Imperial IPA Critique

I was reading in this months BYO magazine and caught Jamil's article about the Imperial IPA. I think it's time I did one, and I'd like you to critique my recipe below. It follows fairly close to the article, but I'd like to get some input/suggestions. Thanks!

Grain & Sugars
5.0# US 2-row Pale
11.0# Marris Otter 2-row
0.50# Crystal 60L
1.0# White Wheat Malt
0.25# Special B
1.50# Dextrose

Hops
60m - 2.00oz Magnum (14%)
30m - 1.00oz Centennial (10%)
15m - 1.00oz Centennial (10%)
5m - 2.00oz Cascade (5.5%)
Dry Hop - 1.00oz Centennial (3 days)
Dry Hop - 2.00oz Cascade (3 days)

Yeast
White Labs WLP051 - California Ale V

Mash Schedule
Mash in with 5.5g @ 150F for 75m (long mash for low final gravity)
Single Batch Sparge: 5.2g @ 175F
No Mash Out
Collected 8-8.25 gallons of wort (left out 1 gallon of the last runnings, therefore lower efficiency )

Brewhouse Eff @ 60%
OG Est: 1.085 (actual 1.082)
FG Est: 1.020
Est ABV: 8.31%
IBU: 109.3
Color: 12.4 SRM (copper)

Fermentation Schedule
7 days @ 68F
14 days @ 72F (dry hop on day 18 for a total of 3 days)
Crash cool, and force carb in keg @ 21 days from brewing. Cold condition for another 7 days (tasting a bit every day of course ).

Any thoughts on this recipe? Bueller?

I'd up your sparge temp a bit, but it looks good!

how much did those 7 oz of hops set u back?

AZ_IPA said:

I'd up your sparge temp a bit, but it looks good!

how much did those 7 oz of hops set u back?

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Sparge at 175F or higher? Hops will probably be about $1/oz., my LHBS has a great line on whole leaf hops. I'm not sure if they'll have them in stock, but Magnums, Centennial, and Cascade are kept in stock almost all the time.

TwoHeadsBrewing said:

Sparge at 175F or higher? Hops will probably be about $1/oz., my LHBS has a great line on whole leaf hops. I'm not sure if they'll have them in stock, but Magnums, Centennial, and Cascade are kept in stock almost all the time.

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I'm from the Bobby_M school of higher sparge temperatures - especially if you're doing a single batch with that grain bill; I'd think you'd want to get that bed temp up.

hops for $1/oz? lucky bastard!

AZ_IPA said:

I'm from the Bobby_M school of higher sparge temperatures - especially if you're doing a single batch with that grain bill; I'd think you'd want to get that bed temp up.

hops for $1/oz? lucky bastard!

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yeah, one reason for the lower sparge temp is that I want to get a low final gravity on this beer. From the article, they had a good point of needing a low final gravity for the IIPA. Otherwise, you get too much malt character and it comes out tasting more like a barleywine (still, fine with me either way). I figure with the low sparge temp, I'll have an even longer rest time for conversion...close to 90m. However, I'm a newb especially with IPA's so what temp do you recommend?

I think you're confusing sparge temp with mash temp. You have a low mash temp so that the sugar will ferment out. But what AZ_IPA is saying is to sparge at a higher temperature to decrease the viscosity in the liquid thereby making it easier to get more sugar out than if you sparged at your current temp.

At least, that's what I think he's trying to say.

heinz57 said:

I think you're confusing sparge temp with mash temp. You have a low mash temp so that the sugar will ferment out. But what AZ_IPA is saying is to sparge at a higher temperature to decrease the viscosity in the liquid thereby making it easier to get more sugar out than if you sparged at your current temp.

At least, that's what I think he's trying to say.

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What I mean is, if you don't do a mash out the conversion continues during the entire sparge process. This typically results in a more fermentable wort. I wonder if I could do a double batch sparge...with the first at 170F and the second at 180F? Then I'll get the advantage of a highly fermentable wort AND decrease viscosity in order to collect more of the sugars.

Is 70% your normal efficiency?

I find as my grain bill goes up, my numbers come down. My base is a 78% efficiency for a 1.045 beer.

I decrease my efficiency by 4% for every 10 points I go up.

In this case I'd drop my efficiency to around 63% (ish).

BierMuncher said:

Is 70% your normal efficiency?

I find as my grain bill goes up, my numbers come down. My base is a 78% efficiency for a 1.045 beer.

I decrease my efficiency by 4% for every 10 points I go up.

In this case I'd drop my efficiency to around 63% (ish).

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Thanks for the advice, I really haven't done a beer this big before. My highest was 1.070 and I hit 72%, and for 1.050 beers I get 75-78% regularly. So I guess at 63%, I should modify my grain bill to something like this:

15# 2-row Pale
1# White Wheat
.5# Caramel 60L
.25 Special B
1.5# Dextrose
EST OG: 1.082

Does that look OK?

heinz57 said:

At least, that's what I think he's trying to say.

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yes. that's what I was trying to say!

you could also take out a pound of grain and add a pound of dextrose to the boil. Sacchromyces suggested that to me as a way to dry out an IPA.

