Hop Question - Opinions, Please

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Doglaner

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Hello,

Now, I know that everyone has their own tastes, however I would like some thoughts on combining Cascade and Chinook hops.

I have both in stock, plus 4.5kg or thereabouts of pale malt, and plan to do a simple SMaTH 40pint AG brew this weekend. I'm looking for not too strong, not too bitter, but plenty of aroma. An ale for summer BBQs and long lazy evenings.

My thoughts for the hop schedule are as follows :

15g of each 60 mins.
25g of each 0 mins
50g of Chinook, dry hopped.

My Cascade are pellet and my Chinook are leaf.

In BeerSmith2 this comes out at about 30 IBUs, so right where I want it, however do these hops work well together, and is there anything I should be aware of or watch out for?

Thanks!
 
For me maybe a bit more bitterness. But that will depend on your mash schedule and OG. You could go with all chinook as your bitter hop? other than that your good to go with that combo.


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Most of the C hops ( chinook,centenntial,colombus,citra and cascade) combine well together. I have heard that chinook can become grassy if too much is used late on and you are dry hopping exclusively with this.

I would probably go 25/25 chinook / cascade for the dry hops.
 
Ok, now I know this is a big ask, however I'd really appreciate some help, please, as I'm a bit nervous about mixing my hops! Not sure why, but maybe i think it will be like mixing coffee and jam, or mayonnaise and ice-cream. Each lovely on their own, but not nice when mixed. Hellmanns, obviously, in case you were wondering.

On Friday 6th I am going to do a single malt and multi hop brew, and am aiming for something similar to Hobgoblin Gold, at about 3.9%, for summer BBQs and the like.

So, if you had 100g of chinook (leaf), 60g of Cascade (pellets), 40g Amarillo (Pellets) and a pile of Fuggles and Goldings, plus a sniff or two of Challenger, what would you do, and what would you not do?

I appreciate the earlier comment re grassiness, so at the moment I am thinking Chinook for bittering and maybe a 15 minute late addition, too, and then the Cascade and Amarillo for aroma, possibly as a dry hop.

Any comments welcome.

Thanks in advance.

Dog.
 
Chinook is super dank and earthy if used late. Better use that for bittering and then lots of late cascade / Amarillo.

I've combined those two in a rye pale that was delicious. cascade would be the more overpowering of the two, certainly in a dry hop, but you could balance them by adding a bit more Amarillo.

Stick it into a brew calculator and see what ibus are kicked out, if your brew is about 4-5% you don't want to go much higher than 40 Ibu (unless you like super bitter beer). There's no real limit to how much you add at flame out and dry hop as it doesn't contribute to ibus, just flavour and aroma.

Of course there are no rules to this game, but personally I'd keep the fuggles and goldings in an English style bitter.
 
Doglaner said:
Ok, now I know this is a big ask, however I'd really appreciate some help, please, as I'm a bit nervous about mixing my hops! Not sure why, but maybe i think it will be like mixing coffee and jam, or mayonnaise and ice-cream. Each lovely on their own, but not nice when mixed. Hellmanns, obviously, in case you were wondering.

On Friday 6th I am going to do a single malt and multi hop brew, and am aiming for something similar to Hobgoblin Gold, at about 3.9%, for summer BBQs and the like.

So, if you had 100g of chinook (leaf), 60g of Cascade (pellets), 40g Amarillo (Pellets) and a pile of Fuggles and Goldings, plus a sniff or two of Challenger, what would you do, and what would you not do?

I appreciate the earlier comment re grassiness, so at the moment I am thinking Chinook for bittering and maybe a 15 minute late addition, too, and then the Cascade and Amarillo for aroma, possibly as a dry hop.

Any comments welcome.

Thanks in advance.

Dog.
Click to expand...
For what it's worth i have just brewed with Challenger and Cascade , bottled up, tasted and smelt really good:thumb:
 
Just read the other recent post on late additions. Much to ponder there, too. Perhaps I'm making it too complicated and should use chinook for bitterness and then split the brew mid-chill (about 65c) into two FVs and then simply add cascade to one and Amarillo to the other as dry hops?

What I am loving about this brewing malarkey is the sheer number of combinations of ingredients, temperatures and techniques that are possible. What a fabulous hobby to have, and much more productive than watching telly.
 
Use anything strong for bittering. But you'd be surprised on how great it tastes to just stick with one kind of hop. Most people do a 10 min for flavor but I found 8 minutes works better for my setup. So you could do a heavy load at that time and the after your wort has cooled to just below 80 degrees, put in your last hops. Let it sit for 20 min. The taste is really good.
 
Well first of all, a big thanks to those of you who helped with this, both here and in the other threads.

I was doing a pale ale, using just 4.75kg of golden promise pale malt. In the end I used 26g of Chinook for bittering at 60 mins and then 21g Cascade pellets and 32g Amarillo pellets at flameout. I cooled using a copper cooling coil, and the temp was down to the mid-70s within five minutes, so the volatile oils should be preserved from the latter two.

I found the bazooka filter clogged up with trub much more than previously, however I've done a couple of things differently this time. Firstly I've used pellets at the end of the boil, and secondly I used 1/4 of a Protofloc tablet, both of which produced sludge. In the end I lost about 1200ml of wort, which is a shame.

I ended up with 17l of 1052 ale, which I diluted down to 20l of 1042, and it smells bloody marvellous. I tasted the sample, as you do, and it was very bitter, but not enough to kill me (as you can tell by the fact that I am writing this). I know now from past experience that it will mellow over time and fade more into the background as fermentation does its merry thing to balance it out.

Looking forward to drinking this one, and rather think it won't be too widely shared and will be kept in my personal reserve stash. Shhhh.... Tell no-one!!

Night.

Dog.
 
Great job bud. Start experimenting with different times to put in and shift the quantities around. It's fun to see the difference it makes.
As for the bazooka issue, lately I don't use mine. I've been doing the whirlpool way and it works great. Before transferring to FV (in my case through my plate chiller) give your wort a hard stir getting it to really spin around. Let it stand for like 20 minutes. Then drain. You'll see that almost all the crud stays in the center of the pot. It's amazing.
 

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