Planning on brewing this homemade recipe in a few days, looking for feedback/tweaks before taking the plunge. Target is a smooth medium-bodied autumnal adjunct red ale with a bright citric hoppy spice finish and candied orange/lime aroma. All comments are welcome. 5.0 lb Extra Pale LME 2.0 lb Golden Promise 1.0 lb Crystal 120L 1.0 lb Honey Malt 0.5 lb Caramel Wheat 0.5 lb Golden Naked Oats 0.5 lb Flaked Oats 1 oz Galena @60 min 1 oz Citra @30 min 1 oz Sorachi Ace @5 min AHS Greenbelt yeast Partial mash, grain bag 50 min @ 153 F, extract added at beginning of boil. Thoughts?
Addendum to previous post: 5.5 gallon batch, roughly 1 pint/lb grain sparge liquor. Hops on hand: Warrior, Progress, Summit, Galena, Citra, Saaz, Sorachi Ace, Kent Goldings. Not planning on a trip to the LHS this weekend.
I don't know how I feel about mixing Citra and Sorachi, since they're both very expressive and unique. But, if you're going to, I'd move the Citra to either FO or DH to get more character and adjust your bittering addition to hit your target IBU. Re: honey malt. I could take it or leave it in this recipe. It can be cloying. Maybe dial it back a bit (4 to 8 oz) if you still want it in there.
Your partial mash is a little light on enzymatic power. The only source of diastatic power in this recipe is the 2 lbs of golden promise, and you have 3.5 lbs of non-enzymatic grain that's going to dilute the power. This could cause conversion problems and I'd recommend increasing the ratio of diastatic grain to non-diastatic grain.
Thanks for the feedback all- nice catch, Homebrew42. I'd used Munton's Maris Otter previously and (apparently) incorrectly assumed that the Golden Promise would also be in the 100+ Lintner range, leaving me plenty of wiggle room with the adjuncts and specialty malt. Due to the timing, I'll probably end up throwing in a couple extra pounds of Golden Promise and mashing for 90 min. I may lighten up the honey malt a bit as well, but I've had pretty good results with 12 oz. in hoppy ales previously, so I'll see how I'm feeling when it goes in the bag. As for the hops, I think I'll add another quarter ounce of Galena at the start and move the Citra addition to 5-10 minutes, as I agree that I'm losing a bit of the character at 30, I was mostly worried that the aroma would overpower the somewhat less assertive Sorachi Ace and the whole thing will end up smelling like grapefruit tea or something. Anyways, it's an experiment, so whatever happens (within reason) is welcome.
Citra / Sorachi Ace should be an interesting combo. I don't know if you'll get orange / lime, though. Buy itself, I get mucho lemon from SA. Probably worth a try, though.
