First AG: Citra American Pale Ale Advice

[mr hoppy]

Like usual the lines are blurred and any lines you draw are stepping on real life examples.  Making style guidelines is sort of like beer racism...

Amen, off-topic (sorry) but I was looking at the 2008 BJCP Belgian Blonde guidelines last night - and if you look at them as a "bulls eye" to hit in a competition, and in fairness even Gordon Strong says that's what they are - they're fine. If you look at them as a meaningful description of pale coloured Belgian beer they're nonsense: they exclude all of the pale, sub 8% Belgian beers I like - on one pretext or another - and most of the ones I hate as well.

[molc]

Yeah when I look at styles, it's more of a case of wanting to be able to hit the style guide with a recipe so I know I'm able too and have developed that skill, rather than aiming to create it perfectly every time.

[Qs]

I look at the style guidelines the way I look at graphic design, you need to know the rules to break them effectively.

[biertourist]

Kernel double citra is probably the best hoppy beer Ive ever had. Better than pliny imo. Kernel citra is 1 malt & 1 hop afaik. No faff, trim the fat etc.

Some notes from Kernel via Matthew Dick:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_cz54adDEInaHZyOHpzc1V4YzVhNWdYd25uSWtGM1JJVWRN/view?usp=sharing

Ive seen a recipe of theirs on another forum which was got from a screen shot of a video at their brewery. I think the grist is simpsons best pale ale with some simpsons low colour marris otter. Not 100% marris otter like the recipe notes in the above link. Hope this helps.

My IPAs are all becoming simple malt IPAs.  I like the complexity of at least 2 hops and right now I'm experimenting with a series of "Centennial+ something else" IPAs.  The malt and mashing side of these recipes is so crazy easy; it's the hop separation that's painful.  That's why I'm hoping to switch to hop extract for bittering and I've asked for a HUGE hop spider for Christmas that can deal with pellet hops.

-This series of beers is really helping me to tweak my system so that it can deal with even the most insane of hop bills.

I LOVE "brewing for a purpose" and focusing 3-5 beers in a row on a common theme -I learn so much about that type of beer, the ingredients involved and the important parts of my system that need to be improved to make brewing them easier.   -It helps evolve my brewery equipment and processes more rapidly, I think.


I think I'm going to rotate between these super hoppy IPAs and low gravity lagers as obviously each one is at the extreme end of the spectrum.  I've gotten very good at avoiding ANY astringency in light colored lower gravity beers now, my lager processes are pretty good but they're extremely wasteful. I waste so much beer when I brew lagers and I'm hoping that some of the tweaks that I make to my system for dealing with hop separation can be modified to help with separating beer from trub because minimizing trub is really important in the lager tradition and in keeping fermentations neutral. 

-My whirpool keggle is pretty good at leaving behind the hop pellet crud and with my hop spider I think I'll have hop pellet crud completely under control, but the whirlpool keggle's side outlet also means that I leave behind LOTS of beer (up to 4 liters).  I think I might have to get a more traditional dip tube fitting for for keg's outlet and place it under a fine mesh false bottom to get more liquid out.  This will obviously reduce the efficiency of my whirlpool recirculation but I can make an INSANE whirlpool by supplementing it with my mash paddle inserted into my cordless drill on the fast setting.

To anyone wanting a whirlpool for settling OR for increasing the performance of your immersion chiller, I can't recommend it highly enough.  A sanitized plastic mash paddle inserted into a cordless drill makes an INSANELY POWERFUL whirlpool and dramatically decreases the time (and water quantity) necessary to chill.  -I know water quantity / cost is a sensitive issue, but regardless of whether you're paying for it, you should conserve it and this technique really does help.

P.S. For those of you who like doing whirlpool hop additions or "hop stands" simply turn the water on to your chiller and turn on your cordless drill with the mash paddle inserted until you get the wort down to 140f (sorry: 60C), then stop your whirl pooling and turn off your water and time your hop stand.  Isomerization and extraction of hop oils will take longer at this lower temperature but now you're rapidly below the DMS formation danger zone. -Good idea if you're using lager malts/ pilsner malts anyway; with Pale malt as a base malt probably not such a big deal.
Adam

[biertourist]

I look at the style guidelines the way I look at graphic design, you need to know the rules to break them effectively.

+Eleventy Million!

LOVE this quote!

Adam

[Hop Bomb]

@Adam - the hop spider is the best thing since sliced bread. It keeps almost all pellet hop debris out of the wort & still allows for full hop utilization. It doesnt effect your boil either. In my experience I use less gas as the boil seems more violent with the spider in the kettle.

Pic of mine post boil & post 30 min hop stand:  (I whip mine out then for recirc & chilling)




Hop debris contained inside the spider after 60 min boil with 10.5% boil off (a good strong boil):




200 grams of hop pellet debris that was in the spider:




One thing Id recommend is to put a wee bazooka tube in also to keep the break material out of your pumps. Ive a little one running along the wall of my kettle. Keeps my pumps clog free.




Re: your beer losses - Its not waste if you think the wort is not worth saving. I leave 10 litres behind in my kettle. Its a 100 litres & 10 litres is only the bottom inch & half. Its always full of break material so not worth saving. Sometimes Il drain it for starter wort if I need some. You can always adjust your recipe to account for the losses & brew that little bit more.

[biertourist]

@Adam - the hop spider is the best thing since sliced bread. It keeps almost all pellet hop debris out of the wort & still allows for full only marginally reduced hop utilization.

There fixed that for you.

Hop spiders, ESPECIALLY when the top sticks far out of the surface of boiling wort act as giant heat sinks that pull heat out of the inside of the hop spider and free it into the air. -Measure the temp inside the main part of your kettle and inside the hop spider- you'll find at LEAST a 3 degree F difference.  Below boiling you DO have a reduction in utilization, but we're homebrewers so increasing the amount of hops by 3% isn't a big deal. (Plus by using pellets you've already got a significant utilization increase vs. whole hops.)


-On the residual hop debris that makes it into the kettle still, I've got a whirlpool kettle and I'm still going to whirlpool after removing the hop spider from the boil kettle so that should deal with that well enough. (hopefully...)


Adam