I'm brewing up an amber ale tomorrow and trying to finalize the recipe--I already bought the grains, but I'm having trouble figuring out my hop schedule. My troubles are compounded by the fact that I just received a hop grab bag from Nikobrew, so I have many more varieties to choose from than I usually do, several of which I've not used before. I'm aiming for an OG of 1.055. My grain bill is 78.5% Rahr Pale Ale, 10.5% Red Wheat Malt, 8% Crystal 60, 3% Victory. I'm making this mostly for my wife, who is not a big hop fan, and I'm hoping to keep it right around 25 IBUs. Her hop flavor preferences, in order, are probably fruity, citrus, spicy, floral, earthy, and herbal. Piney is probably her least favorite hop flavor. Below is the list of hops I have to work with from my grab bag. I would greatly appreciate any suggestions for which of these would work well together in an amber, and which you'd recommend for bittering, flavor, aroma, etc. This doesn't have to be super true to style, so I'm open to out of the box suggestions. Smaragd Mt. Hood Magnum Chinook Styrian Goldings Centennial Summit Cascade Mandarina Bavaria Ultra Delta Hallertau Mittelfruh Calypso Santiam I also have very small quantities of Crystal, Willamette, and Mosaic leftover from previous batches that I could use to augment any of the hops above. Thanks in advance!
Good idea and it shouldn't matter much as long as you stay away from the Chinooks and Summits (piney) ...might have her try a Red Seal to see what her hop tolerance is in an Amber Ale. btw, were all those hops in the "grab bag"?
If your wife is not a hop fan that maybe she would most appreciate an Amber Ale which is solely hopped with a modest amount of bittering hops (i.e., no hop additions for flavor.aroma). In this vein I would suggest that you solely add some Magnum at the beginning of boil to achieve your target of 25 IBUs. The resulting beer will feature malt flavors. Cheers!
She has had that one--it's definitely more bitter than she likes. She's not entirely opposed to hop flavor (though there are certain hop flavors she like more than others), but she prefers malt forward beers and she has a pretty low tolerance for perceived bitterness. I say perceived because she will happily drink a roasty stout or porter that has 35+ IBUs.
What yeast are you using? Personally, that would direct the way I would likely go with this recipe. It seems that your wife knows what she likes since you have her hop flavor preferences in order. The two questions to me would be; 1) Do I want to make a beer with little or not hop flavor and aroma and just showcase the malt or have some hop flavor/aroma within your descriptors? and 2) Depending on which way I want to go how does my yeast choice play into this desired profile? If you don't want any/minimal hop flavor or aroma, go with @JackHorzempa 's advise above. If you want some, based off of your descriptions above I would go with Magnum to 15 IBUs at 60 minutes and then at 20 minutes either add Centennial and Crystal or Centennial and Styrian Goldings for another 10 IBU.
I have the option of using either Wyeast 1450 or WLP007. I think I'd like to have some hop flavor/aroma within the bounds of her preferences.
No personal experience with either of those yeasts, but I would likely go with WY1450 either way you decide to go. I would think WLP007 would dry this beer out too much.
I dug out my old hops (and found a bonus partial pack of Centennial) and weighed them out and decided it would be prudent to use those up before I started opening up my grab bag stash. I ended up bittering with Centennial (about 11 IBUs), a 20 min addition of Mosaic (about 11 IBUs), and a 10 minute addition of Willamette (about 3 IBUs). I also ended up using the 1450.
