Being only a third time brewer, and feeling ambitious and experimental i decided to step away from kit directions and experiment. anyone have experience with the following combo? any opinions on how this will taste?
2 oz Columbus: 60 min (bittering) 2 oz columbus: 15 min 2 oz cascade: flame out
3 oz Citra: dry hop week before bottling 1 oz simcoe: dry hop with citra week before bottling
thoughts? suggestions? thanks!
Hey experimenting is half the fun of brewing! If you keep good notes on recipes and final product you can really start to understand what works together and produce better and better beer.
Without knowing what your grain bill I would say this looks a little aggressive. As a reference, let's say you were shooting for a 1.065 o.g. (6.5% ish) your current hop schedule should yield approximately 140 IBU's. If you reduced your 60 min addition to 1 oz. it should be more like 95 IBU's. And further if you reduced both columbus additions to 1 oz. you should be around 70 IBU's. I really like the columbus hop (CTZ) for its "dank" piney pungent character, And believe this hop schedule could benefit from a trending practice of reducing the bittering additions and increasing the late additions which will lend to increased flavor and aroma / perceived hoppiness, but won't create an overly bitter beer (or brew this recipe to really get an understanding of where the bitterness ceiling is...(not a bad idea, extended aging will drop out perceived hoppiness over time)).
Resources that might help:
Looks pretty reasonable, although as Ryan noted, 2 oz. Columbus at 60 minutes will be quite bitter. Personally, I find that boiling Columbus for more than 30 minutes results in a harsh bitterness that lingers far too long on my tongue. (I wake up tasting it the next day.) For that reason, I no longer use Columbus for bittering. I generally stick with Magnum for bittering now.
By way of example, to my palette, there is a huge difference between the original Pliny the Elder recipe (Columbus at 90 and 45, Simcoe at 30) and the MoreBeer Pliny the Elder kit (Magnum at 90, Simcoe at 45, Columbus at 30). I find the former to be quite harsh and the latter to be pretty smooth.
That's just my opinion, though. Some people seem to enjoy that quality so you'll have to judge for yourself.
I do love Columbus for dry hopping.
