Beer Forum

I'm getting ready to brew tomorrow and I went to get all my ingredients today from my LHBS.

I'm brewing a huge barleywine... talking 1.113 OG and I'm going to then take my second runnings and do an ESB.
Never done one so I just looked off Jamil's recipe and was going to do 1oz EKG 60, 1.5 oz EKG 30, and 0.5 EKG flameout.

I accidentally only picked up 2 oz of EKG instead of 3 and so I was thinking of keeping the later additions and just use some of either cascade, simcoe, or centenial as bittering since I have those here at the house and wouldn't have to make the 20 min trek out to go get one oz of hops tomorrow.

For my barleywine I'll have an already opened 2 oz pack of Cascade so I though I would just use the second half of the cascade making it 1 oz cascade for bittering.

My thinking is that since it is bittering the hop shouldn't matter too much as long as I just get those AA's isomerized and then use my EKG for flavor and aroma.
Thoughts?

I'd extend the boil and make the bittering addition out at 90 and adjust the weight down to compensate. That will help to volatize off even more of the flavor/aroma characteristics.

HTH-

Yea I was going to adjust for desired IBU's but my EKG and Cascade are close so it was going to be around the same.

Thanks for the 90 min tip to really make sure I boil off any cascade aspects that I don't want.

In my experience, Cascade as a bittering hop lends a very unique note, similar to bittering with CTZ. I'd go for something more neutral to pair with EKG's, perhaps Warrior or US Magnum. If all you've got on hand is the Cascade, I wouldn't let that throw a wrench in the brew day but it would definitely be one of my last choices.

Ozwald wrote:In my experience, Cascade as a bittering hop lends a very unique note, similar to bittering with CTZ. I'd go for something more neutral to pair with EKG's, perhaps Warrior or US Magnum. If all you've got on hand is the Cascade, I wouldn't let that throw a wrench in the brew day but it would definitely be one of my last choices.

Agreed. If you have any other neutral type bittering hops you can get away with those better. Keeping those EKG's later in the boil will help to preserve that british flare in your beer.

Thanks for the advice. Unfortunately I don't have anything else on hand. But I think it'll be ok. This is for the second runnings from my barleywine so it's just an experiment anyway.

On a side note, I frequently brew blondes to test various things out since they're cheap & clean enough to make issues very noticeable & easily identifiable. When things are going smooth I like to switch the bittering hops between Warrior, German Magnum & CTZ depending on how sassy I'm feeling. But seriously, it's really amazing how a bittering hop choice can change a beer, even at 15 IBU's. 90% of my recipes have 2 varieties for bittering now. Occasionally 3.

Ozwald wrote:On a side note, I frequently brew blondes to test various things out since they're cheap & clean enough to make issues very noticeable & easily identifiable. When things are going smooth I like to switch the bittering hops between Warrior, German Magnum & CTZ depending on how sassy I'm feeling. But seriously, it's really amazing how a bittering hop choice can change a beer, even at 15 IBU's. 90% of my recipes have 2 varieties for bittering now. Occasionally 3.

You crazy Montana folk....