First Recipe attempt

This is my first attempt at creating a recipe. Here is my start....any thoughts/help would be appreciated.

IPA

11 pounds of American 2 row
3 pounds of Crystal 40
3 pounds of Munich Malt

1 oz Cascade 60 min
2 oz Fuggle 15 min

Dry hop 1 oz each of Cascade and Fuggle

American Ale Yeast

murph25 said:

This is my first attempt at creating a recipe. Here is my start....any thoughts/help would be appreciated.

IPA

11 pounds of American 2 row
3 pounds of Crystal 40
3 pounds of Munich Malt

1 oz Cascade 60 min
2 oz Fuggle 15 min

Dry hop 1 oz each of Cascade and Fuggle

American Ale Yeast

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Cut the crystal back to 1 pound would be my .02

yeah i'd tone er' down a bit on the crystal as well

Cut the crystal to no more than a pound, but otherwise the grainbill will be ok.

I don't think the hopping is an IPA, though. Fuggles is an earthy English hop (I don't like it) but if you're going to keep, you need more hops! An IPA will generally have hops at 60 minutes, 15, 5, 0, and dryhopping to get lots of hops flavor and aroma. With no aroma hops, just the flavor hops at 15, it's lacking in hops.

Yooper said:

Cut the crystal to no more than a pound, but otherwise the grainbill will be ok.

I don't think the hopping is an IPA, though. Fuggles is an earthy English hop (I don't like it) but if you're going to keep, you need more hops! An IPA will generally have hops at 60 minutes, 15, 5, 0, and dryhopping to get lots of hops flavor and aroma. With no aroma hops, just the flavor hops at 15, it's lacking in hops.

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Agreed. This looks more like a pale.

Change the hops, add aroma hops, and dry hop the hell out of it.

Also, I'd throw the cascade at the end of the hop schedule (aroma or favoring). It's pretty low in Alpha Acids to be the bittering agent. I'd throw Magnum in as the bittering since It's a clean bittering hop.

Looks like you want to make an American IPA, let's tweak the recipe to get it there. (my advice would be a little different for an English IPA)

A. Cut the crystal by 1/3. 1 pound would work well. I would highly recommend not going much over that in an IPA.

B. 3lbs of Munich and 1lb of C40 is going to be fairly dark for an IPA. SRM will be around 11-12, or amber in color. If that's what you want, giddy up. If not, replace some Munich with 2-row, or Vienna to lighten the color.

C. We need more hops. Much much more. Your beer isn't nearly bitter enough, and there wont be any hop character. So let's drop the fuggles, they have an earthy, floral character, and introduce some citrusy American hops. Try:

1oz Centennial @60
1oz Centennial @15
1oz Cascade @10
1oz Amarillo @5
1oz Cascade @0

Dry hop with 1oz each of any two hops above(any combo will work great)

Now yes, that's a lot of hops, but they're all added pretty late in the boil, so the beer won't be overly bitter, but it will be fairly hoppy. If you wanted to tone down the hop character, cut the 5 and 0min additions in half, and cut the dry hops in half.

C. You've got the right ideas, they just needed a little tweaking. Trust me, when I first started making my own recipes, I had no idea which hops contributed to which flavors. I also made the mistake of adding way too much crystal to a couple beers. You made the smart move and asked before you brewed something that was so-so.

Thanks so much for the suggestions! I am learning a lot from this forum and appreciate the help. I will be sure to post the results of this brew when it is done. Thanks again!