Help on single hop imperial ipa

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jphart03

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I am fairly new to brewing and this is the first time I've looked to change the recipe from my homebrew store. I'm trying to make a single hop imperial ipa with citra hops. I am planning on doing a full boil. I expanded on the recipe that the homebrew store gave me and I just wanted to see if I'm on the right track.

Grains
0.75 lbs. Munich Malt
0.50 lbs. crystal 40
0.25 lbs. carapils
0.25lbs. Wheat malt
6.00 lbs. light DME
2.00 lbs. amber DME
1.00 lbs. corn sugar

Hops
.25oz citra (13.2) - 60 mins
2.00 oz citra - 30 mins
1.50 oz citra - 15 mins
0.75 oz citra - 5 mins
1.50 oz citra - dry hop

Yeast
White labs WLP001 - California ale

OG - 1.087
FG - 1.020
ABV - 8.78
IBU - 99.4
SRM - 10.0

Does anyone have any suggestions to help?
 
I personally would go something like this:

.25oz citra (13.2) - 60 mins
1.25 oz citra - 20 mins
1.00 oz citra - 10 mins
1.00 oz citra - 5 mins
1.00 oz citra - flame out
1.50 oz citra - dry hop

I like less bitter and more flavor/aroma in my beers. Take some from the late and add to the 60 min if you want more bitter but honestly, as stated above, I would use some other hops for bittering and not waste the amazing citra!
 
It isn't long enough for bittering, but too long to preserve the excellent aroma of Citra.

Why do ales like the 90 min IPA from dogfish use continuous hop additions? Any advantage to that over early +late adds?
 
Why do ales like the 90 min IPA from dogfish use continuous hop additions? Any advantage to that over early +late adds?

Well, Dogfish Head does some strange things. :)

I believe that they are trying to extract every nuance possible out of hops, which is why they are doing basically non-stop additions on their xx-minute IPAs.

Early and late hop additions do different things. Early additions impart the bitterness or astringency you can feel on your tongue. Later additions let those aromas that you smell when you rub the hops in your hands stay in the beer. Those aromas are driven off when you boil the hops longer than about 20 minutes.

All that being said, most homebrewers would be reluctant to use the amount of hops it would take to do a continuous addition like DFH does in those IPAs.
 
If that's all the hops you have to work with, I would scale back to IPA strength. For instance, the popular Zombie Dust (6.5%) clone recipe here has ~8 oz of Citra hops alone, and you're two short of that trying to go for IIPA strength. I think you'll be severely underwhelmed and do a disservice to the Citra. Drop the Amber extra (most likely has crystal already in it), drop the crystal - they're both going to be working against you to bring out the hop profile.

For a good IIPA (from a stylistic standpoint) you're going to want around 12-16 oz of total hops.

As others have said, you'll need more bittering - IPA or IIPA. I'd try to get my hands on some Magnum or other clean bittering hop for this purpose.
 
I don't live too far from my homebrew store so I can always go pick up a few extra ounces of hops for brewing. Would something like a few pounds of 2 row in a partial mash be the right direction to go in? If so how much would I need?
 
Well, Dogfish Head does some strange things. :)

I believe that they are trying to extract every nuance possible out of hops, which is why they are doing basically non-stop additions on their xx-minute IPAs.

Early and late hop additions do different things. Early additions impart the bitterness or astringency you can feel on your tongue. Later additions let those aromas that you smell when you rub the hops in your hands stay in the beer. Those aromas are driven off when you boil the hops longer than about 20 minutes.

All that being said, most homebrewers would be reluctant to use the amount of hops it would take to do a continuous addition like DFH does in those IPAs.

I'm just wondering as I've made some continuous hopped brews as of late (still fermenting) to try out the style. They smell amazing but I did add nearly a third of my total hops to steep while cooling. The other third will be dry hopped. Like I said, I'm new to the craft so I've been experimenting a bit.
 
I don't live too far from my homebrew store so I can always go pick up a few extra ounces of hops for brewing. Would something like a few pounds of 2 row in a partial mash be the right direction to go in? If so how much would I need?

Well, if you are going to use Munich and Wheat malt, as shown in your original post, you are going to have to do a partial mash, as those grains must be mashed. You don't really need 2 row, as the light DME would serve as the base.

I suggest picking up some software. BeerSmith is very good and a good number of the people on here, myself included, use it. Costs about $25 on the BeerSmith site. That will allow you to put in different grains and extracts and you can build your recipe that way, rather than just guessing.
 
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