Homebrewing: Calculating a American Pale Ale Recipe

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Have you ever done any first wort hopping? Makes for an awesomely smooth APA.

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I have not. That's when you add hops when you are collecting your runnings from the sparge, correct?

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Move your .5 ounce cascade addition to FWH. Leave everything else alone.

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Just edited the recipe for that in beersmith. Looks like it pushes my bitterness ration up, more in the range of IPA (granted a low to moderately hopped IPA).

Recipe looks fine but everyone will have an opinion of how to tweak it. I prefer to add hops late...i.e. the last 15 minutes. You get hop flavor without the bitterness. So move the .5 cascade to 15 min. The .25 Chinook to 30 min and maybe bump the warrior at 60 min up to 1 oz. And you have a lot of small hop additions...i.e. .25 oz. If you have 1 oz packages, you have .75 oz leftover and have to freeze them. I would use these leftovers for dry hopping.

Well i placed my order for my first ever recipe creation for a pale ale (in original post). I wanted to use citra leaf hops, but they did not have it, so i will be using pellet. Also, i ordered leaf hops of cascade, centennial, chinook, and columbus to do some tasting experiments. I have some bud lights over here that were left by some friends. I was listening to the brewing network and there were a couple guys on there that said they used to do a kind of taste testing of hops by adding some to a bud light, recapping and waiting a couple weeks. I'll try this with these and will use the leftovers for dry hopping in the future.

I've got a question regarding my hops.

As Zappa said, i have some small hop addition amounts in my pale ale recipe.

I will have .25 oz of cascade, .5 oz. of warrior, .75 oz. of chinook and .5 oz. of citra left over.

Zappa suggested dry hopping. My questions are:
1) Would dry hopping take my pale ale, more into the range of an IPA?
2) Which hops would be best for dry hopping? I"m thinking the cascade and citra. Would the remaining .75 ounce be too much, to still be considered a pale ale?

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The point being, just relax and have fun with it. Don't overthink it.

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I'm not fretting over it. But i'd like to stay in the pale ale style. Trying to get friends turned onto hoppy beer, and want to gradually bring them in with a good pale ale.

I'm not doing my typical freakout like i've done in past brews. Just curious how much of a difference the dry hopping would make.

ETA: I also ordered some leaf hops of cascade, so i may use that for dry hopping.

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I'm not doing my typical freakout like i've done in past brews. Just curious how much of a difference the dry hopping would make.

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The dry hopping will only affect the aroma. It won't add any flavor. Of course, flavor and aroma are intertwined.

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I just brewed a Zombie Dust clone last weekend.

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Thats next up on my brew list.

As for dry hopping, it will add aroma but no bitterness. So your PA will smell wonderful but not have the bite an IPA would.

If it were me, I add both the left over Citra and Chinook to the dry hop. I LOVE chinook for a dry hop.


Also, the FWH addition shows up as more IBU's, but it will not be as bitter. I can't explain it, but it rounds out the bitterness and actually makes it smoother. Don't worry about getting higher IBU's.