American IPA BierMuncher's Outer Limits IPA

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BierMuncher

...My Junk is Ugly...
HBT Supporter
Joined
Jan 17, 2007
Messages
12,440
Reaction score
952
Location
St. Louis, MO
Recipe Type
All Grain
Yeast
Safale-04 Wlurry
Batch Size (Gallons)
5.50
Original Gravity
1.075
Final Gravity
1.018
Boiling Time (Minutes)
75
IBU
1.061
Color
12.8
Primary Fermentation (# of Days & Temp)
14 Days at 68
Secondary Fermentation (# of Days & Temp)
Dry Hopped 7 Days at 68
Additional Fermentation
Kegged at 78 for 10 days
Tasting Notes
See notes below:
I wanted to come up with a nice malty, hop-flavorful IPA that pushed the upper limits of a Category-14 (American IPA) beer. The outside range for the OG is 1.075 and the IBU’s at 60. Normally for me, a 60-IBU beer would be a bit too bitter. I knew I’d have to get to one more upper limit with this beer, and that was to attenuate to the high side of about 1.018 finished gravity. With a higher finishing gravity, the malt character would hold its own against the higher IBU’s. This was going to need a high mash (159) and a short rest (45 minutes) to give me the higher FG.

I’m a fan of the slightly sweeter grains, so a fair amount of specialty grains were in order. With 12% Munich, 7% Honey malt (which I love) and 7% of some crystal (60 & 80), I thought I’d have enough residuals to really give some nice body and a malty sweetness. I decided to use a smaller amount of higher Alpha hops for bittering, in this case some Nugget. Then some Amarillo at around 45 minutes and then really lay it on the last 30 minutes with an additional 2.5 ounces of American hops.

I brewed this beer on August 18th. It sat in the primary for two weeks and then was dry hopped for an additional 7 days. It was racked to a secondary with gelatin and rested another 10 days. From there it was racked to a keg and stored at room temp another 10 days…chilled and carb’d. I tasted after just one week on the gas and it was very drinkable. About 2 weeks later I included a bottle in each of my packages to Chriso and GreenwoodRover as part of the 10der & mild swap. I thought the beer was phenomenal, but lest there’s any doubt, here’s what they had to say:

chriso said:
This is a really good example of an American IPA that still knows what it is - just that, an IPA and not a enamel-stripping IIPA. I feel like that distinction has been lost recently in the beer world, and it's nice seeing an IPA that is patently strong, but not overblown or overdesigned.


GreenwoodRover said:
For me an excellent example of an IPA. I haven’t brewed one yet but when I do it will be this one. I have not seen the recipe under BM’s drop down so hopefully this will prompt him to post it. It has all the hop flavor and aroma I love from Avery’s IPA with the color and mouth feel that I like in the Goose Island IPA.

I also had a fellow St Louis Brews member over at the house last week to pick up some grains and after sampling from left to right on my 5-tapper downstairs, he landed on this beer as his favorite. A veteran BJCP judge, he gave it a definite two-thumbs-up and suggested it be entered into some upcoming contests.

So anyway, enough talk. Here it tis.

Outer Limits IPA


OuterLimits_Chart.jpg

OuterLimits_Hops.jpg

Mugs_2.jpg

OuterLimits_Rings.jpg



Batch Size: 5.50 gal
Boil Size: 8.13 gal
Estimated OG: 1.075 SG
Estimated Color: 12.8 SRM
Estimated IBU: 61.1 IBU
Brewhouse Efficiency: 75.0 %
Boil Time: 75 Minutes

Ingredients:
------------
11.00 lb Pale Malt, Maris Otter (3.0 SRM)
1.75 lb Munich Malt (9.0 SRM)
1.00 lb Honey Malt (25.0 SRM)
0.50 lb Caramel/Crystal Malt - 60L (60.0 SRM)
0.50 lb Caramel/Crystal Malt - 80L (80.0 SRM)

0.75 oz Nugget [13.00%] (60 min) (First Wort Hop)
0.50 oz Amarillo Gold [8.90%] (45 min)
0.50 oz Centennial [10.00%] (30 min)
0.50 oz Amarillo Gold [8.90%] (15 min)
0.50 oz Cascade [7.80%] (10 min)
0.50 oz Cascade [6.10%] (5 min)
0.50 oz Centennial [10.00%] (0 min)

.50 oz Amarillo Gold [8.90%] (Dry Hop 7 days)
.50 oz Centennial [10.00%] (Dry Hop 7 days)
.50 oz Glacier [5.60%] (Dry Hop 7 days)


Hit the mash temp at 159 exactly. Held for 45 minutes and the sparged.

