Simple APA recipe

I am going to cool my wort to 165, then throw my hops in for a half hour stand. After experimenting on several brews I find this maximizes my flavor/aroma balance to my liking when doing hop stands. I am going to use BRY-97 yeast. But it doesn’t exist in the beersmith database.

BeerSmith 2 Recipe Printout - http://www.beersmith.com
Recipe: Ralph’s Summertime Pale Ale
Brewer: Roger
Asst Brewer: Ralph The Wonderdog
Style: American Pale Ale
TYPE: All Grain
Taste: (30.0)

Recipe Specifications

Boil Size: 5.70 gal
Post Boil Volume: 5.20 gal
Batch Size (fermenter): 5.00 gal
Bottling Volume: 5.00 gal
Estimated OG: 1.047 SG
Estimated Color: 5.6 SRM
Estimated IBU: 63.6 IBUs
Brewhouse Efficiency: 72.00 %
Est Mash Efficiency: 72.0 %
Boil Time: 60 Minutes

Ingredients:

Amt Name Type # %/IBU
7 lbs Brewer’s Malt, 2-Row, Premium (Great Wes Grain 1 77.8 %
2 lbs Munich 10L (Briess) (10.0 SRM) Grain 2 22.2 %
1.00 oz Cascade [5.50 %] - First Wort 60.0 min Hop 3 24.8 IBUs
2.00 oz Cascade [5.50 %] - Boil 10.0 min Hop 4 16.3 IBUs
2.00 oz Cascade [5.50 %] - Steep/Whirlpool 60.0 Hop 5 22.5 IBUs

Mash Schedule: Single Infusion, Light Body, Batch Sparge
Total Grain Weight: 9 lbs

Name Description Step Temperat Step Time
Mash In Add 12.25 qt of water at 162.7 F 152.0 F 60 min

Just a few observations.  You are chilling to 165F, and are planning to steep for 30 minutes, but your recipe accounts for a 60 minute steep and it likely calculated a 194F steep unless you changed the default steep utilization.

Your recipe will make a good beer.  My post mostly is intended to help you understand how to use the software.

Recipe wise, I’d split the 10 minute addition in half and move half of it to 20 minutes.

Yeah I foregot to go in and change the time of the steep. Plus my software doesn’t have a setting that I know about for a hopstand beginning at 165 degrees. I did however tell it to only account for 20% of the hop usage I get from a boil.

Honestly I wouldn’t expect to extract much in the way of IBUs @ 165F.  Not saying none, but I think it’d be pretty negligible. That’s what I like so much about the cooler hop stands - very little bitterness extracted and volatile oils get driven off to far less a degree.

Looks tasty to me… I think cascade is simply awesome in a pale ale.  Your recipe is similar to one I have on tap, less the munich with more base malt and I used a 20 min addition as the previous post stated.  I have seen BRY-97 take quite a while (12 to 24 hours) to get going and show signs of fermentation.

-Tony

That’s a lot of IBU’s for an APA… even if you were to say the steeping hops don’t give IBU’s (and they will for sure) you’re looking at over 40 IBU’s just from the boil additions in a 1.047 beer.

Personally, I think 41 IBU’s is the right ballpark for an APA that is this hoppy, even at a lower OG. That’s in the 0.8-1.0 BU:GU range that I normally shoot for.

At 165F, the utilization will be so low that you can ignore the IBU contribution for all practical purposes. I start my steeps at 185F when I’m not looking for any additional bittering, and it works well for me even starting that warm. Hop stand bitterness is quite smooth compared to boil hop additions, so even if you do measure a few IBU’s more, you won’t really taste them IME.

Recipe looks good to me. The only thing missing is the dry hops.

at 165F you should still be getting about 30% utilization of the AA from the hops… At least according to this.  I find I seem to get bitterness from hops if I add them at any time over 100F.

