Aroma hop comparison blonde recipe
I decided that I should get a better grasp on aroma hops as my next venture in to homebrewing. My plan was to brew two batches of blonde ale with identical grists and hop schedule, but changing the type of aroma hop. The varieties of hop in question are centennial and Amarillo. I wanted something that would still be tasty, so a SMaSH was out of the question. My grist looks like this:
60% Pilsen
35% Maris Otter
5% flaked oats
Mash @ 152
Ferment with Chico strain
Target O.G. 1.048
Target F.G. 1.008
Bitter to 20 IBU with warrior, bravo, or some other low flavor/high AA hop at 60 min
2 oz flameout with respective aroma hop
2 oz dry hop with respective aroma hop, 3 days.
Bottle condition to ~2.8 vol
Does the base recipe look good? I just came up with it on a whim after reading around, having never used anything but recipes. How do the hop rates look for 5 gallon batches?
Posted Feb 16, 2016, 3:31 AM UTC
When did SMaSH beers stop being tasty?
Maybe I phrased that the wrong way. Certainly there are some SMaSH beers that are great, but there's so many factors that could make them less likely to be very good that I would rather not waste 10 gallons worth of ingredients to find out I made a mistake. Simply put, I'm not sure I could get the results I want with my skill level. At least with adjuncts like flaked oats, and a mix of two base malts, I am pretty much guaranteed not to end up with watery, flavorless beer.
I guess I'm having a hard time understanding what you're going for. Your dry hop looks good, but 2 oz at is a lot for a blonde ale, I'd expect that addition to be about half an ounce. But maybe you're okay with that because you want more aroma.
On the malts I think you're fine - you could potentially add a small amount of honey malt or crystal malt, but it all depends on what you want the malt character to be like.