Pitched a slurry of safale-04 from a prior batch at 68 degrees.
 
I rated this 5 star based on my tasting of the original batch sample (Thanks BM!).

I'm brewing this at the end of this month (the Wednesday before Thanksgiving) and I'll post my results when I get a chance to taste it. Based on BM's ferment and aging schedule it should be a nice way to start off the new year.
 
I brewed this tonight but f'ed it up in lots of little ways:

I read and re-read the recipe but always missed the Honey Malt until 2 hours before mash-in so I subbed 3/4# of aromatic for the 1# honey, because it was all I had and the closest in terms of SRM.

I would have hit the 1.075 OG if i wasnt an ass. I siphoned 5 gal onto a S-04 yeast cake then topped up to 5.5gal for an OG of 1.068. Maybe my efficiency sucked (63% when i'm normally 70% and compensated for the 5% diff in my eff and BM's) or i didn't realize %.5gal was the finish ammount and you only racked 5 gal. oh well, i'm sure it will be decent for my first weak attempt at an IPA.............
 
I brewed this tonight but f'ed it up in lots of little ways:

I read and re-read the recipe but always missed the Honey Malt until 2 hours before mash-in so I subbed 3/4# of aromatic for the 1# honey, because it was all I had and the closest in terms of SRM.

I would have hit the 1.075 OG if i wasnt an ass. I siphoned 5 gal onto a S-04 yeast cake then topped up to 5.5gal for an OG of 1.068. Maybe my efficiency sucked (63% when i'm normally 70% and compensated for the 5% diff in my eff and BM's) or i didn't realize %.5gal was the finish ammount and you only racked 5 gal. oh well, i'm sure it will be decent for my first weak attempt at an IPA.............
Truth be told, I missed my target of 1.075 by a few points too. :cross:

The beer will turn out great regardless.
 
I brewed a batch in late november.
I f-ed up the grain bill and forgot the honey malt, but subed for Aromatic malt.

This is the BEST BEER I have ever brewed.

I sampled it tonight with Two Brothers Bitter End IPA and Three Floyds Alpha King.
First - two bros. no competition. the OLIPA was WAYYYYYYY better. Fresher (obviously) and less one note.

The 3 floyds - OLIPA more than stood up to the bitterness, my aroma wasn't as good, but the balance, oh sweet balance, put the Munster, IN boys to shame....

Brew this next if you want a really great IPA.
 
Coupla things, BierMuncher.

First, I notice you use honey malt in a lot of your ales. What are you going for with this? Do you notice it in the finished beer at such low amounts?

Also, you mash at higher temps like 159. Is this is for maltiness?

TIA.

Batch Size: 5.50 gal
Boil Size: 8.13 gal
Estimated OG: 1.075 SG
Estimated Color: 12.8 SRM
Estimated IBU: 61.1 IBU
Brewhouse Efficiency: 75.0 %
Boil Time: 75 Minutes

Ingredients:
------------
11.00 lb Pale Malt, Maris Otter (3.0 SRM)
1.75 lb Munich Malt (9.0 SRM)
1.00 lb Honey Malt (25.0 SRM)
0.50 lb Caramel/Crystal Malt - 60L (60.0 SRM)
0.50 lb Caramel/Crystal Malt - 80L (80.0 SRM)

0.75 oz Nugget [13.00%] (60 min) (First Wort Hop)
0.50 oz Amarillo Gold [8.90%] (45 min)
0.50 oz Centennial [10.00%] (30 min)
0.50 oz Amarillo Gold [8.90%] (15 min)
0.50 oz Cascade [7.80%] (10 min)
0.50 oz Cascade [6.10%] (5 min)
0.50 oz Centennial [10.00%] (0 min)

.50 oz Amarillo Gold [8.90%] (Dry Hop 7 days)
.50 oz Centennial [10.00%] (Dry Hop 7 days)
.50 oz Glacier [5.60%] (Dry Hop 7 days)

[/b]
Hit the mash temp at 159 exactly. Held for 45 minutes and the sparged.