Keep us posted. I was looking for my next beer to brew, and I'm thinking a big ol' IPA may be in order.

TwoHeadsBrewing said:

What I mean is, if you don't do a mash out the conversion continues during the entire sparge process. This typically results in a more fermentable wort. I wonder if I could do a double batch sparge...with the first at 170F and the second at 180F? Then I'll get the advantage of a highly fermentable wort AND decrease viscosity in order to collect more of the sugars.

Click to expand...

That seems better, but then I'm inclined to wonder why not just mash a little longer and do the double batch sparge with 180 degree water after the long mash? You'll get the same time scale for conversion and you'll have a better chance at a higher efficiency.

heinz57 said:

That seems better, but then I'm inclined to wonder why not just mash a little longer and do the double batch sparge with 180 degree water after the long mash? You'll get the same time scale for conversion and you'll have a better chance at a higher efficiency.

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That makes sense...maybe I'll try that instead, seems like it might be easier too. Thanks for the input.

Looks great! I wouldn't change a thing.

Reading through the article, I really liked the idea of using wheat malt or flaked wheat to add head retention without adding too much body since the whole point of the dextrose and low mash temp is to have a thin body so the hops come through.

Re: efficiency, it depends on your tun design, but I have found on bigger brews I can still hit my usual low-80's efficiency by fly sparging using the hybrid technique (run off 1st runnings, infuse for mashout, and then fly sparge from there). It takes a little more time, and you have to monitor the grainbed temp carefully to ensure you stay in the 160's. For a double batch sparge, the 4% falloff per 10 gravity points reduction is a good rule of thumb. It matches up well with the theoretical numbers Kaiser posted on his site.

Thanks for all the help, I'm going to make my trip to the LHBS!

Hops
60m - 2.00oz Magnum (14%)
30m - 1.00oz Centennial (10%)
5m - 2.00oz Cascade (5.5%)
Dry Hop - 1.00oz Centennial (3 days)
Dry Hop - 1.00oz Cascade (3 days)

If I were you I would add more hops during the 15min and below time period. In BYO they had an IIPA in there and it had 14 ounces of hops.

In the dry hop you might want to do half ounce of each as one addition for 3 days and then do the other halves for 3 days.

Thanks all for your help and advice...this brew went very well on Friday night. I ended up with a OG of 1.082, so just barely missed my gravity. I actually had another 1-1.5 gallons of sweet wort left over, but I never needed to top off the boil kettle. If I had a bigger kettle, I would have thrown it in there and boiled it all down, resulting in a OG closer to 1.085.

BTW, BierMuncher good pro-tip on the mash efficiency. My calculated efficiency on this batch was right about 61%, and had I boiled down the remaining sweet wort I would have been right there around 63-64%. That efficiency kind of sucks, but you were right on with your estimated efficiency.

I ended up going with White Labs California Ale V because the LHBS was out of Wyeast 1056 American Ale, but it should be pretty much the same. From what I read they are both based of the Chico ale strain from SN. Fermentation started up less than 12 hours after pitching, but I'm surprised there was no big blowoff. Just about 3" of krausen and it's happliy bubbling away. I'm hoping it will be a nice IPA, just need to wait for a few weeks, dry hop the hell out of it and see what happens! Thanks again everyone!

Glad everything went well. Next step is sending a finished product to the south.

heinz57 said:

Glad everything went well. Next step is sending a finished product to the south.

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+1.. Even FARTHER south, even.

Glad to hear it went according to plan.

When I do my IIPA I am going to partigyle it for a small pale ale.

I'm hopeful it will be a VERY tasty, BIG IPA. If it turns out good, I'd be happy to do an informal brew swap.

Oh yeah, here's some pics from the brew day:

MLT - 10g Rubbermaid cooler with 10" copper pipe manifold




Got it all organized in the garage:


Happily bubbling away, with a brown ale for company (IIPA on the right):

Hops and yeast for the IIPA:

Nice workspace you have setup there. I really should put a work area in my garage. Right now I have a shelf on wheels for storage and a folding table. It works, but it's not suitable for a three tier setup.

Saccharomyces said:

When I do my IIPA I am going to partigyle it for a small pale ale.

Click to expand...

sounds like a good plan - recipe?

Woohoo! After 4 weeks this finally hit final gravity @ 1.018, which is 8.4%. I racked onto 2oz. of cascades and 1oz. of centennial hops in the secondary last night, and figure on leaving it for a week of so. I also had a sample prior to racking and it was MMMMMMMM, tasty! Surprisingly, it didn't have any alcohol hot to speak of and was pretty pleasant for a 70F sample.

I have a couple questions about this batch though:

1. Keg or bottle? I think being so high in ABV this beer would be good to leave for 2-3 months. I really don't want to tie up a keg, but do have an extra one I could use. What's best for a high abv, but also hoppy IIPA?

2. How long should I dry hop in the secondary? I figured on 3 days, but I really want the hops to JUMP out of the glass on this one. I've heard other people doing 1-2 weeks on hops...what is best?

I do two difference varieties at a half ounce each for 5 days, then I take them out and do the same thing with 2 other varieties.

Your beer is going to be a little sweet because you have a fairly high FG for an IIPA.