So me and my buddy just cracked open the first of our Honey pale ale on friday, and well, it wasn't what we expected. Actually it wasn't even in the same realm of what we expected. We hopped it well, did everything correctly and it tastes more like a tripel than anything. Which is weird because the calculated IBU was just under 60 I believe. We used 1lb of honey. 5lb of light malt extract. 1.5 lb of both 2-row barley and canadian honey malt. It's not bad by any means but i'm wondering if anyone might know what could have happened. It could have been the yeast. Don't remeber off the top of my head what yeast we used, but it is supposed to be good for pale ales. Again I'm not by any means disappointed with this beer, it is actually pretty damn good, just wondering how this happened.
Well, the recipe looks similar to a tripel. If you didn't control fermentation temps very well, you might've gotten some phenols. A pound of honey will dry out a beer quite a bit, depending on the OG.
Was the extract DME? If so, and assuming a 5 gallon batch, your OG was probably well over 1.065. (1.060 would be upper end for an APA.) Also, 60 IBUs is well over the top for the APA style (as well as a Tripel) . The honey, in addition to increasing your OG and ABV, would have thinned the body (in comparison to a more typical grain bill) with the same OG. But can you describe in what way this beer tastes 'like' a tripel?
very end of the boil. The OG was actually much lower than I thought it would be. If I remember right it was 1.058 or so. We intentionally boosted the IBU. Its only about 5.1% abv. It tastes like a tripel in the sense of the body of the beer. Flavor a bit. Lack of bitterness. It resembles one but doesn't really fall into any category perfectly. Tripel is just the closest thing to it. It was liquid malt extract, not dry. Yeah we fermented at room temp, which in florida was pretty warm. Most the time up around 78 and towards the end dropped to about 75/76, maybe a tap lower the last day. I figure that probably has a lot to do with it. But I still dont understand where the hops went. We hopped 4 times, at 60, 45, 30, and 15 alternating between williamette (7.5%) and cascade (7.4%). Its a pretty nice beer, very thick malt body to it though.
The fermentation temp is likely part of your problem. The honey was probably not a great idea, either, as it dried out a beer that was not very heavy to begin with. Also, you didn't mention the quantity of hops used, but the timings of your hop additions are not going to give you much of a hop wallop. The 60, 45, and 30 minute additions will give you bitterness, but virtually zero flavor or aroma. You'll get a bit from the 15 minute addition, but not as much as you would have had you dumped them all in at, say 10 minutes or less. Of course, you would have had to make adjustments to hit your target IBUs in that case. Generally speaking, if you're looking for lots of hop flavor, you want to focus on late additions. Did you mash the 2-row and Honey Malt? If not, this might be one of the reasons your OG was off.
No we are building a mash tun now. Its done but leaking so I gotta figure that out. We steeped the malts at I think around 150ish (I think we went for 155) for about 30-45 mins. Well there is no bitterness at all. Essentiall no hop presence. Which I wasn't expecting a ton of it, I was more going for a nice small bitterness at the finish. I don't know. Oh we used .5 oz of hops each time. 2oz total. so 1 oz of each hops. I'm about to do a real simple beer just to learn so new ingredients. So i'll work on the fermentation temp and the hop additions. Thanks everyone for your help and suggestions so far.
2-row and honey malt need to be mashed. But, at 155, you probably got some conversion. As to the hops, the lack of flavor is not a surprise with 2 oz spread out the way you did it. Indeed, it would have been hard to coax much flavor out of 2 oz no matter what your hop schedule looks like. I've gotten some nice hop flavor with 4 oz, though 6 to 8 is more typical in my hop bombs. Timing is pretty important. How did you calculate IBUs? 60 seems high, but I don't have my cheat sheets handy, so I can't say for sure. FWIW, each batch is a learning experience. It's good that this turned out drinkable (they usually do)
Did you steep them in the full water volume for recipe? If so, that's going to be a very thin 'mash' with likely very low efficiency, so there's a cause of unexpectedly low OG. Though in reality, that maybe wasn't the worst thing, since it kept your OG down in the range for a Pale Ale, which is what you were shooting for.
I used some online calculator. I just downloaded beersmith so I'll be using that for my next beer. Were trying a pale ale again I think. Using the same hops just doing it different. The IBU will be around 45 if all goes as planned. Were changing all the malts though. Same yeast and no honey. Yeah once I figure out the leak in our mash tun were switching to all grain so hopefully in the next week when I get a chance. But we figured we wouldn't get nearly as much out of it by steeping. But you have any suggestions on how to do that better? or more efficiently?
You can 'steep' grains that normally need to be mashed, as long as there is a base malt (in your case the two row) present with sufficient diastatic power (enzymes) to convert its own starches and the starches of the other malt(s) (in your case the honey malt). But if the 'steep' (actually a mash in this case) is too thin (or thick), it won't be very efficient. Ideally, you'd want the water to grain ratio between one and two quarts per pound. Thicker/thinner mashes can work, but it's hard to go wrong if you aim squarely in the middle.
So what if I do it with just a honey malt? For 30 minutes or so and then bring it to a boil and add an extract? Would that work? or would I still need a base malt?
Some will say that honey malt can just be steeped, and doesn't need to be mashed with a base malt. I disagree with that. Honey malt contains a lot of starches. A regular steep isn't going to convert those starches to sugars, so they will end up in your beer, causing haze and shorter shelf life. As a rule of thumb 'best practice,' the only malts that should be steeped are cara/crystal malts and roasted malts (such as chocolate and roasted barley).
did you do a concentrated boil? that can lead to a far lower than expected bitterness due to alpha acid isomerization/solubility limitations coupled with dilution post boil. re: thick body + 'tripel' taste, I can only speculate increased phenols/hot alcohols from the warmer than ideal ferment for the yeast strain + underattenuation?
