Hi.
I’m fairly new to homebrewing, only 3 batches so far (a hefeweizen, a stout, and a belgian dubbel). I’m trying to get experience with different beer styles and brewing techniques. Next up is dry hopping with an IPA. Since the NB Dead Ringer extract kit got such great reviews, I was planning on using that recipe as my base, however, substituting Australian Galaxy hops for the Centennial-type hops.
I recently had a Schlafly Tasmanian IPA (St. Louis, MO), and it was absolutely delicious. Fruity, hoppy, but not too bitter, perfect. I did a little research on it and they used only Galaxy hops. IBUs are 60, ABV=7.2%.
I called NB to check out the AAU% on the hops in stock. Centennial type are 9.7% and Galaxy are 14%.
If I keep the same hop schedule (1 oz. at 60min, 1 oz. at 20min, 2 oz. at 5 min, and 1 oz. dry hop), will the beer come out too bitter if I use the Galaxy hops? From my calculations, the IBU of Dead Ringer is only about 41-44. Did I mis-calculate? If I do a straight substitution, the IBU will be about 64. Scaling back the 60 min hops to 0.5oz will give an IBU of about 48, and scaling back to .75oz will give an IBU of about 56.
Any suggestions? Comments? Anyone tried Galaxy hops before?
I would go with a half ounce at sixty and leave the rest unchanged. i don’t think you’ll notice that it is a little more bitter. I love the idea of substituting galaxy for cents.
You can do it, but I wouldn’t waste the Galaxy on bittering. Magnum or some other high alpha hop will do the job just as well and you can save the tasty hops for flavor. I made a Galaxy/Amarillo/Citra beer a few months ago - freaking delicious.
Galaxy are tasty. I recently used them in an IPA because I couldn’t grab any citra locally. I agree with midmo in using magnum for your bittering. Have fun and enjoy!
I really like galaxy but it is more coarse than cents. Definitely a great IPA hop. Cents is still my fave IPA hop though. Wanting to do a 50/50 galaxy/cents IPA. I did 33/33/33 galaxy/simcoe/cents but was a bit too much guava, passionfruit for me (starts to push the cat pee thing) but was still a great IPA. Good luck on your brews! :cheers:
Actually haven’t tried my brew yet. I bottled it about 8 days ago, so I want to give it about another week to carbonate.
I ended using 0.5oz Galaxy for bittering (60min), then 1 oz (20min), 2 oz (5 min) and 1 oz dry hop in secondary.
I was trying to create something that would be similar to Schlafly Tasmanian IPA, which is by far my favorite beer right now.
Hopefully it turns out well. ABV is about 6.3%. The color is a little darker than I was expecting. Also, I lost a fair amount of beer transferring from secondary to bottling bucket because I didn’t want to suck up too many hop particles, and then also lost a little during bottling. Only got 39 bottles total, which is almost 10 less than I usually do.
Sorry I can’t give advice about Galaxy hops for those looking to brew shortly. Give me another week and I’ll let you know. That being said, Schlafly Tasmanian IPA is absolutely delicious and it’s a single malt, single hop beer made with Galaxy.
Update: I’ve been drinking the Galaxy IPA like it’s going out of style. It came out really well. A little more bitter than I was going for, but otherwise it’s pretty great. Wish I had more bottles of this one.
