+1 on good TR.

I'd like some recipe critique if that's possible. I want a medium bodied, lightly bittered, 6.5-7% abv, hop forward IPA. I'm looking for a bright, floral aroma and taste. Here's what I've come up with:

12lb 12oz pale malt
12 oz vienna
12 oz crystal 60

2 oz chinook 60 min
1 oz centennial 15 min
1 oz cascade flamout
1 oz centennial dry hop

mash at 152F

Am I going to get something close to what I'm hoping to get?

You say lightly bittered but that recipe puts you around 105IBU :-O!!!
1oz Chinook at 60min puts you ~60IBU.

I might want to dry it out a bit to let the hop flavors come out a bit more. I'd do something like 9lb pale, 0.5lb dextrose. This would put you around 1.010fg and 6.6%alc.

The recipe as is puts you at 8% assuming 72% eff fwiw.

I'd also bump the dry hops up to 2oz.

Beersmith is putting met at 70.1 IBU and 6.2% ABV assuming 70% efficiency.

Now, this is one of the first times I'm using beersmith, but I think everything is input correctly. Any idea what I'm doing wrong?

You sure you got all grain selected as "Type"?

All grain is selected. The only thing that confuses me a little is what mash type to put. I currently have "single infusion, full body, batch sparge" selected. Does that matter?

It could be an issue on my side. Looks like the hopville calculator puts you at 7.7% and 82ibu though.

screen shot of my bs.
http://img576.imageshack.us/img576/3161/testrecipe.jpg

The mash hops were older then the other hops. I probably should have just added the chinook at 60 and the columbus maybe at 15min.

I think my initial tastes may have been off because of carbonation. I'm having some people over on Sunday to watch football I'm going to get their opinion. Slight head cold isn't helping aroma either.

I don't get too much roast. The of carafa III was based on Stone Sublimly Self Rightous Ale.

Wraths,

I'm not even getting the same IBUs as you, this is weird. I've triple checked that the alpha acids, times and amounts are entered correctly but I get a different %/IBU. Also, I can't get the grain option that you have "Pale Ale Malt (Briess)" to show up in my grain drop-down menu. Is that a custom grain you've entered?

Do you guys have the same average boil volume entered? You get better hop isomerization from a larger boil volume, and it could be enough to make your calculated IBU's noticeably different if your average boil volumes are not the same.

There are also several different formulas for calculating IBU's - and from what I hear they can come up with significant differences in IBU's. You should be able to find out which one your software is using fairly easily. Hopville uses tinseth. I think you can choose which one to use in Beersmith.

You can add-on a bunch of extra packages for free. Under file->Add-on. I installed all of these.

Changing my sparge to match yours brought me down to 7.3%, avg boil size is 5.76gallons. Started with 6.52g ended with 5g.

I think BS default is tinseth. Not sure where the discrepancy is.

Just throwing a few more things out there that you guys may already have looked at but not sure...

Regarding the IBU's:

Are you both entering the same AA value for each hop?

Regarding the ABV:

Are you both using the same yeast with the same % apparent attenuation value entered?

Also, I don't think hopville allows you to account for wort loss to chiller and boil kettle deadspace. So if you enter 5 gallons as the finale volume, all your gravity points are going to be assumed to make it to those 5 gallons. If Pliny has some values entered into his equipment profile for wort loss to chiller and boil kettle, lets assume 0.5 gallon, and also has 5 gallons entered as the final volume, his gravity points should be diluted into 5.5 gallons because that 0.5 gallon of lost wort has sugar in it. Hopefully that convoluted sentence makes sense.

My guess is you're equipment profiles are quite different. when I plugged it in for my standard 5.5 gallon batch using the exact weights of everything you posted at 70% efficiency and got an SG of 1.066 and IBUs of 100.6 fwiw.

I work with a 15% boil off though so that could be affecting my calcs.

All of these different calculations aside, I've adjusted the recipe a bit to take down the bitterness and increase the floral taste aroma. A somewhat-final recipe is as follows:

12lb 12 oz 2-row
12 oz Vienna
12 oz Crystal 60L

1 oz Chinook 60 min
1 oz Centennial 15 min
1 oz Amarillo 15 min
1 oz Cascade Flamout
1 oz Amarillo Dry hop

Mash at 152F

Sound ok?

Personally, I would hammer that with late hop additions and spread them out a bit. Something like this:

15 min: 0.5 oz Centennial and 0.5oz Amarillo
10 min: 0.5 oz Centennial and 0.5oz Amarillo
5 min: 0.5 oz Centennial and 0.5oz Amarillo
FO: 1 oz Cascade
DH: I would bump to 2 oz.

You might have to tweak your 60 minute addition to end up at your desired IBUs. Speaking of which, what is your IBU to OG ratio now that you've tweaked things? My preference for an IPA is 1:1 or a little higher but it's really up to what you like.

Currently my IBU/SG is .760 I've never looked at this number before. Am I correct in assuming this is kind of a measuring stick of hoppiness in a beer? If that's the case I'm going to want to bump this number up I guess.

It doesn't correlate exactly to perceived bitterness but it's a good starting point. Most American IPA's start at 0.8:1 and go up from there. My last AIPA was 1.1:1 and people where complaining it was too smooth.

I generally do my APA's 0.8:1 and my AIPA's 1:1 or a tad higher.

I suggest that you look up some commercial IPA's that you like and see what their ratio is. You can usually find this, or at the least find some well reviewed clone recipes and that will give you at least a ballpark to work with. Then model yours within that range.

Just racked my RIS to corny. Tasted the hydro sample and yummmmmm. 11.7% and no alcohol fuselage at all. Roasty up front and rich milk/dark chocolate in the back. Can't wait to see how it is when it carbs up.

Had Founders Breakfast Stout on nitro last night at Smokin Betty's in Philly. Fantastic as always but I've never had it on nitro, full bodied but fluffy at the same time. It was like drinking it on top of the lightest most comfortable pillow if that makes any sense. Fantastic.


Went on to the Farmers Cabinet after that, I've been here many times but they do a good job with house brewed beers and dynamite cocktails. I had a what they called a Berliner-esque Wiesse. It was nice, a bit tarts followed by clove. Very drinkable.

Cleaning the equipment for the Bitter today!!!

Hit 151F on my mash with grain temp starting at 48F :P.

Hey guys, sorry for a mini hijack. I am running a beer-themed game of sheep in POG. There doesn't seem to be too many beer people in POG, and I was recommended to see if any of you all would like to play.

I know several forums have run games of sheep so you may have seen it, but basically the game is like family feud. You submit a bunch of answers to a list of categories, and your score for each category is how many people answered the same as you.

If you are interested in playing, then PM me an unnumbered list of your answers to the following:

Without using any duplicate answers, name a brand of each of the following styles of beer:

Pale Ale
India Pale Ale
Stout
Porter
Pilsner
Wheat
Barleywine
Amber ale


Thanks guys, and I hope you play! Cheers!

Submitted.

Submitted (only used each brewery once...was that the rule?)

No sorry. You can reuse a brewery as many times as you want. The rule is to prevent angleshooting like putting "Bud Light" for everything (despite the fact that it would be an incorrect answer for each category).

Feel free to resubmit if you want to change something in light of this.

This will probably be revealed on Wednesday so anyone who wants to play has some time.