1st all grain brew. How does my APA recipe look?

[Dustin_J]

Hey everyone,

I'm tackling my first all grain brew sometime in the next week or so and would love to get some feedback on the recipe. Any thoughts or comments are appreciated

Link to recipe --> http://www.msu.edu/user/jundtdus/APA1.html

[valorian]

Well, A couple things I'm wondering about. Why the Crystal 20 and 40? Persionally, I would get rid of the Crystal 20. I really don't think it's going to contribute anything to the flavor. The hops, the selection looks good. My suggestion though, if your going to do a 60 minute addition and them nothing until 15, I would take the Simcoe from the 60 minutes, move it to a 20 minutes addition and then increase it to 1 oz and go the all late hops addition route. Just my suggestions.

[barleypopmaker]

I agree with valorian. However, remember it's your beer and in the end you should do whatever you want to do and what you think you will like. Only you know your taste preferances. I don't think the recipe looks bad at all. But, Personally I would either drop the crystal all together and just go with Munich and Victory or drop the Munich and go with the crystal 20 instead of the 40. But like I said, that is just what I would like more in a APA. I like the lighter color of APA's, and like to showcase the hops and have just a touch of malt complexity and let it hang out in the background. Some malt complexity is nice, but I think you should do alright with the light Munich and the Victory. As a matter of fact, I just made a killer APA with just Pale malt, 1lb of victory(I love Victory malt in APA's), and 1lb of crystal 10(mainly just to add a little color and a touch of added flavor but not much at all) and all my hop additions (Amarillo and Chinook) with late addition hopping. So I also whole heartedly agree with Valorian's suggestion on the hop additions

[Dustin_J]

Thanks a lot for the suggestions guys.

Unfortunately, I got excited and brewed on Sunday using the recipe above. Basically, I had some crystal 20 and 40 around, so I figured what the hell. The good news is the beer fermented down from 1.056 to 1.010 in 3 days, and as of tonight tasted damn good. It attenuated a little more than I wanted, but my mash temp slipped a little low so that's probably part of it. The hop aroma and flavor is a little on the low side for my preference, though, so I think your suggestions for the hop schedule may have been dead on...I'll have to give it a shot next time. I'll probably have to dry hop with an ounce of centennial or simcoe to come up with a little more aroma. But all in all, it looks like it's going to beat the hell out of all of my previous extract batches, so I can't be too upset about it.

Cheers!

[valorian]

Good to hear everything went well. What was yout mash temperature? I don't thing 1.010 from 1.056 is really all that bad. Part of making the perfect recipe is making a batch, tweeking the recipe and rebrewing it. Good luck with the All Grain brewing.

[Dustin_J]

I hit my initial mash temp of 154 dead on, but it dropped to 150 within about 20 minutes. So, I added ~1 gal of boiling water which brought it up to 155 or so, and covered the lid with a sleeping bag. This seemed to keep the heat in, but from what I understand the lower temp early may have broken the starches down into more fermentables and less dextrins. I'm basically just bitching though, I certainly don't mind a little higher ABV as long as there is still some malt there to support it, which there definately seems to be.

[eric_lord]

Dustin,
What are you mashing in that drops the temp so quickly? My cooler drops 1 degree an hr.

FWIW, I use 2oz of amarillo or cascade at the 30,15,5 additions for a 12gal batch. This seems to be perfect for me.

eric.

[Dustin_J]

Hey Eric,

I'm using a 36-quart igloo cooler. After looking around on the web and doing some research, I think I measured the temp too quickly. From what I understand, it takes about 10-15 minutes for the grain to soak up all of the strike water and during this process, the temp goes down continuously. That would explain the 3-4 degree drop I had. Also, my strike water was probably about 3-4 degrees too cool, as I had my mash tun thermal mass set to 0 in promash. Taken together, this would put my temp right at 150, which would be what I found after 15 minutes. Also, I noticed that after I added the boiling water, my temp really didn't drop much in the next 30 minutes or so. I did insulate the lid of the cooler with some spray foam, but it probably won't matter much. For $5, I figured what the hell.