[dons]

I'm not going to bore you by telling you how I got into this predicament.  Suffice to say that my mind was confused BEFORE going into my supplier and, after talking to the guy and NOT MAKING NOTES, a week later I'm completely lost in space. 

Here's where I am.  I am brewing an all-grain, pale tomorrow - in about 22 hours.  My brew store is a round trip of 4 hours, so the supplies I have are what I'm going to have to use.  My grain is 10.5 pounds of 2-row, .5 pounds of Crystal 45 and .5 pounds of Cara pils.

Here is the quiz.  I'm going to tell you the hops that I have and would like your suggestion as to how to use them.  I THOUGHT that I knew what I was going to do, but the hops that I happen to have are NOT what I had asked for when procuring supplies (nuff said about that). 

1 oz. Chinook
2 oz. Centennial
2 oz. Columbus

Assuming a 60 minute boil, how much of what do I use when?  I'm nearly sure that I want to use all of the Columbus to dry-hop.  If you agree with that, that leaves 2 ounces of Centennial and 1 ounce of Chinook for the bitter, flavor and aroma.

My "sense" is that I want to do something like chinook at 60, 1 ounce of centennial at 10 and the last once of Centennial at 5.  With the Columbus for the dry hop.

Can anyone tell me if that would be a decent idea?

Thanks much in advance,
as ever
The Noob...

Don

[tumarkin]

tha'll certainly work. however, if it were me, I'd use the columbus for the flavor additions and centennial for late flavor and dry hop. the chinook is a good bittering hop. columbus (also called tomahawk) is a high alpha, but dual purpose hop. whatever you decide to do, pay attention to your results. see if you're happy or if you'd like to try a different tack next time. take good notes.

[EHall]

Need to know the AA% of each of what hops you have. You said you want to make a pale ale... how many IBUs are you shooting for? or do you want to make something closer to an IPA? but otherwise the hop sched you have can/will work.

[trev]

1 oz columbus 60 min
1 oz centennial 30min
1 oz centennial 5 min
1 oz. Chinook 0 min
1 oz columbus dry hop

[hamiltont]

Give this some thought. It's similar to how I hop most of my APA's & IPA's.  I really enjoy the flavor & aroma of the late additions. ~ 40 IBU's.  Cheers!!!


10 minutes
.5 oz Columbus
.5 oz Chinook
.5 oz. Centennial

5 minutes
.5 oz Columbus
.5 oz Chinook
.5 oz. Centennial

0 minutes
.5 oz Columbus
.5 oz. Centennial

Dry Hop
.5 oz Columbus
.5 oz. Centennial

[jaybeerman]

Columbus is a perfect hop for late and dry hopping.  Centennial is great flavor hop but a great all around hop.  Chinook is a love/hate hop - do you personally like the flavor of Chinook (or the flavor description)? IMO chinook is great with centennial as a flavor addition, but like I said some people hate it.  If you wanted you could use some of the Chinook as FWH, for subtle flavoring.  Or if you didn't want any flavoring from the Chinook but still want a bit of hop complexity, you could go with

1 oz Chinook 60 min
1 oz centennial 10 min
1 oz Columbus 5 min
1 oz centennial dry hop
1 oz Columbus dry hop

Really it's up to you and your best bet is to read up on the flavor and aroma descriptions of each hop and decide for yourself.

[bluesman]

Give this some thought. It's similar to how I hop most of my APA's & IPA's.  I really enjoy the flavor & aroma of the late additions. Cheers!!!

60 minutes
.5 oz Chinook

15 minutes
.5 oz Columbus
.5 oz. Centennial

10 minutes
.5 oz Columbus
.5 oz Chinook
.5 oz. Centennial

5 minutes
.5 oz Columbus
.5 oz. Centennial

Dry Hop
.5 oz Columbus
.5 oz. Centennial

+1

If you want a moderate bitterness and more flavor/aroma then this is the way to go. If you like a more firm bitterness then adjust by increasing the bittering addition (60min).

Personally I like hamiltont's suggestion.

[hamiltont]

Give this some thought. It's similar to how I hop most of my APA's & IPA's.  I really enjoy the flavor & aroma of the late additions. Cheers!!!

