Brewing my first Imperial IPA!!

This is my 3rd beer I'm brewing and I decided to step it up to something awesome since the first 2 turned out good. So a step up to the Imperial IPA style seems necessary. Below are my ingredients list. I have alot more hops than I think I need but it's mainly because the first time I went to my LHBS, they didn't have what I wanted so I bought some others. Feel free to give me your comments or any suggestions you might have. Thanks in advance!

Fermenting vol. 5 gal.

Specialty grains:
10 oz briess carapils
6 oz of crystal light

Fermentables:
6 lbs of CBW Pilsen Light LME
2 lbs of Muntons Light DME
2 lbs of Muntons Extra Light DME
0.75 lbs of corn sugar

Hops: (I'm thinking 60 min boil)
2 oz Columbus - 60 min
2 oz Amarillo - 30- min
1 oz centenial - 5 min
2 oz simcoe - flame out
1 oz Citra - flame out
1 oz Galaxy - flame out

Dry Hop:
1 oz Citra - 7 days
1 oz Centennial - 7 days

Yeast:
US-05 yeast. (I'm skipping the starter)

Again, this is more hops than I think I need but these are just the hops I have and the times that I would use them if I were actually going to. So I suppose my goal here is to get a lot of earthy flavors from the Columbus and then all the fruity and piney of the four late addition hops would give it the flavor profile i was looking for which is bitter with some earthy flavors (columbus) and very piney (simcoe) and very fruity (citra, galaxy).

1 oz Columbus 60
1 oz Columbus 45
1 oz Amarillo 20
1 oz Amarillo 10
1 oz Citra 0
1 oz Simcoe 0

Dry hop: 1 oz each Citra, Galaxy, Simcoe, Centennial

This is something like what I would do if I had those hops available. The dry hop will be important for getting the juicy hop flavor and aroma you want

PrinceOfThePoint said:

1 oz Columbus 60
1 oz Columbus 45
1 oz Amarillo 20
1 oz Amarillo 10
1 oz Citra 0
1 oz Simcoe 0

Dry hop: 1 oz each Citra, Galaxy, Simcoe, Centennial

This is something like what I would do if I had those hops available. The dry hop will be important for getting the juicy hop flavor and aroma you want

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Problem I have with the dry hop is that only my centenial and citra are not pellets. Can you dry hop with pellets?

That recipe looks pretty good. But, I would drop the carapils. There's plenty of carapils in the extract and it's just going to be working against the goal of getting this beer as dry as you can.

You said you wanted to get some earthy-ness from the Columbus hops, but if you're just using them to bitter you are going to get very little flavor or aroma from them.

I would go with something like this:
1 oz Columbus - 60 min (or however much bittering you need to get to your target IBU level)
1 oz Amarillo - 30- min
1 oz centenial - 5 min
2 oz simcoe - flame out
1 oz Citra - flame out
1 oz Galaxy - flame out

Dry Hop:
1 oz each Citra, Centennial, Columbus, and Amarillo - 5-7 days

Also, you didn't mention it but you will need to do a full boil in order to get the IBUs you need for an Imperial IPA. Only around 80-100 IBUs worth of isomerized alpha acids can be dissolved in wort at one time, so if you are only doing a half boil and topping up then your ending your boil with 2.5 gallons of 80-100 IBU concentrated wort. So when you top up with water (which obviously has 0 IBU) you're diluting your IBU in half. So you can only have a maximum of 40-50 IBUs in the finished beer. I apologize if you're already doing a full boil and this was unnecessary.

peterj said:

That recipe looks pretty good. But, I would drop the carapils. There's plenty of carapils in the extract and it's just going to be working against the goal of getting this beer as dry as you can.

You said you wanted to get some earthy-ness from the Columbus hops, but if you're just using them to bitter you are going to get very little flavor or aroma from them.

I would go with something like this:
1 oz Columbus - 60 min (or however much bittering you need to get to your target IBU level)
1 oz Amarillo - 30- min
1 oz centenial - 5 min
2 oz simcoe - flame out
1 oz Citra - flame out
1 oz Galaxy - flame out

Dry Hop:
1 oz each Citra, Centennial, Columbus, and Amarillo - 5-7 days

Also, you didn't mention it but you will need to do a full boil in order to get the IBUs you need for an Imperial IPA. Only around 80-100 IBUs worth of isomerized alpha acids can be dissolved in wort at one time, so if you are only doing a half boil and topping up then your ending your boil with 2.5 gallons of 80-100 IBU concentrated wort. So when you top up with water (which obviously has 0 IBU) you're diluting your IBU in half. So you can only have a maximum of 40-50 IBUs in the finished beer. I apologize if you're already doing a full boil and this was unnecessary.

