Amarillo Single-Hop IPA (first original recipe)

Howdy all!
Brewed this Saturday, thoroughly excited to see how it turns out:

---------------------------------------
Amarillo Single-Hop IPA
---------------------------------------
Calc. OG: 1.055 Measured OG: 1.053
Calc. FG: 1.015
Calc. IBU: originally 55 (see note)*

-Grains:
7lbs Light liquid malt extract
8oz Munich II
8oz Crystal 60L
4oz Cara-Pils
4oz Honey Malt

-Hops:
4oz Amarillo 10.9%AA pellets (schedule further down), 1oz of same for dry-hopping
*calculated recipe used 8.5%AA, LHBS batch was 10.9%AA which brought calculated IBUs to 75...

-Yeast:
Safale S-05 Amuhrikken Ale (soaked in 1cup sterilized h2o for 30 min, poofed with 1/8tsp dextrose boiled in tiny amnt of water)

Steeped grains in grain bag, 1.5 gal for 45min, aiming for 153, unfortunately I made a boo-boo and thought if I dropped the grains in when the water was 158ish it would cool to 153. Nope! Steep sat at 160 for like 25 min, then finally down to 155 for the last 20. Sparged/Rinsed with 2.5 quarts @ 170F

I guess it's not a big deal since there wouldn't have been a whole lot of sugars coming from the grains anyway, and this brew could possibly use the added body from the (if any) beta enzymes...

-Boil: topped to just over 4 gallons, boiled off to about 3.5gal
60min: add 3.5# LME (didn't stir fast enough, accidentally caramelized a little)
30min: 1oz Amarillo
25min: 1oz Amarillo, trickle a little more LME (hate when temp drops and boil stops from late LME)
15min: 1oz Amarillo, trickle more LME
10min: 1tsp Irish moss, remainder LME
5min: 1oz Amarillo (only addition not in hop bag)
0min: Removed from heat, let sit for about 5-10min w/lid on.

Cooled to 80f in 30min, strained through funnel into carboy with 1gal room temp clean h2o, got almost all the free hops and grain leftovers out. Topped to 5gal with a teeny bit of water, shook around for a couple min, took OG reading, pitched yeast.

Covered carboy with a wet towel, had a fan on it overnight, which kept it at about 65F. Maintaining moisture and using the fan when necessary to keep it between 65-68F (measured between towel and carboy w/stem thermometer). Easiest way to keep ferm temps a little cooler!

Primary for 7 days, pending activity of yeast... might leave for 2 weeks just because. Dry hopping for 7 days w/1oz Amarillo in secondary either way.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

I am curious if the extra 2%AA will have a drastic effect on the finished flavor of the beer, if it will be *too* hoppy, or if it will just be a monster hop bomb. Any feedback or thoughts would be awesome, I'll let everyone know how it tastes after I bottle it and let it sit a couple weeks

Also, I would like to get a 6-6.5 gallon carboy for my primary, since having 96% of the head/krausen blow off through the blowoff tube (certainly serving its purpose) might not be the greatest thing, since I'm definitely losing a little liquid in the process.

Cheers!

Anybody? Anything? lol

I think the reason that no one has posted is that no one wants to be critical...since you've already made the beer.

1. 1.050 ish is lower gravity for an IPA...especially using extract.
2. 4 ounces of hops isn't NEARLY enough for a "hop bomb" IPA. The bittering level is good, but you have almost no late boil additions that add the awesome flavor/aroma.

I'm not saying that the beer won't be a drinkable APAish kind of beer, but an IPA it is not.

I made a very similar beer recently. Like heywatchthis said, you don't really have an IPA, but it will likely be excellent either way. My beer was a little honey malt and a little cara munich, so not a very different grain bill, and my hops were amarillo mostly but also some cascade, all in the last 25 minutes, to get a very similar IBU. I used 10 oz of hops, using bigger additions as time went on (something like 1 oz at 25, 1 oz at 20, 2 oz at 15, 2 oz at 10, 3 oz at 5, etc). You probably made an excellent beer, though, let us know how it is.

how isnt this an IPA? the OG is there, the IBUs are there, and theres certainly enough hops. a hop-bomb, no, but very much an IPA.

the 2%AA difference won't turn it from an IPA to a hop-bomb, but it will alter the balance from balanced to more bitter. many people seem to confuse this, but IBUs are a degree of bitterness, not hoppiness.

I'm actually glad to hear people being "critical." Thank you all for speaking up!

