Citra Slam I(I?)PA

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Darth_Malt

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Just picked up ingredients for my first AG batch w/ my new equipment the other day. I'm planning a mostly Citra IPA, although after playing around in Beersmith2, I may end up bumping this up to an IIPA. Here's the recipe as of now.

12 Lbs Pale 2-row
1 Lb Honey Malt
8 oz Crystal 40L
8 oz Cara-Pils

.5 oz Warrior 60 min
1 oz Citra 20 min
1 oz Citra 10 min
1.5 oz Citra 5 min
1.5 oz Citra 0 min
.5 oz Warrior 0 min
2-3 oz Citra DH 7 days

California Ale Yeast WLP001

With this grain bill I end up with an estimated OG of 1.066. This puts me at the high end of the American IPA range, but just under the IIPA range. With the addition of 2lbs of Honey, I can push the OG up to 1.079, up my Hop additions a bit, and come out with a Honey Citra IIPA. Any thoughts or advice would be greatly appreciated.

I've got a day or two before I can brew this yet. My plans to empty my shed and turn it into my brew house got pushed back thanks to this relentless winter we're having here.
 
I'd leave it where it is. I love citra and i think it'll play better with a touch lower gravity to really let it shine through
 
Just mashed in a few minutes ago. 4.5 gallons of water, 148F for 75 minutes. Sparge with 4.3 gallons at 168F. It smells amazing!

Sent from my SPH-M830 using Home Brew mobile app
 
don't do it. cut your hops down by half. citra is potent stuff. figure bitter to 1:1 BU:GU for your 60 min + fwh addition and hit it with 2-3 ounces of citra towards the end.
 
While that IS a little bit much on citra, I say go for it (I know it's probably late for advice now since you were mashing in earlier). I like citra quite a bit and make a citra SMaSH that my friends really enjoy.
 
Finished this up late last night (actually very early this morning), it's sitting in the carboy now waiting for things to get going. My efficiency came out way low (63% or so), which I'm going to chalk up to a combo of this being my first time doing AG and the fact that my grains were crushed over a week ago. Still ended up with a 1.061 OG and 5.25 Gallons in the fermentor, which I'm ok with. I ended up pitching before it got all the way down to 70F, it was like 3:00am and I had to get to sleep. I'm hoping this won't damage the yeast, maybe I can pitch another vial if nothing happens (correct me if this isn't the right idea please). It smells absolutely amazing! Citrus, citrus and more citrus with a nice subtle honey in the background. I am beyond excited to get this thing bottled and ready to drink.
 
A few shots of the new setup in action. Took them to help explain to my buddy what exactly the process involves, figured I'd share them with the HBT crowd too. The sample is my pre-boil hydro sample, so the color obviously darkened a little bit during the boil.

Mash.jpg


Mash Drain 2.jpg


Sparge2.jpg


Preboil Hydro.jpg


Boil.jpg
 
Let us know how this turns out. I'm a huge fan of citra, the more the better. I'm brewing up an IPA this coming weekend with lots of late citra. I also just dry hopped a kegged Barleywine with whole leaf citra. CITRA
 
Darth_Malt said:
Just picked up ingredients for my first AG batch w/ my new equipment the other day. I'm planning a mostly Citra IPA, although after playing around in Beersmith2, I may end up bumping this up to an IIPA. Here's the recipe as of now.

12 Lbs Pale 2-row
1 Lb Honey Malt
8 oz Crystal 40L
8 oz Cara-Pils

.5 oz Warrior 60 min
1 oz Citra 20 min
1 oz Citra 10 min
1.5 oz Citra 5 min
1.5 oz Citra 0 min
.5 oz Warrior 0 min
2-3 oz Citra DH 7 days

California Ale Yeast WLP001

With this grain bill I end up with an estimated OG of 1.066. This puts me at the high end of the American IPA range, but just under the IIPA range. With the addition of 2lbs of Honey, I can push the OG up to 1.079, up my Hop additions a bit, and come out with a Honey Citra IIPA. Any thoughts or advice would be greatly appreciated.

I've got a day or two before I can brew this yet. My plans to empty my shed and turn it into my brew house got pushed back thanks to this relentless winter we're having here.
Click to expand...

I don't know why anyone would think that's too much Citra. I make an IIPA that uses a similar hop schedule, and it turns out fine. Actually I would just keep the 1 addition of Warrior @60 for it's clean bittering, and drop the end boil addition, and do a hop stand with citra instead, but hey whatever works for ya. Also I would have used about 4 or 8oz of Honey Malt. That stuff is pretty potent. Hopefully it doesn't outshine the other flavors. Good luck!
 
Got home from work tonight and was greeted by this beautiful sight! I was worried I pitched my yeast while the wort was still too warm, but I think it's fine :)

As far as the Honey Malt goes, I did a Rye Pale Ale kit that used 8oz Honey Malt and about half as much hops as this recipe. I absolutely loved that sweetness behind the bitterness and Dry Hop aroma. That plus my new found love for Bell's Hopslam (Honey IIPA for those who haven't had it) led me to just go for it with the full pound.

Citra krausen.jpg
 
After a few days of fermenting, I'm starting to think about options for racking to a secondary. My plan was just to rack to a 5 gallon carboy with 3 oz of Citra, let it do it's thing for 5-7 days and bottle it up. However, I recently picked up a few 3 gallon carboys for doing smaller test batches of beer/mead/cider, and they're still empty (a sad sad sight seeing 3 empty carboys). I was thinking of breaking this down into 2 of the small carboys, dry hopping both with 2 oz of Citra, and doing one with some oak chips to see how that turns out. Anyone have any thoughts on this? How much oak would be ideal for 2.5 gallons of IPA? Would a week on oak be enough to give it a noticeable flavor without being overwhelming?
 