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I didn't think about the IBU and final volume conundrum. I only have a 5 gallon kettle. So it seems like after the 60 minute boil I'll have two options, don't fill up to 5 and simply have less beer to ferment (this is good cause my IBU's will be as high as I want them), or fill up to 5 gallons after boil and loose my IBU's. It's really just a matter of seeing what I want - more of a less complete beer or less of a more complete beer. Did I get that right?

steviebNY444 said:

I didn't think about the IBU and final volume conundrum. I only have a 5 gallon kettle. So it seems like after the 60 minute boil I'll have two options, don't fill up to 5 and simply have less beer to ferment (this is good cause my IBU's will be as high as I want them), or fill up to 5 gallons after boil and loose my IBU's. It's really just a matter of seeing what I want - more of a less complete beer or less of a more complete beer. Did I get that right?

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Only 2 posters?! wtf. Let's go people talk it up. Tell me it sucks or it rules or whatever else. This is definitely the most interesting thing on the forum right now I'm not gonna lie.

steviebNY444 said:

I didn't think about the IBU and final volume conundrum. I only have a 5 gallon kettle. So it seems like after the 60 minute boil I'll have two options, don't fill up to 5 and simply have less beer to ferment (this is good cause my IBU's will be as high as I want them), or fill up to 5 gallons after boil and loose my IBU's. It's really just a matter of seeing what I want - more of a less complete beer or less of a more complete beer. Did I get that right?

Click to expand...

What I would do is boil the largest volume you can without making a big mess, when the boil is over top off with spring water or even distilled if you have very hard water to begin with, to get to 5.5 in your fermenter. You won't really lose any IBUs, but you should increase the bittering addition because hop bittering is less efficient the higher the gravity. You can get as many IBUs into a beer as you'd like, I think what peterj is referring to is that the human pallete can't tell the difference past about 100 IBU. If you use a beer recipe calculator you can see this difference in efficiency. Plug your hops in and then raise and lower the OG. Don't think of it as altering the beer with water, but rather brewing it with two steps, so the wort you're boiling is going to be a bit bigger than the final product will end up as.

Plan on having a 5.5 gallon batch at the end. The extra half gallon is to make up for loss during fermentation/transfer so you get a full 5 gals when you're finished, cause, face it you're gonna want as much of it as you can get :cross:

Well if you don't top off with water you'll end up at a much higher gravity than the recipe calls for. I agree that you should do as big a boil as possible in order to retain as many IBUs as you can without diluting them with as much water. As long as you pack enough flavor and aroma in there, you should be able cover up for a lack of IBUs.

Another option would be to scale down the recipe enough so you don't have to top off with water. A 2.5-3 gallon batch would be possible in a 5 gallon pot.

Brettomomyces said:

You can get as many IBUs into a beer as you'd like, I think what peterj is referring to is that the human pallete can't tell the difference past about 100 IBU.

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While I have heard that people can't taste more than 100 IBUs, that's not what I'm referring to. It is actually chemically impossible to dissolve more than about 80 to 100 IBUs into a beer. The solution becomes saturated at that point. That's why when they lab test the IBUs in something like Pliny the Elder (which should have about 200-300 IBUs according to the formulas) it actually only comes in around 80-90 IBUs.

Brettomomyces said:

You won't really lose any IBUs, but you should increase the bittering addition because hop bittering is less efficient the higher the gravity.

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This is actually not true with extract brewing. It's not actually the sugar concentration that inhibits the bittering. It's the protein, grain dust, and other particles that come from the grain that adhere to the alpha acids and drop them out of solution. Since most of that has been removed during the processing of extract, gravity doesn't really end up having the same effect on bittering when using extract as it does with all grain. Unfortunately, most of the recipe calculators are not set up to discriminate between extract and all grain when it comes to hop efficiency.

peterj said:

While I have heard that people can't taste more than 100 IBUs, that's not what I'm referring to. It is actually chemically impossible to dissolve more than about 80 to 100 IBUs into a beer. The solution becomes saturated at that point. That's why when they lab test the IBUs in something like Pliny the Elder (which should have about 200-300 IBUs according to the formulas) it actually only comes in around 80-90 IBUs.

