Cascade Honey IPA project

I have about a pound of cascade sitting around and really thought this might be interesting. This is what I was planning on for 5 gallons.

6.6lbs Amber ME
1lb Crushed Crystal steeped for 20-30 minutes
2-3 lbs of honey depending..
0.5oz Heavy toasted oak chips added during primary fermentation
adding 1oz of cascade at 60-50-40-30-20-10-1
adding 3.3 lbs oh Amber ME at 60 and 3.3 at 30
adding the honey at flameout

This is just something I came up with today and I'm thinking it will taste delicious. Please let me know what you guys think, thanks!

Seriously no one has anything to say?

Not sure about the ingredients in this as its been forever since I've done an extract batch, but as for the hops, holy bitterness batman!
4 bittering additions of an ounce a piece IMO is way to much. Drop the 50,40,30 and i think you will be good.

Have you ran this in a recipe calculator?

I've never brewed with honey (I'm vegan), but I feel like you'll get more honey flavor than anything else. I bet it'll be fairly hoppy too. It sounds pretty good to me; I might try something like that with agave sometime.

IF you're looking for honey flavors, use honey malt. Consider making it a partial mash batch by adding a couple pounds of 2 row along with the crystal (what L number/level?) and honey malts.

DO NOT USE OAK DURING FERMENTATION!!!! Add 1-3oz of oak (I prefer cubes) AFTER fermentation is over. Give it a couple of weeks and then pull a taste sample. You'll want the oak flavors/contribution to be stronger than you want in glass while it's in bulk. Once you bottle it up, it will start to fade (slowly) over time. So even by the time it's carbonated, it will have mellowed some. IF you use chips, be prepared for the oak contribution to change as time passes. IF you use cubes, what you get will be more stable. It will also be more multi-dimensional from the start (unlike from chips). Normally, I oak 6-7 gallons with about 3oz of cubes for 2-4 months. Once extraction is complete, there's not much more that will happen. If it's a bigger brew, that you're going to let age anyway, you'll want more oak character at the start so that it's more mellow later when you finally drink it.

I agree about dropping the 50-30 minute hop additions. You could even consider hop bursting. That's adding all the hops from 20 minutes to the end forward. So, 20, 15, 10, 5, 0 (or even more frequent). I've done it with recipes and the bitterness is more balanced.

I would also suggest reading up on what the different oak toast levels will give you for flavors/character. Don't just assume that you want heavy toast. I prefer medium, or medium plus due to what you get from the wood. Heavy, is not what I look for from oak.

IF you're going to add honey, add it either when you've chilled to under 110-100F, or when fermentation slows down.

Since amber LME has crystal malt (and other things) in it, I'd ditch the amber LME, and use light or pale LME.

I'd change up the hopping, too, as was mentioned as you have mostly bittering hops but not any aroma hops. I'd make the recipe more like this:


1lb Crushed Crystal steeped for 20-30 minutes
3.3 pounds pale LME
1-2 oz cascade 60 minutes (to get IBUs of 40-45 in this addition)
1 oz cascade 15 minutes
1 oz cascade 10 minutes
1 oz cascade 5 minutes
1 oz cascade flame out
3.3 pounds pale LME flame out
2-3 lbs of honey (to get an OG of 1.070) flame out

0.5oz Heavy toasted oak chips added 1 week into secondary fermentation.
dryhop 2 oz cascade one week before packaging

The thing is I have honey laying around and even If I wanted honey malt my brew store doesn't sell it. All the ingredients I posted I have on hand. So I was hoping the tweaking would come from just that. I was hoping by adding the honey it would increase the ABV which in turn was why I would increase my hops to balance it out more. What do you think about that?

bottle with honey...fantastic upfront aroma and taste. Depending on the quality of the honey, it can even be a little overwhelming. I do this for every batch

Calichusetts said:

bottle with honey...fantastic upfront aroma and taste. Depending on the quality of the honey, it can even be a little overwhelming. I do this for every batch

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So for example you would boil 4-5 oz in a cup of water and use that for priming?

Travisbrew said:

The thing is I have honey laying around and even If I wanted honey malt my brew store doesn't sell it. All the ingredients I posted I have on hand. So I was hoping the tweaking would come from just that. I was hoping by adding the honey it would increase the ABV which in turn was why I would increase my hops to balance it out more. What do you think about that?

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Yes, I like it. It will help thin the body of the beer and make it taste "crisper". Two pounds is over 20% honey, though, and I'd stay at a lower % that, so I'd say two pounds of honey is max.

If you have amber LME on hand, and want to use that, leave out the additional one pound of crystal malt! Otherwise, you're doubling (tripling?) up on the crystal malt.

You don't really have enough malt with only 6.6 pounds for an IPA, as ideally you'd have about 8 pounds plus the two pounds of honey. But if you want to avoid buying any ingredients, it may have to do.

sivdrinks said:

So for example you would boil 4-5 oz in a cup of water and use that for priming?

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Dont boil...just heat it up and swirl it around, bottle before it can cool off. The standard is 3 tablespoons PER GALLON. That is 1.5 ounces if it helps, or 63 grams. I use 4 tablespoons to slightly overcarb them. So for a 5 gallon batch, you should be using about 7 ounces of honey (or 15 tablespoons)

Honey will take slightly longer to carb up

@yooper
what would be the difference in more malt and more crystal I thought crystal is basically amber malt. Stil new to homebrewing though. How would you do the hop additions to make this thing extra hoppy. And my last question would be if you would even mess with oak chips and how much will crystal effect the taste vs amber lme?

For an IPA, use light toasted oak chips in the secondary, not dark toasted oak cubes or chips. Trust me on this.

I agree with not adding crystal to this beer and using 3-5% total honey malt instead of 8-12% honey. A little bit of honey malt goes a long way. However, if you're set on actual honey then stir in 1/2 to 1 lb. when the wort is cooling down at approx. 150 F.

Move the flameout LME to 15 minutes for sanitation purposes.

Go with a simple hop schedule at 60/10/0/DH... progressively add more hops as you go down the line.

So like at 60 add an oz than at 10 add 1.5 oz than at flameout add 2 oz? The problem is i can't get honey malt from my brew store. Do you think it would be ok to add another 3.3 lbs of amber lme to make it 9.9 lbs total? than add a pound of honey when it cools?

or better yet instead of adding another amber malt extract what about a light DME 3 lbs, and adding it in at 30 minutes in. Does that sound ok?