawk) [14.00 %] - Boil 15.0 min Hop 12 1.6 IBUs
0.06 oz Cascade [5.50 %] - Boil 6.0 min Hop 13 0.8 IBUs
0.04 oz Ahtanum [6.00 %] - Boil 6.0 min Hop 14 0.6 IBUs
0.02 oz Amarillo Gold [8.50 %] - Boil 6.0 min Hop 15 0.5 IBUs
0.2 pkg Thames Valley Ale (Wyeast Labs #1275) [124.21 ml] Yeast 16 -
0.55 oz Simcoe [13.00 %] - Dry Hop 0.0 Days Hop 17 0.0 IBUs

2

Remember that these clone recipes aren’t going to be spot on either. I like your recipe. I think what you are missing is a bittering charge at 60 minutes. You basically have all flavor additions at 15 and 0. I’ve never done a 1 gallon batch so I’m not sure off my head of the amount if a hop you would need. You have Columbus and chinook on hand now, right? Columbus will give you a “dank” bitterness while chinook will be much more “piney.” Pick one and do a light 60 min charge. A whole oz at 15 minutes seems steep. That’s where you gained all of your IBUs. Cut that down significantly to work with your bittering unit. I’d shoot for 30-40 IBUs. I half oz or so at 0 and dry hop would be nice too.

3

With these 1 gallon batches, I have been trying to only do 15 minute boils. I assumed that as long as I hit roughly the same IBU in Beer Smith, I could tweak boil times. For instance, the 15 minute Amarillo addition of 1 oz adds ~50 IBUs. .40 oz of the same hop for 60 minutes does the same thing.

4

And Jai Alai has 70 IBUs actually :      http://cigarcitybrewing.com/beer/jai-alai-ipa/

So I think you need more bitterness up front on that one. A 70 IBU IPA should have upwards of 50 IBUs between FWH and 60 minute additions.

5

Gotcha. I’ve never done a 15 min boil or a one gal batch, so somebody else can weigh in on that and give you a better answer. But I have to think that you won’t be getting the same bitterness as you would with 60 minutes but I could be way off.

6

Makes more sense now. I’ve never had this beer. Seemed like a high ABV for a pale ale. It’s actually an IPA.

7

Yeah, that 15 min boil threw me. Take a look the hop bursting article from a few months back.

8

I really don’t have to do the 15 minute boil, but it makes my one gallon brew day a bit shorter.

9

Absolutely. If you’re going through the time, might as well do a bigger batch, so that’s understood. I think 15 minute boil/1 gallon batches are good for hop experimenting. I think erockrph does this often. Not saying that you should use 1 pound of hops in a 1 gallon batch like he does  ;), but he should certainly be able to give you some input.

10

Personally, I think the lack of dry hops is responsible for the majority of what you’re missing. My 1-gallon APA recipes I use to taste-test hops use 1/2 oz of dry hops. I also add my first hop addition as a pseudo-FWH, which I think gives a bit more flavor. Basically, once you pull your steeping grains add your first hop addition. I treat it as a 20 minute addition for the sake of calculating IBU’s and I think it gets me pretty close.

Here’s my basic recipe:
Title: Single Hop Pale Ale (Apollo)

Brew Method: Extract
Style Name: American Pale Ale
Boil Time: 15 min
Batch Size: 0.8 gallons (fermentor volume)
Boil Size: 1 gallons

STATS:
Original Gravity: 1.055
Final Gravity: 1.015
ABV (standard): 5.21%
IBU (tinseth): 40.96
SRM (morey): 4.8

FERMENTABLES:
0.8 lb - Dry Malt Extract - Extra Light (72.7%)
0.3 lb - Liquid Malt Extract - Munich (27.3%)

HOPS:
0.15 oz - Apollo, Type: Pellet, AA: 18, Use: First Wort, IBU: 40.96
0.25 oz - Apollo, Type: Pellet, AA: 18, Use: Boil for 0 min
0.5 oz - Apollo, Type: Pellet, AA: 18, Use: Dry Hop for 7 days

OTHER INGREDIENTS:
0.8 g - Gypsum

YEAST:
Fermentis / Safale - American Ale Yeast US-05

NOTES:
Pitch 2-2.5gm of dry yeast.

Begin bringing water to boil. At ~120F add extract and gypsum. Add “FWH” as temp hits 140F.

11

Do you follow the above by switching hops in but following the same schedule and ratio?

12

Great advice and procedure. It’s pretty similar what I to what I do when I try out new hops. DME is handy for that. It’s all about evaluating hops in this method anyway.

13

Exactly. I target between 40-45 IBU in this recipe. All I change is the size of the first hop addition to get me in that 40-45 IBU range. The flameout hops are always 1/4 oz and the dry hops are 1/2 oz. Which means I end up using right around 1 oz per batch for most of the higher AA% hops.

When I do these, I usually do 6-8 batches one after another on one day. By sticking to the same hop schedule it also allows me to calibrate these batches to one another, so I can make a comparison on things like how big the hop aroma is and how coarse or smooth the bitterness appears to be.

14

Could I do this with any hop? Someone mentioned earlier that 15 min w a bittering hop was too much.

Also, would you kindly share some favorites with me? I have mosiac and the four C’s right now.

Why no specialty grains? I just assumed that would also be better.

15

Any hop will work. He includes singe munich lme in place of specialty grains. This recipe is about the hops so it’s not really designed to be great beer just a canvas for hops.

16

Ok, well I suppose I’ll use grains as I don’t normally have that on hand.

17

This works with any hop. But the recipe I gave is specifically designed to taste-test and compare hop varieties. If you’re brewing for personal consumption I think you’ll have much better results using 2-3 different hop varieties in a beer instead of just one. A single-hop beer tends to be a bit monotone.

Mosaic and the 4 C’s are all excellent APA/IPA hops, and you can combine any/all of them together. Right now, I am using a lot of Apollo (orange/dank), Nelson Sauvin (grapefruit/white wine) and Meridian (apricot/tangerine/pine) in my hoppy ales.

The main reason I use the Munich LME is to get some additional malt complexity without having to steep grain. When you’re doing 7 or 8 batches in one session, it saves some time and is one less step to juggle. If you’re just brewing a 1-off batch, then 2-3 ounces of steeped Crystal malt would work just as well (if not better).