Pitched a slurry of safale-04 from a prior batch at 68 degrees.
 
Coupla things, BierMuncher.

First, I notice you use honey malt in a lot of your ales. What are you going for with this? Do you notice it in the finished beer at such low amounts?

Also, you mash at higher temps like 159. Is this is for maltiness? For this recipe in particular, I wanted to hit the "Outer Limits" of everything...including the final gravity.

TIA.

I love Honey malt. For me a good APA or IPA has to have sufficient malty/sweet flavor. I don't like an overly dry beer where the bitterness puckers you up.

Honey and higher mash temps give me the huge body I like without having to overload the grain bill and risk a hot alcohol bomb.

A lot also depends on the season. An IPA being sipped in the dead of winter (in my opinion) needs to taste different than one being drunk in the heat of July.
 
Honey and higher mash temps give me the huge body I like without having to overload the grain bill and risk a hot alcohol bomb.

Hey BierMuncher,

What did you mean by "hot alcohol bomb" above? You have to forgive me, I've only just made the leap to AG from extract and not familiar with all the lingo.

BTW, I just brewed your Black Pearl Porter recipe on Saturday and it went great! I can't wait to drink it, thanks for putting that up here.
 
Hey BierMuncher,

What did you mean by "hot alcohol bomb" above? You have to forgive me, I've only just made the leap to AG from extract and not familiar with all the lingo.

BTW, I just brewed your Black Pearl Porter recipe on Saturday and it went great! I can't wait to drink it, thanks for putting that up here.

Besides adding specialty grains like honey, a sure fire way to build up a lot of body is to just go with a large (very large) grain bill. You'll get a big beer with lots fo body, but the fermentables will be so high that the ABV will be very high and require a lot of conditioning time for the alcohol "warmth" to tame down.

Big IPA's, RIS's and the like often have a hot alcohol flavor when they're young.
 
Me thinks I'm gonna brew me up some of this on Father's Day. :mug:
 
i just bottled a partial mash version i did of this, it tasted delicious at bottle time. i love the hoppy malt sweet IPAs. this is a great recipe ive been looking for somethig like this. cant wait to try one!
 
Sadly, and at the same time, awesomely, I think this has eclipsed Lagunitas IPA as my favorite IPA.

There's just something about the aroma of this beer, and the malt character just stands up to the hoppiness so well.
 
So I'm assuming that all the hops are pellet due to your picture?

thanks for the recipe. I'm looking to perfect an IPA recipe to always have on tap. I'll give this a try soon.
 
Could White Labs #007 (Dry English Ale) be substituted for the Safale-04, and still be close to the original finished product?
 
I brewed this yesterday. Despite some equipment problems, the brew went pretty smooth. I miscalculated my boil-off rate and ended up with nearly 6 gallons of 1.070 wort in the carboy.

I discovered that the valve on the output of my March pump had a small crack in it. I was super bummed. We recently had tempt drop below 0 for a prolonged time, and there must have been some water trapped in it. I think I lost about a quart of sweet wort through the duration of the mash.

I'm trying White Labs WLP-051 California Ale V. I love trying new yeasts, and it is supposed to be good for IPAs.

Will post back in a couple of months with comments on my results.

Prost!
 
My gravity is stuck at 1.032 took a reading a week ago and now a week later still stuck there? Any ideas because that's a little to high for my taste from staring at 1.062.
 
Rouse the yeast? What yeast did you use? Agitate it a bit? Warm it up a bit? I used White Labs California Ale V and went from 1.070 to 1.015.
 
thanks guys I appreciate it, I'll take a reading in a couple days and let you guys know.
 
This is an excellent beer. Thanks for posting the recipe, BM.

I made this because I wanted to try to push the limits of what I thought a grain bill for S-04 could do. It made me realize that S-04 is actually an incredibly attenuative yeast. I came to realize that it is the WLP 007 strain mentioned above according to the Mr. Malty yeast strain chart (dry Whitbread).

