Parched Villager IPA (Extract)

8 Lbs Pale LME
1 Lb Crystal 60

Northern Brewer .75oz @ 60 mins (~35 IBU'S)
Cascade 1.00oz @ 30 mins (~11 IBU's)
Cascade 1.50oz Dryhop 10 days
Irish Moss @ 15 mins

steep crystal at around 155 in 2.5 gal water for 60 minutes in grain bag (I used a 5 gal paint strainer from Home Depot). After let bag drain and move to a pot of 2 gals of ~170 degree water to sparge. Combine and bring liquid to a boil and move off heat, then add in LME. Return to heat and make sure not to burn the Malt Extract. Add in hops regimen and irish moss and cool down, top off to 5 gals and pitch WLP001 California Ale. I fermented at around 72-74.

I just drank the last one yesterday evening and it was quite good after aging(about 3-4 months) so i figured i would try and review it although im new at this type of thing (usually i just drink them).

Appearance - Offcolor light brown head, long lasting within the glass. Lacing was definitively present. Light brown with slight chill haze and vigorous carbonation.

Smell - Malt overtones are present with carmel sweatness. Medium floral and slight citrus also present and balance nicely with the crystal grains. The cascade smell is very prominent. Fruty esters from the yeast blend nicely with the citrus of the hops.

Taste - Carmel notes up front with a prominent presence of cascade hops. Grapfruit. Slight toffee. Carbonation is perfect on the tongue. No Diacetyl or DMS

Mouthfeel - Carbonation is perfect on the tongue. Medium body, not chewy. Malt is distinguishable.

Drinkability -Overall for an IPA with somewhat low IBU's for the style i believe it turned out very well. Well enough for me to brew again soon. The alcohol heat (keep in mind its at 7%- FG:1.010) is smooth and not present. Hops are not as "smooth" in progressing onto the palate as i would like but i plan on changing them slightly for the next brew.

I didn't even look at the recipe, but I really like the name...:rockin:

So I gave this a shot. I steeped the grains at approximately 155. The temperature ran up a bit to the high 160's. My OG was 1.039 and FG was 1.024. Primary was 14 days and secondary was 10 days. The OG was nowhere near what you had. Would that be a result of the steeping temp creeping up so high? Pretty disappointed. It smells great but will have no alcohol at all.

Not sure why your OG was so low either. Just with the extract you should have hit around 1.057 according to beersmith. What type of malt extract did you use and are you sure you used 8 pounds of it? My calculations put a 1.039 startiong gravity with only 5.5# of liquid malt extract so i think somethings wrong. Also a starter is really important to get the yeast to eat alot of the residual sugars and get the final gravity very low....

You sure it's not 1.75 oz of Northern Brewer? Beersmith gives about 15 IBU's for .75 oz's of 8.5% at 60 minutes - not 35 IBU's.

scratchypants said:

You sure it's not 1.75 oz of Northern Brewer? Beersmith gives about 15 IBU's for .75 oz's of 8.5% at 60 minutes - not 35 IBU's.

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you will notice i didint give amounts, only ibu's. The last few times i have done the recipe i use different AA% hops so i recalculate each time....in this case when i wrote this up i was using around 10%AA northern brewer. Also i have since switched to beersmith but i was using promash at the time and was using the rager system for IBU. Since beersmith uses tinseth the numbers may differ also.

scinerd3000 said:

Northern Brewer .75oz @ 60 mins (~35 IBU'S)

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Don't know man, sure likes an amount to me...

haha...sorry man im a *******....at the time i had intended to just add ibus and not say oz or alpa acids for the hops...dont know why i decided that and in hindsight it was a bad idea. As for the numbers even so with promash at 9.9%aa its rounding 35 ibus at 60 minutes for .75oz.