BeerBorg

First I am doing a SMaSH brew with Red-X. But also I am going to find out just how much flavor hop stands impart. I will be doing a bittering charge in the form of First Wort Hopping one ounce of Cascades. But the other 5 ounces are going to be thrown in when I get the temperature down to 160F and left to soak for an hour.

Recipe: Ralph's Red X SMaSH
Brewer: Roger
Asst Brewer: Ralph the Wonderdog
Style: Red IPA
TYPE: All Grain
Taste: (30.0)

Recipe Specifications
--------------------------
Boil Size: 5.70 gal
Post Boil Volume: 5.20 gal
Batch Size (fermenter): 5.00 gal
Bottling Volume: 5.00 gal
Estimated OG: 1.059 SG
Estimated Color: 16.6 SRM
Estimated IBU: 51.3 IBUs
Brewhouse Efficiency: 75.00 %
Est Mash Efficiency: 75.0 %
Boil Time: 60 Minutes

Ingredients:
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Amt Name Type # %/IBU
11 lbs RedX (BestMälz) (15.2 SRM) Grain 1 100.0 %
1.00 oz Cascade [5.50 %] - Boil 60.0 min Hop 2 20.4 IBUs
4.00 oz Cascade [9.00 %] - Steep/Whirlpool 60.0 Hop 3 26.8 IBUs
1.00 oz Cascade [5.50 %] - Steep/Whirlpool 60.0 Hop 4 4.1 IBUs
1.0 pkg American West Coast Ale (Lallemand/Danst Yeast 5 -


Mash Schedule: Single Infusion, Medium Body, Batch Sparge
Total Grain Weight: 11 lbs

I'm interested to hear your results! Keep us updated

I'm so glad a number of the Borg are trying RedX. I can't wait to brew with it myself and I'm watching all of you to see how things go. Please keep those of us interested updated.
Roger, just curious about the alpha on the 4 oz of Cascade....why is it 9% when the others are 5.5%? Did you get a pack that is that much higher than normal? I rarely see it above 7 or 8%. At least in the packs that I have.

Beer-lord wrote:I'm so glad a number of the Borg are trying RedX. I can't wait to brew with it myself and I'm watching all of you to see how things go. Please keep those of us interested updated.
Roger, just curious about the alpha on the 4 oz of Cascade....why is it 9% when the others are 5.5%? Did you get a pack that is that much higher than normal? I rarely see it above 7 or 8%. At least in the packs that I have.

Yes I got 3 2oz packages. One package was around 5% the other two packages were listed at over 9%. I have never seen Cascades rated so high.

It's going to be good. I did a recent beer this way to test the very same thing and it didn't last long.

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Extra work but, it'd be awesome to split the wort pre-boil. Do half with a traditional hop schedule and the other with all hop stand. That would give a "once and for all" answer.

Pudge wrote:Extra work but, it'd be awesome to split the wort pre-boil. Do half with a traditional hop schedule and the other with all hop stand. That would give a "once and for all" answer.

I didn't do split batch to compare but I brewed a Cream Ale last summer when I first started playing around with hop stands where I did a small bittering charge with Willamette and then added an oz of each Willamette and Saaz for a hopstand. I think I did it at around 180* for 15 min. With no other flavor/aroma additions I was pleasantly surprised at the level of flavor and aroma, along with a few extra IBU's towards the bittering. Not only that but the character of the flavor and aroma was different and even seemed to hold up and last longer in the finished beer.

I did a string of hoppy beers with hopstand after that and found for myself that for a simple, cleaner beer a hop stand alone worked well but when you want big hop flavor and aroma in a hoppy beer the hopstand seems to work best in addition to traditional late hop additions. This is just my opinion and I think it's different on a homebrew scale then what the big boys do and the impact they get.

And then there's this.

Hop Stand vs. Dry Hop

Gymrat....looks like a great way to get a feel for the Red X. Can't wait to hear what you think.

MrBandGuy wrote:And then there's this.

Hop Stand vs. Dry Hop

I had read this a while back. And though I have not done split batches to test my theory, my overall experience has been I get the same aroma from hop stands as I get from dry hopping. As much as I hate hop particulates in my fermenter, even if I felt I got less, I would still hop stand over dry hop.

Pudge wrote:Extra work but, it'd be awesome to split the wort pre-boil. Do half with a traditional hop schedule and the other with all hop stand. That would give a "once and for all" answer.

I agree 100%. If I had two burners I would do just that. I have done split batches in the past. And I really hated doing one boil, then another.

I hadn't brewed a hoppy beer in a while, so I tried a hop stand on my Mosaic IPA. I might try again this summer with a recipe I've brewed before to try and note a difference. I found this latest experiment interesting that they found a noticeable difference in the flavor.

I wonder if they would find as big a difference if they did it with a lid on like I do, to keep all the oils from blowing off into the air. (so far the DMS gods have not cursed me for doing so).

I've felt no need to dry hop most of my beers since I started doing that. But this would not be so easy to do with a bigger batch. My hop stand beers seem to stay more stable/consistent over some age range vs. my dry hopped beers did too. So even if the dry hopped ones were better really fresh, I might still like the hop stand ones more with a bit of age on them.

I do have the ability to split batches across 2 fermenters easy enough - it would not be too difficult for me to do a PV batch , split the wort, hopstand half of it, and dry hop the other half of it. So maybe I will try that, and use Dawg and some friends as a guinea pig / second taster with a fresh bottle and then a bottle a month or two older.

I was shooting for a 1.060 beer. Then I took too much runnings from my sparge. I was only half an inch from the top of my kettle. It took more skill than I knew I had to avoid a boil over. I was just sure I was going to come up short on my OG with all that volume. But I hit 1.060 ON THE NOSE! My conical is in use so I used my brewing bucket. I have less head space than I like to see. Hopefully that BRY-97 won't get too carried away. I did notice I had some Nottingham that I didn't realize I have and almost went with that. But then I decided I don't want to dry it out too much because I do want a taste of the malt character.