Hi Ryan,
I'm so pleased to hear of your affinity for IPA, but I assume supply could be problematic in Montana!
For our, malt we used to use entirely Golden Promise, but, due to supply and quality, we now use a blend of around 65% Optic. However, malt from varieties such as Marris Otter is an excellent one, and if it works well micro brewery and home brewed beers I would stick to something like that. We also add around 3-5% wheat malt to the final grist. We also use around 10% sugar to control colour and help fermentation
We use very high hopping rates due to our late hopping in traditional hopback and as a result only achieve around 20-22 % bitterness utilization, aiming for a final bitterness target of of 28 for both the draught ( 3.8ABV) and bottle (4.5ABV)
For home brewing I would tend to go for the higher ABV version!
We use Fuggles as the main copper hop at a level of around 10% of total hops –around 0.2 g per litre
We use Styrian Golding as the main hop, these days blended with Willamette, which we find compliments the aroma and also acts as a buffer against the variable quality of Styrian Golding . If you can’t get Styrian Golding, replace with Willamette initially
The usage rates in g per litre are as below for all hops
Copper Late
Styrian Golding 0.25 1.75
Willamette 0 0.4
Super Styrian 0.2 0
Fuggle 0.2 0
If you can't get any Super Styrian simply add more fuggle (around 0.3 g per litre) or some other variety of your choice such as Challenger or perhaps US varieties like Liberty or Mount Hood.
To get more late hop character why not try "hop tea". This is simply made by bringing hops to the boil in Water for around 5-10 min ( too long and you will add too much bitterness), straining and cooling and adding the resultant "tea" at the end of fermentation. Remember to allow for dilution effect on the original brew! I suggest you start in the range 1-2 g per litre
Simply add any variety ( in this case Styrian Golding /Willamette) but you try other varieties to give different characters
I hope you find this useful – good luck and cheers!
Regards
Robert
Dr Robert Burton
Production Director
Caledonian Brewery
Tel: 0131 6238073 / 07971 503477
Fax: 0131 3132370