60 minutes
.5 oz Chinook

15 minutes
.5 oz Columbus
.5 oz. Centennial

10 minutes
.5 oz Columbus
.5 oz Chinook
.5 oz. Centennial

5 minutes
.5 oz Columbus
.5 oz. Centennial

Dry Hop
.5 oz Columbus
.5 oz. Centennial

+1

If you want a moderate bitterness and more flavor/aroma then this is the way to go. If you like a more firm bitterness then adjust by increasing the bittering addition (60min).

Personally I like hamiltont's suggestion.

I went back & changed it a little after running it through the gonkulator.  It was about 80 IBU's as originally posted. A little hoppy for a Pale Ale, at least for me.

[dons]

Wow, such quick response.  You guys are awesome.

To answer:  the supplier listed alphas as follows:
Chinook 13.6
Centennial 8.8
Columbus 14.6

I have really no target for IBUs - but I prefer more hops than bitter - I know, that does not answer you.

Don

[tschmidlin]

It also helps to know your target OG/FG, but you've got lots of good suggestions above.

[denny]

Nobody givin' FWH any love?  I'd use an oz. of the Centennial as FWH.

[hamiltont]

With this hop schedule, the grains you mentioned and assuming 75% Efficiency & and FG of 1.010 -  I'm getting an OG of 1.063. Alcohol by Volume of 6.9% and IBU's of 40.  Cheers!!!

10 minutes
.5 oz Columbus
.5 oz Chinook
.5 oz. Centennial

5 minutes
.5 oz Columbus
.5 oz Chinook
.5 oz. Centennial

0 minutes
.5 oz Columbus
.5 oz. Centennial

Dry Hop
.5 oz Columbus
.5 oz. Centennial

[dons]

Okay, brewing done and, so far, I'm very pleased.  Thanks again to all the suggestions.  What I did was the following:

.5 oz Centennial at FWH
.5 oz Chinook at 60
.5 oz Columbus at 10
.5 oz Columbus, .5 oz Chinook, .5 oz Centennial at 5
.5 oz Columbus, .5 oz Centennial at 0
(will dry hop with .5 oz Centennial, .5 oz Columbus)

OG 1.062.   Nearly equal to what Hamiltont forecast.

By the way, for fly sparging I used the "Zapap Lauter Tun" as described in the Papazian book.  I drilled the holes a bit smaller than he suggested and I added a layer of padding from Home Depot that is shelf lining for a heavy tool drawer - the holes looked perfect.  It worked REALLY well.  Steady flow of very clear liquid in the sparge and I took about an hour for the process.  After 40 minutes all hints of sweetness was gone from the run off.  It was a big gamble for me, because I know most (all?) of you use a different process but this looked like the easiest for me and I wanted to try it.  Big victory for me here.

All in all, I have really high hopes!
Thanks a ton again for the help!
Don

[Will's Swill]

What was the padding for?

[dons]

Sorry, poor explanation.  I was still worried about grain getting through the holes I drilled and getting stuck in the tap/piping coming off the bottling bucket (into which the lauter tun leeched wort - is it really "wort" at this time?), so I put a layer of this shelf material, which had much smaller holes than the ones I drilled in the bottom of the bucket, in the bottom of the lauter tun to serve as another "sieve" in the bottom of that bucket.  The holes in this plastic "fabric" were very much akin to the size of the holes in the mini-cooler sieve material that I always used for my extract brewing from the kit I purchased when I first got in to brewing.

So, if you can picture:  I set the lauter tun with the extra sieve material on the bottom inside the bottling bucket - it fit so there was about 4 inches left in the bottom bucket.  Then I attached clear tubing to the tap of the bottling bucket and and directed it into a 8 gallon kettle to catch the "wort".  I scooped all of the steeped mash into the top bucket and proceeded to sparge 4 gallons of heated water over the grain, about a quart at a time keeping a layer of water on top of the grain.  It took an hour, with the flow into the kettle controlled by the tap in the bottling bucket.  As a noob to the all-grain process, I think this would be considered fly sparging.

Long explanation and probably confusing, but I tried to be clear for anyone who might want to consider doing the sparge process this way.  As well as the process that everyone here seems to use works (the custom manifold with slits cut into it in in the bottom of a 48 quart cooler) doing batch sparging, I just wanted to lay out another way to sparge that worked really well and did not require making that daunting (to me) constructed manifold.

Hope this was clear - if anyone was really interested. 
Don