Imperial IPA?

Ok, i was given a few bags of various hops

1 oz Summit 16.3 AA
5 oz Cascade 6.3 AA
1 oz Centennial 8.0 AA

and i have almost a pound of 7.3 AA amarillo

I figure with these available i can make atleast an Imperial IPA, maybe an american IPA as well (maybe a SMaSM w/ the Amarillo or Cascade?)

Any tips on where to begin with this would be helpfull, i've never done an IPA before. Do these hops even go well together?

Yep, all of these go well together.
If you want it to be "Imperial" you'll want to hit somewhere in the 1080s...style guidelines suggest a range of 1070-1090, but I think 1070s tend to be a bit low for a kick-ass imperial style. As a rule of thumb, I would keep the grain bill fairly simple 90% base 10% specialty (a little crystal and little munich is pretty nice). I'd recommend a 90 minute boil for increased maltiness and max utilization. Bitter with your summits and flavor by adding hops about every five minutes during the last 30 minutes. I like to add an ounce or two at knockout as well. make sure you reserve some of your Amarillos of for dry hopping. In a 5 gallon batch, I would recommend 3-4 ounces of dry hops for about 2 weeks. Where you planning on doing all-grain or extract?

In looking at some IPA recipes i noticed the fairly simply grain bills, so was thinking of making this my first AG batch now that I've finally got all my equipment put collected and assembled. (other than a grain mill, but i'll just buy milled grain)

Just playing with beer calculus i was looking at

14# 2-row
2# vienna
8oz crystal 60L
4oz Crystal 120L (mixing crystal to use some left over stuff)

that gives me an OG of 1.091

In reading a description of summit hops it says they have a strong orange and tangerine notes. would i still get those to come through if i use them as bittering?

BA_from_GA said:

In reading a description of summit hops it says they have a strong orange and tangerine notes. would i still get those to come through if i use them as bittering?

Click to expand...

Not much flavor will come through using summit as the bittering addition. If used in the 20min - 10min range, you will get more flavor out of them. Amarillo and summit go very well together as flavor additions IMHO.

Your grain bill looks good to go for an IPA, but I'm not so sure you'll hit that 1.091 from the grains alone. In order to hit that gravity, you'll need a 92% efficiency from your runoff. Since this is your first AG batch, that would be extremely difficult to hit. Heck, I actually don't know if I've ever met a homebrewer getting 92% efficiency from their system. I would calculate your recipe based on a 70% estimate then after you take your OG, benchmark off of that for your system. It will probably improve a bit as you get into the swing of things. If you still want this to be an imperial style, then I would recommend adding another 2 1/2 pound of 2-row and leave the other grains as they are. This should yield around a 1.080 OG, which puts you well into imperial territory.

On the hops question, anything you add prior to the last 30 minutes of the boil is not going to yield a lot of those flavors like orange and tangerine notes. Most, if not all of those hop flavors and aromas will be driven off in the boil. What really matters on the side of flavor and aroma are those later additions...especially the final 15 minutes or so. The Amarillo and Cascades also impart citrus note, which play really well in IPA and IIPAs.

Don't be shy on those dry hops either