All this time I'd been thinking it was the same as WLP 002, the Fuller's strain, which is very low attenuating. I think my confusion arose because WLP 002 and S-04 are given as the yeasts in Brewing Classic Styles. They are not the same strain. Best one could do for a dry substitute in a pinch but I wish that were clearer in the book. But I digress.

This is a great, great IPA.

I like it because it seems to me, as a Bostonian, more of an "East Coast" IPA -- the hops and estery character of the yeast give it a nice fruity complexity. (I did let it go about 68 ambient, which means probably in the low 70s in the fermenter.) And there's so much great malt character to back up the bitterness.

Great beer. One I will proudly pour around at my next club meeting.
 
This was good. I had to substitute whole hops for a couple....I think it was the Amarillo and Centennial.... due to LHBS stock limitations. So ended up around 65 ibu.

I missed OG ...undershot by 10points. Hit 1064....but it still tasted good and looked good too. Very clear with good head and lacing.....Yup...Was goood! Will brew again.

Thanks for the recipe!
 
I have to admit, I didn't read every post, but I have a question about the FWH time and the boil. How do you have a FWH time of 60 min and a boil of 75 min? I'll see if it makes any diff, but I was just wondering as I punch my version through beersmith. Does anyone know if you should adjust your FWH time to include that of you taking your runnings and coming to a boil or only the boil time? Its probably spelled out in beersmith...sorry...
 
Hello BM, I know this is an old thread and the brew may be ancient history for you, but it looks like an interesting, malty IPA...and I have a question. How do you manage get more than 75% attenuation (OG 1.075 to FG 1.018) while using S-04 and a mash temp of 159F? I have used 04 a few times and gotten up to just below 75% attenuation, but that was with a mash temp closer to 150F. Or was that FG just what your software outputted, and you actually finished higher? I ask, because I like the idea of a maltier IPA, but I wouldn't want to leave a massive residual sweetness. Your experience with this? Thanks!
 
Batch Size: 5.50 gal Boil Size: 8.13 gal Estimated OG: 1.075 SG Estimated Color: 12.8 SRM Estimated IBU: 61.1 IBU Brewhouse Efficiency: 75.0 % Boil Time: 75 Minutes Ingredients: ------------ 11.00 lb Pale Malt said:
(60 min) (First Wort Hop)
0.50 oz Amarillo Gold [8.90%] (45 min)
0.50 oz Centennial [10.00%] (30 min)
0.50 oz Amarillo Gold [8.90%] (15 min)
0.50 oz Cascade [7.80%] (10 min)
0.50 oz Cascade [6.10%] (5 min)
0.50 oz Centennial [10.00%] (0 min)

.50 oz Amarillo Gold [8.90%] (Dry Hop 7 days)
.50 oz Centennial [10.00%] (Dry Hop 7 days)
.50 oz Glacier [5.60%] (Dry Hop 7 days)

[/b]
Hit the mash temp at 159 exactly. Held for 45 minutes and the sparged.

Pitched a slurry of safale-04 from a prior batch at 68 degrees.

What do you think about subbing Golden Promise in place of the MO
 
Hello BM, I know this is an old thread and the brew may be ancient history for you, but it looks like an interesting, malty IPA...and I have a question. How do you manage get more than 75% attenuation (OG 1.075 to FG 1.018) while using S-04 and a mash temp of 159F? I have used 04 a few times and gotten up to just below 75% attenuation, but that was with a mash temp closer to 150F. Or was that FG just what your software outputted, and you actually finished higher? I ask, because I like the idea of a maltier IPA, but I wouldn't want to leave a massive residual sweetness. Your experience with this? Thanks!

You're not asking me, but I say proceed with caution. I tried this recipe out with WLP001 (73 - 80% attenuation, BIG starter, 69F constant), and I am stuck at 1.026. I mashed at 158F for 45min, as instructed. Verified the mash temp with two different thermometers

I'm going to give it some more time, and possibly repitch on a big yeast cake from another brew that is ready to be bottled, but at this point I might end up with a hoppy strong ale or a low ABV barleywine. :(

Anybody have advice to offer?????????????????
 
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