Opinions on Recipe for American IPA (Partial Mash)

5.00 lb Extra Light Dry Extract
2.00 lb Pale Malt (2 Row)
1.00 lb Caramel/Crystal Malt - 40L
1.00 oz Galena [13.00 %] (60 min)
2.00 oz Cascade [5.50 %] (30 min)
1.00 oz Cascade [5.50 %] (15 min)
1.00 oz Cascade [5.50 %] (5 min)
1.00 oz Cascade [5.50 %] (Dry Hop with whole hops in Secondary)
1 Pkgs American Ale (Wyeast Labs #1056) Yeast-Ale

I played around with the Beer Smith demo and created this recipe. It's my 1st recipe and 1st IPA so I wanted to keep it simple mainly just using Cascade. The girlfriend and I finally have a larger pot so we can get close to a full boil on propane.

Brew day is hopefully Thursday before I get my wisdom teeth out, so I might miss some tastings between moving to the secondary.

I would definitely use a little less crystal malt, if you're shooting for a specific color you could use a darker crystal but less of it. I think that much crystal would leave a residual sweetness that is not the most appropriate to an IPA. If you're using it for mouthfeel you could add a little wheat malt and reduce the crystal a bit.

Mouth feel was the plan. I will use 60L crystal 1/2 pound and a 1/2 pound of Wheat.... Or will that botch it too?

I'd go without the 30 min Cascade addition and throw another half oz of galena at 60 and dry hop with more cascade. The extra bite of the galena will balance your crystal sweetness. I use carapils for the mouth feel and a little extra head.


Heh. Heh. He said mouth feel and a little extra head.

Personally, I use a full pound of Crystal/Caramel in IPA's all the time and never have had one that was too sweet.

I just got back from the store with about 1/2 of the supplies. There was no Galena at the store but I was only allowed to buy 3oz of hops anyways with 6lbs of grain. My gf will be picking up the rest of the ingredients at her LHBS so hopefully we will find everything.

BTW I bought I lb of Crystal and 8oz of Flaked wheat Im not sure what I will use yet. I have a day to think about it. Thanks guys!

If you can't get galena, try nugget or chinooks.

I think the recipe looks fine. Brew it and if it requires tweaking you'll know where to apply it by the time you've drunk it all up...

Your LHBS limits what you can buy? Screw them!

https://commerce.peak.org/vh/f/freshops.com/cgibin/shopper.cgi?listcategories=action">

I've got a freezer full and they'll probably last into next year!

I used to same recipe as able except added .5lb of wheat and kept the crystal. And there was 1 oz Nugget at 60, and 1 oz of cascade 20, 10 and 5. I was shooting for an OG of 1.062 and I got 1.061 so no real complaints there. I haven't seen the airlock moving yet, but no worries. I tasted the hydrometer sample and it is definitely nice and hoppy! I also placed an order for some leaf cascades for dry hopping. May be over doing the hops, but its my 1st IPA so its a learning experience.

Thanks again I'll let you know about the taste later on.

Just Transfered from primary to secondary and racked it on two ounces of cascade hops (whole leaf). I didn't plan on ~20 days in the primary but finals and graduation got in the way of things. It looks to be about 6.4% ABV if my calculations are correct and it tastes really good, I definitely have high hopes upon the finished product.

Any suggestions on how long it should be dry hopped?

Again thank you for all the advice!

20 days is a great amount of time for primary fermentation especially at a gravity like that. If you dry hop for two weeks or more you will start to get grassy flavors in your beer. I would recommend no more than 10 days with the hops in it. If you can 7 days would be perfect. Just make sure your hops are in contact with the beer, you can throw them in loose on top or a lot people think its better to put them in a sanitized bag with sanitized marbles so they will sit on the bottom of your carboy. Best of luck!

bbrim said:

20 days is a great amount of time for primary fermentation especially at a gravity like that. If you dry hop for two weeks or more you will start to get grassy flavors in your beer. I would recommend no more than 10 days with the hops in it. If you can 7 days would be perfect. Just make sure your hops are in contact with the beer, you can throw them in loose on top or a lot people think its better to put them in a sanitized bag with sanitized marbles so they will sit on the bottom of your carboy. Best of luck!

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Thanks... What I did was heated up some water and let it cool a bit and then put the hops in and saturated them (the water level was actually just under the whole hops so not much water was added ). I've heard making this "hop tea" livens them up a bit. I then put that in a secondary and racked the beer on top of that...when it was cooled of course.

Yesterday I received my kegs so I kegged this last night. It was interesting trying to figure out the keg system but I believe all is well. I will post when I try it.