What do you think of my ipa recipe?

8.5 # light lme
1 # us crystal 40
0.5 lbs Vienna malt

and an uber complicated hop schedule - I punched this in to a ibu calc and came out with 62 IBU's.

Magnum hops 17% AA - 1oz @60, 0.25oz @30, 0.5oz @5
Cascade hops 8.6% AA - 0.5oz @20, 1oz @10, 0.5oz @5
Amarillo hops 11.2% AA - 0.5oz @2, 0.5oz @1
2 packets of safale-05

I tried to steep my grains @160° but the temp wouldnt hold for long and it was @ about 150° almost the whole 25 mins. I had an og of 1.062 and lost a ton of wort due to hops.
The day after i pitched the yeast i thought to myself f#ck. I meant to get victory malt and not vienna. I realized that you have to actually mash the vienna malt. But i think it will be fine because A) it was only 1/2 pound and B) it was actually about mashing temp near the whole time - albeit only for 25 mins. Its been in primary for 18 days now and im going to dry hop (in the primary) with an oz of cascade pellets today. What do you guys think of my recipe?

Looks pretty good, hops are a little hard to read but it seems fine. I am one who thinks 2 oz. is a minimum for dry hopping an IPA.

The one wierd thing is the Amarillo additions of 2 and 1 minutes, no harm just seems wierd since these additions will virtually get you the same results.

Edit, also a mix of amarillo and cascade dry hopping could be awesome.

Looks good, the end result may be a little thin for the mash temp. You may like it that way though? I would have probably thrown a little dextrose in there. I've had some recipes like that turn out a little thin from that mash temp.

I agree with mnstorm99, I tend to do no less than 2oz for dryhopping.

Let us know how it turns out!

Edit: Oops, just realized you were steeping..you will be fine!

Yea it seems a lot of people like to dry hop with a bit more than that, and will usually do a mix of their late addition hops for the dry hop.

And you should be fine only "mashing" it for 25 minutes. Thats very little of your fermentable sugar.

My only comment is regrading the magnum. It's not really a good aroma hop because it is so clean, so I mostly reserve those for bittering additions. It wont hurt the beer though, so no worries. Just a thought for next time

Yeah my timing on the hops was a little weird because i used a lhb website to look at hops and their AA levels - wrote out my recipe for those levels. But when i picked up the hops and got home i noticed all their AA's were WAY higher than quoted online. So i shuffeled all the timings around real quick. Feels good to hear people say that it wont be terrible because of the vienna fiasco.

Shoot. I should have checked this before i bought my hops. Anyways, i just added the 1 oz cascade pellets and the beer smelled fanfreakin tastic. Hopefully it wont oxidize since i had to lift the lid off the bucket.

I think you'll be ok with the steep temp, but did you sparge your steeping grains? if not like a previous poster mentioned you might wind up a little thin. not by much though since they are really just flavor enhancers in this recipe.

your hop schedule confused the $#!t outta me at first glance. overall though I think you will wind up with a very satisfying beer. I like the last minute magnum. I'm one that likes last miute with simcoe and some people say you can't use it for aroma. I beg to differ. check out my RyePA http://hopville.com/recipe/546375/american-pale-ale-recipes/muddled-pup-ryepa (probably my best recipe to date)

coypoo said:

My only comment is regrading the magnum. It's not really a good aroma hop because it is so clean, so I mostly reserve those for bittering additions. It wont hurt the beer though, so no worries. Just a thought for next time

Click to expand...

Probably a bit of opinion here, but I have made a single hopped pale ale with Magnum and thought it was pretty good. I think mixed with some of the more assertive hops out there it can add quite a nice character.

There is no mash taking place here. Only steeping. 160f will work fine for this. However, Vienna requires mashing to convert the starches to sugars so you will end up with some starch left in your beer. The grist to water ratio in a steeping situation is too great to get a good conversion. Also 20 and 30 minute hop additions are a bit of a waste. you will not be getting the max potential IBUs from those additions and will boil off all of the flavor/aroma. Adding more hop additions does not necessarily help anything. you could make the same exact beer with three additions.

Don't worry though, your beer will be fine. Next time, try simplifying your hop additions to get the same results and pay attention to what grains need to be mashed and which don't. The purpose of adding Vienna or Munich is to add melanoidins. Some extracts already have some Munich or Vienna for this purpose. Also, be careful how much steeping grain you add because they can raise your OG fairly quickly.

What i was worried about was really the starches from the vienna making it cloudy and i also hear that starchy beer is more prone to infection. But since it was only half a pounf hopefully there wont be a problem there. And yes i did sparge. Pray to he beer gods for me, that my beer taste good and not suck.