Columbus and cascade recipe

[Sarenth]

Tonight is brew night.

My recipe is

boil size - 2.5 Gallons
total volume - 5 Gallons

4kg Muntons pale extract
250g Cara 40

50g columbus 16% (60mins)
25g columbus (30mins)
25g Cascade 5 mins
25g Cascade (Dry hop)

Yeast US - 05

Does this look like a good combination? Is this enough for a prominent cascade flavor?

Its not very christmassy I know!

 

[mike77]

I think this would be very bitter. The columbus alone would be about 130 IBUs. Although i see you are doing a partial mash so I don't know if that makes a difference.

 

[Spapro]

The cascade looks fine but agree with Mike, way too much Columbus.

30g of columbus at 60 mins
drop the columbus at 30 mins all together
25g of cascade at 5 mins
25g cascade dry hop

The above will give you a very bitter 60 IBUs with lots of cascade punch from the dry hop in particular.

Also saves you some columbus hops for a future brew. Good luck with it.

 

[TartanSpecial]

if it were me I'll cut back the 60min columbus to 25gram and the 30min columbus to 15grm or do 25gram at 20mins instead. This should give you something in the 50-60 IBU which is still fairly bitter (for me anyway...others will say I'm a wimp)

 

[TartanSpecial]

Spapro, our posts crossed...yeah I was thinking about possibly dropping 30 columbus too in which case increase 60min to 30gram.

 

[mike77]

Sorry my post wasn't very helpful. I can't post links from my phone for some reason. Do a google search for brewersfriend ibu calculator. You can plug in the details of the hops and boil times. Also do a search for ibu beer style guide to get an idea of what you may want to be aiming for

 

[mike77]

Here is the IBU calculator here

http://www.brewersfriend.com/ibu-calculator/


Actually when you enter in your boil size and your batch size Total IBU = 73.44 so not as way out as first thought. A lot of bittering potential must get lost as you are only boiling half the liquid. That said 73 would be too high for my taste which is usually in the 50s .

This chart is good to get an idea of what you personally might want to end up with

http://www.brewersfriend.com/2009/01/24/beer-styles-ibu-chart-graph-bitterness-range/

 

[TartanSpecial]

I didn't know the bitterness was affected so much by reduced boil size when doing an extract recipe. Didn't spot that so have learned something today which is nice. Put it through beersmith , switched to small boil sized and the IBU's plummet.

 

[Spapro]

I use Brewmate which has a batch size (but no boil size). I used to do hob top partial mashes with Coopers kits and always used Brewmate to calculate recipes.

Amazed that the boil size would affect so dramatically the amount of hops required to achieve a given IBU but not used brewers friend so maybe thats exactly the case.

 

[TartanSpecial]

hope the brew went OK Sarenth...did you keep to the original hop schedule?:lol:
After being wrong footed yesterday I put your recipe and hop schedule though beersmith2 at different boil sizes. I assumed 6.8% alpha for the cascade for the purposes of the exercise, and batch size always 23ltrs . Beersmith has predefined dropdown choices that drive the examples quoted . Last one is plugging in my all grain equipment set-up
Method Boil Size IBU’s
Extract 7.6ltr 47.7
Extract 11.4ltr 61.7
Extract 15.1ltr 73.5
Extract /Part Mash 19ltr 75.4
All Grain 28ltr 96.6
This is software driven (and absolute values from brewers friend are different but trend is similar…brewers friend comes out lower) but I didn’t realise you see this effect doing extract brewing with concentrated boils and how significant the impact apparently is. If I plug in 5kg DME instead of 4kg to the 7.6ltr boil example the IBUs drops to 33. I’ve done a few extract recipes but had bought a 27ltr kettle so always did full sized boils and wasn’t aware of this phenomenon. So much to learn in this brewing lark.. :ugeek:

 

[Sarenth]

Cheers for all the help,

Didn't finish brewing till early in the morning

am very tired today so sorry for late replies.

Adjusted the recipe as the bitterness was too high.

I took Spapro's suggestion and tweaked it

25g of columbus at 60 mins
25g columbus at 30 mins all together
30g of cascade at 5 mins
25g cascade dry hop

It seems I need to use more hops or boil for longer if I boil in smaller sizes. After a fair bit of reading and forum research I found out that wort gravity would also reduce my hop utilization, so I only put in 1kg of extract for the boil.

Thanks for putting me on the right track and that IBU bitterness range is great. will use it next time. Cant wait to drink this Hop monster.

Attached a few random photos of the brewing last night.

 

[TartanSpecial]

let us know how the brew turns out. :thumb:

 

[Spapro]

Nice pics, sure you will end up with great, very drinkable beer - the 25g cascade dry hop should give the brew a real hop punch !

You can see how it turns out this time and up the bittering hops next time out if you want it more bitter. Good luck with it, should be drinkable by Christmas, let us know how it turns out.

 

[jeg3]

I recently did an AG brew with Columbus and Cascade with additional Magnum as a bittering hop. Dry hopped with Columbus for a few weeks.

It will be ready in a couple of weeks, but it was good after a the dry hop.