@heywatchthis:
I'm not sure what you mean by "no late addition hops." All of the hops were added with 30min or less in the boil, hopefully for the sake of not losing very much flavor or aroma from any of the additions. I know that won't give me as much flavor and aroma as if I had added 2oz at flameout and 2 at 10 min, but I just wanted to experiment with it. I figured this would be a good ruler to see how the hop flavor and aroma comes out. I'm actually relieved to know it's not going to be a hop-bomb. I'd rather start here, see how it develops, and see where I can go with future recipes, and even whether or not I like an all-amarillo IPA. Even if this is more towards APA rather than IPA (which the quasi-useful style guidelines say it is), I'm thinkin it'll be pretty tasty. Cheers!

@phuzle:
After finalizing my grain bill, I discovered it was very similar to a lot of other pales/IPAs. I really like the idea of increasingly larger additions later in the boil. Sounds really good! I'm excited to share with everyone how this turned out!

@dcp27:
I had a hunch that an extra 2%AA wouldn't be a deal-breaker, I just wasn't sure how much of a difference it would make. It will be interesting to see where the bitterness lies compared to how I was expecting it to taste with a 1:1 balance. Thinking about it now, I'm totally aware that IBUs are just a measure of the extracted alpha acid, which is solely a measure of bitterness. Musta just slipped my mind while I was typing up what I did.

I think what I've gathered is that this will hopefully be a great starting point for learning about how to better craft hop-forward beers.

dcp27 said:

how isnt this an IPA? the OG is there, the IBUs are there, and theres certainly enough hops. a hop-bomb, no, but very much an IPA.

the 2%AA difference won't turn it from an IPA to a hop-bomb, but it will alter the balance from balanced to more bitter. many people seem to confuse this, but IBUs are a degree of bitterness, not hoppiness.

Click to expand...

Not to be make a big deal about it because I really don't care much for style guidelines, and I guess I agree that its an IPA because of the IBUs, but the OG is below the minimum threshold for an American IPA as defined by BJCP. It would be barely above the minimum threshold for an English IPA, but you'd have a hard time convincing me that American ale yeast and PNW hops make an English IPA. That said, the OG and grain bill says to me "pale ale" or "amber ale" and the hops say "pale ale" or "IPA". It is just out of style guidelines for pale ale because of the high IBUs and just out of IPA because of too low OG. Either way, I don't care much - I made a similar beer recently that had OG of 1.05 and IBU 69. I'm still calling it a pale ale, mostly due to the SRM of 6 and OG of 1.05

JakeMo

Personally I like it. I'm curious how the honey malt will combine with the Amarillo Hops.

I like to use Pacific Gem, Amarillo, and Simcoe in my "IPA/APAs". I put that in quotes because mine are not by definition IPA's or APAs.

My alcohol content is there around 6+%. But I like mine a little less bitter, but using the same ingredients I try to keep mine around 30-35 IBUs. Only because the typical beer drinker hates 60+ IBU brews. And I don't just brew for myself.

Two of my favorite beers are "Left Handed - Stranger Pale Ale" and "New Glarus - Moon Man (No Coast Pale Ale)". They are Pale Ale's but drinkable by all. Left Handed is about 28 IBUs and New Glarus is about the same. Here's a direct quote from "Moon Man's" web description.

"If big IPA's were a reaction to bland beer, Moon Man is a reaction to extremism."


Judging by your grain bill you should have a nice, not too intense beer.

(My only suggestion is probably doing a little bigger boil. If you go to your local home grow store you should easly be able to get a 6.5 primary plastic bucket (my store has them for $14). My first IPA, I was a little disappointed with the total amount of beer I got for all the work I did. It was by far the most expensive beer I brewed ($16 in hops alone) just for them to soak up more of my precious brew. After you dry hop you will lose even more to the leaves/pellets)

Tuggy-

Thanks for the input! Left Hand's Stranger is definitely a delicious American pale. Fortunately for me, I brew for myself and the beer-loving friends of mine I choose to share it with. I'm looking forward to trying this beer with Simcoe, Cascade, or any number of other hops after seeing how the malts balance. I attempted to go light on the honey malt, but I did like the idea of having that honey sweetness to back up the hops. I also wanted to make an attempt at a medium-low alcohol beer with a good hop presence. I'll let you know how it is!

After looking over my OP, it seems that it's a bit congested and confusing. I did a full 5 gallon batch, and boiled 4 gallons (only have a 5 gallon pot). I'm not terribly excited about losing beer to dry hopping, especially since I already lost about a pint to krausen blow-off. I only have 5 gallon carboys right now, I really want/need to get a 6.5 gallon carboy for primary, especially when there's so much krausen.

After much research and thought, I've decided to go with the hop bag for dry-hopping. I was considering using a small muslin hop bag, but I just don't think the hops would get enough exposure to the beer. I'm planning on using a medium nylon bag (4"x4"), which I think will work nicely.

