Beer Forum

i had a beer in rapid city s.d. at the firehouse brewery and all they said was that they used ahtanum hops ,didn't specify how much and where. i have never used these before , anybody have any insight on a recipe for just these or should they be combined with something else?

Ahtanum is like a mild cascade in my opinion. I used it last year to brew a 100% Ahtanum pale ale with british base malt and british yeast. The beer came out fantastic! I even used 2 oz ahtanum for dry hopping.

can you tell me what your schedule and amounts were? thanks

Looking back at my recipe I now see I have errored in my thoughts. I used magnum for bittering and ahtanum for finish. My bad but here it is anyway!

8.25# Marris Otter
.5# crystal 20
.5# wheat malt
.5# munich malt

mash 152 degF/60 min.
60 min boil
OG - 1.055
FG - 1.014

Hops

.60 oz Yakima Magnum - 60 min.
1 oz ahtanum - 10 min.
1 oz ahtanum - 0 min.
2 oz ahtanum - dry hops 7 days in primary

-next time I would lower the crystal just a bit...

and why is that? .5 lb doesn't look like too much to me. i like the hop additions though.

When I formulated the recipe the crystal addition looked fine but after carbing it up, the finished product actually came across a bit too sweet for liking. I think the Marris Otter base malt might have contributed a bit more than expected to mouthfeel in this beer as I am usually used to brewing american ales with Briess 2-row. Either way, you could combat this by lowering the crystal to maybe 5-6 oz and/or mash at 150-151 F for a bit lower finishing gravity. Using an english ale yeast also probably affected the mouthfeel as well. YMMV. Good luck!

Stone Pale Ale is a good example of an Ahtanum beer that is not dry hopped. Stone uses CTZ for bittering, but not in a way that would affect the final flavor.

If you brew an Ahtanum IPA and a Willamette IPA, they will taste somewhat similar; however, the Willamette will have a "lemon" background, while the Ahtanum will have a "grapefruit" background. Both will be resiny, and some add slightly metallic, up front.

The existence of grapefruit notes in Ahtanum is not a reason to classify it as a variety that is similar to Cascade--- That would be like saying Centennial is a "supercharged Cascade", when it clearly is not, since Cascade has no "rose" background to it.

I've heard they go well with palisade. I'm planning something along those lines.