Click to expand...

All I have for this one is my own anecdotal evidence, but a good friend one mine brewed a 5g batch that he calculated at 400 IBU as part of a silly LHBS comp, I'm not really sure why the hell he made it that bitter to be honest...When he first told me I didn't believe him, but once I tasted it, extreme. My mouth was numb with the bitterness for something like 5-10 minutes, and I'm someone who drinks Ruination pretty regularly. Do you have a link something with more info on that? I'd love to read it.

peterj said:

This is actually not true with extract brewing. It's not actually the sugar concentration that inhibits the bittering. It's the protein, grain dust, and other particles that come from the grain that adhere to the alpha acids and drop them out of solution. Since most of that has been removed during the processing of extract, gravity doesn't really end up having the same effect on bittering when using extract as it does with all grain. Unfortunately, most of the recipe calculators are not set up to discriminate between extract and all grain when it comes to hop efficiency.

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Thanks for that info, I haven't done any extract in a long time.

UPDATE!

Just brewed it and some weird **** happened.

I used all of my hops except for 1 oz of Amarillo pellets. And obviously my 2 oz of centenial fresh and 2 oz of citra fresh for dry hopping.

The reason why i bring that up is because of what my OG was. It was high. Really high. Which is why im sitting here thinking I should just add that extra oz of amarillo pellets because this baby came out to 1.14. and I need all the hops I can get to bring the flavor within a decent range. I used a several more tables spoons of corn sugar but damn it def shouldn't of put it that high. I thought I was supposed to come out with a 1.075 OG. I have one of those floating OG readers and i made sure i got all the hop residue out of it as best i could and made sure it was at 60 F. I ended up buying a 24 qt stock pot this morning and i filled it way too high and was teetering on the brim for a few hours, especially after each extract addition. At the end of the boil I was at about 5.5 gal.

So I guess two main questions:

Is it theoretically possible to have that high OG in 6 gallons with the sugars I used? Let's assume i used the whole pound of corn sugar.

Should I add the extra ounce of Amarillo pellets with my 2oz citra and 2oz centenial? Not sure if you can use pellets to dry hop.

aight, another update.

I took some wort out of the spigot of the fermenter to double check this weirdness. After filtering it like 4 times and even checking if the OG reader would measure my faucet water at 1.00 spec. grav. I ended up geting as low as 1.095. Much more reasonable than my initial reading but still way higher than it should be. I'm calculating a theoretical to be 1.077. I hope the yeast can handle that and frankly I'm a bit scared it can't. Any thoughts/suggestions?

Brettomomyces said:

All I have for this one is my own anecdotal evidence, but a good friend one mine brewed a 5g batch that he calculated at 400 IBU as part of a silly LHBS comp, I'm not really sure why the hell he made it that bitter to be honest...When he first told me I didn't believe him, but once I tasted it, extreme. My mouth was numb with the bitterness for something like 5-10 minutes, and I'm someone who drinks Ruination pretty regularly. Do you have a link something with more info on that? I'd love to read it.

Click to expand...

Yeah, there's a pretty good discussion of it here: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f128/there-limit-ibus-you-can-get-wort-273482/

And this is a paper by the authors mabrungard cites: http://ir.library.oregonstate.edu/x.../1957/22805/MalowickiMarkG2005.pdf?sequence=1. It says in the first sentence of the abstract, "Solubility limits of alpha-acids (humulones found within the hop cone of the Humulus lupulus plant) were experimentally measured in a pH buffered, aqueous solution, and found to be limited to approximately 90 ppm at pH 5.2."

steviebNY444 said:

aight, another update.

I took some wort out of the spigot of the fermenter to double check this weirdness. After filtering it like 4 times and even checking if the OG reader would measure my faucet water at 1.00 spec. grav. I ended up geting as low as 1.095. Much more reasonable than my initial reading but still way higher than it should be. I'm calculating a theoretical to be 1.077. I hope the yeast can handle that and frankly I'm a bit scared it can't. Any thoughts/suggestions?

Click to expand...

If you calculated the recipe correctly, added the correct amount of extract, and ended up with the correct volume then your OG will have to be pretty close to the calculated OG. When topping off and adding extract, it's sometimes very hard to completely mix the solution evenly. This can lead to high or low sample readings. But if you added a known amount of sugar (extract) to a known amount of water, you should have very close to the calculated OG. In this case, since you're getting such different results with different samples, I would just go with the calculated OG for the volume that you ended up with.