Kai posted some info about this here: http://forum.northernbrewer.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=57700&start=15

I only noted it because it looked like a lot of IBU’s going into an APA… I think it’s going to make the beer a bit unbalanced.

+1.  I don’t doubt that IBUs calculate for a 165F steep, but IME they’re not perceived the same way as even a warmer hop stand.

Interesting.  A study I saw a while ago that was in English had very different conclusions.  I searched for it recently and couldn’t find it in less than 3 minutes, so I lost interest.

However, I recall they analysed ibus at 100C (212F), 90C (194F), and 80C (176F).  Utilization at 90C was about 50%.  That’s the number Beersmith uses as a default for 90C, so I assume he used the same study.  80C was closer to 25% utilization.

I steep around 160F and use 15%-20% utilization in Beersmith.  I’ve done some  4-8oz steeps for an hour and they don’t seem to add much perceived bitterness to a 60-70ibu beer before the steep ibus are calculated.

Everyone perceives bitterness differently.  The original recipe would not be a bitter beer to me.  It would be an easy drinking pale ale.

“I am going to use BRY-97 yeast. But it doesn’t exist in the beersmith database.”

I use this yeast on occasion and I just added it to the database myself. Same with many hops that weren’t in circulation at the time of the BS release you’re using.

Just click on the Ingredients tab, click Yeast, click Add Yeast, use information on the yeast from the Danstar site and save it.

http://www.danstaryeast.com/products/bry-97-american-west-coast-beer-yeast

You can do the same for hops. I would personally do some searching from a variety of sites and form a consensus on the typical alpha, beta, and other aspects when adding the information.

Otherwise I find your steeping procedure interesting. I have experimented with cooler steeps and haven’t gotten the results I was after but only tried it a couple times. The one I just brewed had flameout additions and I steeped for only 10 minutes primarily because I was on a timeline and had to wrap things up and leave. It was around 195 to 200 most of that time. I also get a little anxious with all the dust, insects and pollen blowing around outside with my kettle open and cooler wort in there. I can’t help it. Guess I need to relax and you know…

When I read that, it looks like the difference in iso-AA concentrations in the finished beers is rather small when comparing the beers with the whirlpool additions vs those without. Without confidence intervals on those charts, you can’t be sure whether those values are even statistically significant. Keep in mind that this is also coming from a professional brewery that uses a true whirlpool. A home brewer peforming a hop stand will likely have different utilization.

If there is any increase in IBU’s at that level, it seems to be balanced out by the additional hop flavor gained during the hop stand - or at least that is how my palate perceives it.

Forget about science and software.  When in doubt, hop stand for 60min and pretend it adds zero IBU to the recipe unless you are steeping more than 4oz. or have a low tolerance for bitterness.

Sub 170F hop stands increase flavor and aroma a lot more than bitterness.

Yep. Agreed. I’m all for measuring my IBUs extracted in the boil, but there is a point in hopstands where the numbers stop reflecting what you actually perceive by drinking the beer. I feel that  sub-175F is the point where very little perceptible bitterness is extracted, at least in the home setting.

This is the 5th beer I have done using hop stands. I experimented with temperatures and discovered I get a really nice flavor and aroma when I start at 160, without any perceived bitterness at all. I really don’t think this beer will be unbalanced at all. I expect a really nice cascade flavor with a very smooth finish.

Typically BRY-97 has been a slow starter for me but produces a nice clean tasting beer. But for some reason this time it was blowing into my blow off bucket like an aquarium pump within 12 hours.

I kegged this beer yesterday. It finished at 1.010. That BRY-97 really kicked ass. I don’t know if I mentioned this but my OG was 1.060. Which is really high for 9lbs of grain. My volume was a little low, I was shy about a half a gallon from topping the keg, but that doesn’t seem like enough to take what was expected to be a 1.050 beer to 1.060. The sample tasted just right for an APA. It was pretty close to balanced with the scale leaning toward the hoppy side. It will be a good refreshing summer beer albeit one with 6.8% ABV.