my first attempt at an IPA

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bryank

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here's the recipe:
14.00 lb Pale Ale Malt (3.5 SRM) Grain 88.9 %
0.50 lb Caramel/Crystal Malt - 80L (80.0 SRM) Grain 3.2 %
0.50 lb Munich Malt - 20L (20.0 SRM) Grain 3.2 %
0.25 lb Cara-Pils/Dextrine (2.0 SRM) Grain 1.6 %
1.00 oz Nugget [12.00%] (60 min) Hops 37.0 IBU
0.50 oz Nugget [12.00%] (60 min) (First Wort Hop) Hops 20.3 IBU
0.25 oz Amarillo Gold [8.90%] (30 min) Hops 5.3 IBU
0.25 oz Centennial [9.50%] (20 min) Hops 4.4 IBU
0.25 oz Cascade [unknown] (10 min) Hops IBU
0.25 oz Centennial [9.50%] (5 min) Hops 1.5 IBU
0.25 oz Amarillo Gold [8.90%] (5 min) Hops 1.4 IBU
0.25 oz Cascade [unknown] (5 min) Hops IBU
0.50 lb Corn Sugar (Dextrose) (0.0 SRM) Sugar 3.2 %
1 Pkgs Pacman

I mashed at 151 degrees and am still trying to figure out my efficiency. This one was lower than I was expecting at a 1.054. After 4 days I'm down to 1.005 and I do have some Amarillo leaf hops that I was gonna toss in for dry hops. You guys think this will be too bitter since I missed my gravity by a few points (i.e. about ten)?
 
It looks like a pretty high IBU beer with the 1.5 ounces of nugget for bittering, and then the amarillo at 30 minutes. that looks like alot of IBUs! Hopefully the beer was a high OG beer to balance that!

What was the OG? 1.054? that looks like it's got some intense bitterness and very very little in flavor and aroma hops. I'd think that dryhopping can only help!

Next time, decrease some of the bittering hops and hop up the flavor and aroma hops- an ounce at 15, 10, 5, and 0 is not too much!
 
For 15lbs, I'm amazed your OG wasn't higher. I did a 17 lb IIPA and had a 1.079 OG, 1.021 FG. How much of the juice did you try and extract from the bag (if you BIABed)? Maybe your water levels for the mash and sparge could be tweaked. The Hops schedule is completely up to personal preferences, but remember the dry hopping goes a lot further than you think and can mask off flavors.
 
wow, I totally didn't realize you already brewed this. I agreed with MadRok that your efficiency is nothing like I would have expected.

This will end up being a fairly bitter beer. however, adding in the amarillo now won't do a speck of harm. If you have beersmith, I would say keep lowering your efficiency till you hit your actual gravity and that should give you an idea about how bitter the beer will be because it will recalculate your IBUs.
 
It may just be a matter of letting it mello for a bit, then dry hopping to mask a little. Are you kegging or bottling? Kegging should allow you a little more mello time while you carb slowly, maybe another 2 weeks or so. It depends now on your fermentation temps while you dry hop too. I'd ask smarter people than me though lol.
 
yeah, this was my lowest efficiency yet. I've ranged anywhere from this one 55% all the way up too 76% usually averaging around 65. I used 4.5 gallons for my mash, then sparged to volume to get 8 gallons for my boil. I'm pretty sure that I'm losing efficiency in my sparging process somewhere.
 
Well, the worst case scenario, is you have better beer than Budweiser, Miller or Coors. There is a lot of math that goes into Mash and Sparge water volume numbers that you can check, if you are boiling down to 5.5, then that may be part of the issue. You can really go for 7 or 6.5 down to 5.5, 8 seems like a bit much but it all depends on the overall plan. It may be a matter of getting more juice out of the bag, so you might consider pressing it some. Good luck either way man!!!
 
Yeah, I usually leave a lot of the hot break/hop matter down in the bottom where my pump will stop sucking after chilling. I'm also thinking that my PID controller might be getting tuned up a bit better because my boil off doesn't seem to be as high as it used to. I might reduce my recipes down for less of a boil volume.
 
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