I wouldn't oak a Citra IPA, but that's just me. Citra is my favorite hop though, so anything that takes away from that just doesn't work for me.
 
Looks like the Krausen is starting to fall back down, airlock activity is slowed way down. Going to give this a few more days in primary, let the yeasts finish doing their thing. Going with the advice I got, I'm going to just rack this over to a 5Gal and dry hop the hell out of it (at least 3 ounces). I'll save the oak for another brew.
 
So I've got something new happening in this batch. The top half of the beer has a much lighter color than the bottom half. I'm assuming this is just a result of the yeast starting to settle out a bit, but I'm not 100% sure. I added a pic, I hope it's clear enough to see what I'm talking about.

Separation.jpg
 
If it's cooler in that area I would suspect that you are seeing yeast floccing and possibly so protein settling to the bottom.
 
I snagged a shelf from work to get my carboys up off the uninsulated floor of my mobile home. As soon as I picked up my carboy, the top layer of cloudy looking beer started to clarify as the yeast settled out. This IPA is the one on the right, the left carboy is 4.5 gallons of Brandon O's Graff. It's been in the secondary for almost 2 weeks. Planning on giving that at least another week before I bottle it (with what as a primer I don't quite know yet). I know I got 2 replies against oaking part of this IPA, but I'm still tempted to split it and oak half of it. I bought 3 gallon carboys to play and test different ingredients and styles and haven't used them yet. I want to put them to use and if the oak doesn't work, I'll still have half of the batch un-oaked and presumably delicious.

Fermshelf.jpg
 
I dry hopped this a week ago with 2.5 oz of Citra pellets, the smell is amazing! I just tossed them right in the primary, mostly because I didn't feel like washing/sanitizing a secondary or two that day. Took a sample this morning and it's down to 1.011 (exactly what Beersmith had for predicted FG). Tastes like citrus (surprise surprise!) with a slight honey flavor in the background. Hoping to get this bottled up tomorrow.
 
So after an extra week of dry hopping due to a crazy week at work, this is FINALLY going into bottles! Using honey for priming, 1/2 cup dissolved in 1 cup boiling water (based on the NorthernBrewer calculator for 2.5 volumes CO2). Looking forward to tasting this in a few weeks, I'll be back with an update then :mug:
 
I'm a little late with an update on this, but here it is. This beer turned out great! It's pretty much everything I was hoping to get out of this recipe. The aroma is mouthwateringly delicious. Honey and Grapefruit overwhelm your nostrils as you breath it in. The first sip is all Citra, attacking your taste buds with citrus flavor. And just when you think it's too much bitterness and the hops should have been cut back, the honey malt comes in and saves the day with a subtle sweet backing. This was my first AG brew, and it's not as smooth as I would like. But I will definitely be brewing this again, probably with a few minor tweaks to be figured out later. I'll try and get back with some pics of this one too.
 
1lb of honey along with .5 of crystal? Too sweet? Maybe a good balance with the Citra?


Sent from my iPhone using Home Brew
 
It really seems to balance out nicely. It does lean toward the sweet side in the end, and I will most likely drop some of the crystal next time. I don't want to drop the honey because that strong honey flavor and aroma is really good with the citra.
 
I'm about to brew this beer again, and I realized I never posted a picture so here it is. I'm drinking my second to last bottle right now, and overall I am still very happy with how this turned out. Especially being one of my first AG batches and recipes.

I am, however, going to change a few things with the next brew. I'm going to drop the Honey Malt from 1lb to 8-12oz, and probably add 1/2-1lb of honey (locally sourced Star Thistle to be specific). I also plan to spread out and lower the late hop additions a LITTLE bit. I'm hoping this will smooth out this beer, and with the honey, hopefully dry it out just a tad more. My eventual plan is to ramp this up into a IIPA, but that's another game for another day.

I'll be back with recipe v2.0 and hopefully tales from a successful brew day :mug:

CitaIPA.jpg
 
I brewed up version 2.0 of this today, all in all it was a pretty good brew day. I made a few changes to the recipe, hoping it will smooth out the beer in general. Here we go...

5.5 Gallon Batch
Mash @ 148 for 75 min.
OG 1.066

12lbs US Pale 2 Row
12 oz Honey Malt
8 oz Munich
4 oz Cara-Pils
.5oz Centennial @60
.5oz Citra @20
.5oz Centennial @15
.5oz Citra @15
.5oz Citra @10
.5oz Citra @5
1oz Citra @Flameout

Pitched 1 vial of WLP001 California Ale.

I'm planning on adding 1lb of local Orange Blossom honey to this when I rack to secondary, then dry hopping with 2oz Citra and 1oz Centennial for a week before I bottle this up at 2.2vol CO2 with Honey.
 
Going to be checking gravity on this today and again Sunday. If it's done fermenting, I'll be hitting it with 1 oz Centennial and 2 oz Citra for a week or so of dry hopping. I decided to hold off on the Honey addition this batch. I want to see how the changes in the grain bill and hops affect the flavor before I make any more changes.
 
Finally got this bottled up yesterday! The smell is AMAZING!!! Version 1 was all Citra and it smelled great, the addition of the Centennial made this just that much more complex. The color was a beautiful gold, almost orange. I'm assuming this is coming from the addition of the Munich. I can't wait to crack on of these open and see how it turned out. I'll be back in a few weeks with notes and a picture! :mug:
 
Citra and Centennial is my goto combination right now. Looking for something else to add to the mix. Contemplating Nugget, Challenger or something else in that direction.
 
Have you tried Motueka? I did a pretty hoppy Belgian Wit with them and it's quite good. Very nice fruity aroma and flavor, and pretty low AA too.
 

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