Hopping an APA kit - advice needed

[dalet3]

Hi all

 

This weekend i plan to hop my APA kit with, Columbus, Centennial & Cascade hops. Does anyone know the best way/process to go about this?

 

Cheers

[Otto Von Blotto]

Depends what you're after from the hops? A 10 minute boil with some of the hops in some water mixed with dry malt would give some added flavour, a dry hop a few days into ferment will give aroma.. it's up to you really.

[dalet3]

I'm hoping to have an extremely hoppy pale ale at the end.

 

Would i put 3 diff hops in to boil at the same time or would i need to put them in separate & boil diff lengths of time?

[dalet3]

i'll be using pellets for this.

[Scottie]

Hey Dale

These three hops will all bring pretty much the same thing to the brew. Even though the Centennial is also called super cascade I am not sure I like it in mid range boils. I have used Columbus twice now but the brews are still fermenting or conditioning, it smells great.

 

How about boiling some Columbus for 10 minutes, Centennial in at flame out and let the boil volume rest for 30 minutes then dry hop with Cascade [unsure]

[dalet3]

That sounds great. I have 100g of each. What amount you you recommend i uee of each?

 

If i put the Centennial & Columbus in to start, would there be no need to dry hop with too?

[Scottie]

With that many hops you could consider doing a brew using an unhoped malt base, but either way you will have plenty of hops left for future brews.

Less is more and you want to avoid grassy notes from over hopping. I'd say boil 15g of Columbus for 10 minutes, add 25g of Centennial at flame out and dry hop with 25g of Cascade when the Krausen starts to subside, let the FV rest for a week after FG is reached. The dry hop will produce you hoppy APA (aroma).

[Hairy]

What is the rest of your recipe for the APA? You want to get the beer in balance.

 

For example, if you are making a thin, watery beer then you don't want to throw too many bittering hops at it and would probably go easy on the flavour hops too.

 

I used to like the following base, although I used to vary it all the time:

 

1.7kg Coopers APA

1kg light dry malt

200g dry wheat malt

250g dextrose

 

It will give you an OG around 1050 and ABV around 5.5%.

 

But I used to find the APA kit not quite bitter enough for this type of beer so I would throw some hops in at 20 minutes. But I like these beers to be around late 30's to 40 IBUs.

 

Sorry, I have probably thrown your plans into disarray now [innocent] If you haven't done so then download IanH's Beer Designer spreadsheet from AHB and have a play with the hop additions to see what it does.