I feel ya on the "expensive beers" sentiment. My last brew was an Old Rasputin clone (I called it Rasputin's Apprentice ), and the total bill was close to $75 for the ingredients, most of which was for the LME and DME. Ugh, never has it been more apparent how much one saves with all-grain brewing. But $16 in hops sounds pretty awesome to me!

Anyway, I did something on that batch which actually worked like a charm: I split the primary between two 5-gallon carboys, 2.5 gallons in each. I suppose I could continue doing this while I'm only doing 1-2 batches a month, since there was zero blowoff (obviously) and I went straight to bottle after primary.

As another post above said, the grains sound more like an Amber Ale, and the beer in the carboy is a beautiful reddish-copper color. That's actually exactly what I had in mind when I came up with this recipe, a hoppy amber. BCJP "Styles" are great for categorizing other people's beer, but I think they will be completely useless to me as far as the beers that I want to create. I'll let other people figure out how to classify them.

Tuggy said:

$16 in hops alone

Click to expand...

you really should check out steelers77 site: http://www.farmhousebrewingsupply.com/scripts/hopsList.asp?idCategory=21

or go bigger with www.hopsdirect.com if you plan on using that much hops. chances are both will have better selection and quality than most LHBS and come at a fraction of the cost.

dcp27,

Awesome links. My Home brew store has some great prices on equipment/grains etc. Usually lower than what i can get it for online. But their hops are expensive ($3-4 per oz for hops pellets) $4+ per 2oz hop leaves.

Jakemo,

With only 1 OZ of Hops pellets for dry hopping you won't lose too much on your last transfer, but you will lose some. I used 3oz of leaf hops to dry hop and it took up a lot of space and soaked up a lot of brew. My 5 gallon batch turned into 47 bottles (Usually I'm 53-54) But I can't complain about the taste

no problem, both have some great stuff although hopsdirect got kinda wiped out early this year.... even with those prices, I just spent ~$16 on hops for a brew I'm kegging this weekend

*Moved to new thread*

First follow-up:
OG was 1.053 ish (due to water/wort mixture it was somewhere in that area...)

FG as measured at bottling last Sunday, 70F, with priming sugar added, was 1.018. I expect it to come down to about 1.015... seem reasonable? That puts it at about 5.6% abv, just 0.1% off from the calc. abv.

Taste was awesome! It had an excellent aroma, great hop flavor, not overly bitter or anything! And that was straight after dry hopping, without any carbonation or additional conditioning! I can't wait to see how it tastes in another couple weeks!

It'll be 3 weeks in the bottle the weekend following my birthday how cornvenient is that!?

2nd Update:
Tried a 12oz bottle this weekend (2 wks in bottle), but I don't know why. I had a cold. I couldn't smell it or taste it. Epic fail.

Your recipe looks good, other than it's a very low gravity IPA. If you brought the beer up to 1.060-1.070, it would drop the IBUs, and give it more balance. Considering you're an extract brewer, you might want to consider adding 1lb of adjunct (table sugar) next time. It will dry the beer out a little bit, boost the gravity, but shouldn't be enough to add any cidery flavors.

Well, I tried my first bottle yesterday, since my cold is over and I could actually taste and smell it. My summary:

It. Was. AMAZING.

Appearance: a nice light amber color with a little hop haze from dry hopping. Delicate but consistent lacing. On a careful pour, it's easy to get 3 fingers of head. The head is white and medium-fine.

Nose: Beautiful hop aroma, it smelled very floral with some sweeter citrus (not quite bitter like grapefruit but more like orange). Very fragrant.

Taste: Explosion of hop flavor, but not very bitter. Just enough to balance the malt. Malt presence is subdued, but not absent. A very hop-forward beer, but not offensively so.

Body: Medium body, a nice lively mouthfeel with zesty carbonation. Maybe a tad bit overcarbonated. Not detrimental, just a note for the next time I brew something like this.

Drinkability: YES PLEASE

I had a Ska Decadence Imperial IPA following, and was honestly disappointed. I wanted more hop flavor and aroma. I had an Oskar Blues Gubna after that, which was better. I still can't believe how much hop flavor and aroma I got by using all late-addition hops. Definitely a keeper. Now it's time to start experimenting with first wort hops

After 4 weeks in bottle, the aroma has faded significantly. It was definitely its best at 3 weeks. Note to self: put in fridge at 3 weeks.

A month and a half in the refrigerator made this and awesome beer. Crisp, delicious hop flavor, lots of citrus and apricot. I'll brew something very close to this again.