blending centennial, nugget, cascade and simcoe

[berkeleybrewer]

Brand new to the brewing network after finding the Sunday Session archives and podcasts on itunes. Anyway, I'm preparing to brew my first Partial Mash recipe, a Black IPA (or CDA) and wanted to use several hops I have in the house. My plan is to late wort hop pretty much all my hops and do 20 min, 10, 5, flameout and dry hop additions to get a smoother bitterness.

My question is, will the 4 hops that I have (Nugget, Cascade, Simcoe and Centennial) blend well together? I was thinking that with each addition, I'd split it up so that each overall addition consisted of these percentages:

30% Nugget
30% Centennial
25% Simcoe
15% Cascade

The overall goal is to get a nice herbal and not overpowering citrusy hop character to complement a light ,roasty, malt character. Thoughts??

[spiderwrangler]

The Cascade and Centennial are going to give you citrus, and the Nugget and Simcoe herbal and piney notes. As far as a blend, I say go for it. You should be able to calculate a AA% for the blend itself (average of all varieties taking weight into account), and enter your custom blend into whatever brewing software you use. If you don't use any, I'd recommend it, for something like this it will allow you to get a better idea what your IBU's will be. You potentially would be able to taste the beer as it gets towards the end of fermentation and dry hop with particular varietals depending on if you feel you want more citrus, or other characters.

[LukeD23]

Go for it! I think it will be a great combo. Think about the timing of the hops. I agree with spiderwrangler on the citrus vs piney notes you get from those hops, so if you want more citrus use your Cenntnial and Cascade for dry hopping if you want a more earthy feel go for a blend of nugget and Simcoe, which to me is what I want to meld with the chocolaty dark malt character of a Black IPA. Good luck! Cheers

[berkeleybrewer]

Thanks for the responses. To answer your question spiderwrangler, I do use BeerSmith for brewing software since it runs on macs.

After taking both your input into account, I think I'm going to lean more toward a 50/50 blend in terms of simcoe/ nugget vs. cascade/centennial. But doesn't Simcoe have a very strong tropical fruit aroma to it?

Also, in terms of the hopping, I worked it out to add about 20 IBUs total at 20 min, 30 IBUs at 10 min and another 10 IBUs at 5 min, plus the initial 10 IBUs from boiling a small amount of Nugget at 60 min.


Also, just curious, but if I wanted to experiment with blending different hops without making a full-fledged beer, could I theoretically steep a small portion of each kind of hop in hot water as a tea to get the same flavor? Any suggestions or comments on this idea...

[spiderwrangler]

Also, just curious, but if I wanted to experiment with blending different hops without making a full-fledged beer, could I theoretically steep a small portion of each kind of hop in hot water as a tea to get the same flavor? Any suggestions or comments on this idea...

It isn't going to be the same as the character in a finished beer, but you can get an idea of what they are bringing to the mix.