Citra Cascade IPA

Hey All,

Sorry for the quintessential newbie post. I've done (5) 5gal extract brews and (2) 2gal BIAB brews, and I'm pumped for all-grain. I found and converted a 5$ cooler from the SPCA thrift store, so now I have my cooler mash-tun, and I decided to do a Citra/Cascade IPA for my first all-grain batch. Any opinions on the recipe?

Grain Bill:
10# 2-row
1# Crystal 45
1# Carapils
8oz Crystal 60

1.33 qt/lb mash ratio, mash for 1 hour at 152, batch sparge to get a 3 gallon boil. I have a 3.5 gallon brew kettle, so I have to do a partial boil. I used brew365's mash sparge water calculator to figure out my temps and quantities. I am going to add spring water to the carboy to make a 5 gallon batch.

Hop schedule for a 60 minute boil:
FWH 0.5 oz Citra
45min 0.5 oz Citra
30min 0.5 oz Citra
20min 0.5 oz Citra
15min 0.3 oz Cascade
5 min 0.3 oz Cascade
flameout 0.3oz Cascade
dry-hop 1 oz Cascade
dry-hop 1 oz Citra

Pitching onto 1/3 of the yeast cake of a previous batch that used WLP001.

How does the hop schedule look? Is there any reason not to do a partial boil of an all-grain beer if that's what my equipment require? Anything else?

Thanks,

Fred

Personally i would the 45 and 30 up to 15 and 5. No sense in wasting good citra hops like that.
Seems everything else is fine.
With a partial boil you wont get full utilization of your hops.

Even though citra are high AAU hops they are better for flavor and aroma. I would even consider using something else like columbus or magnum as a FWH

Personally I'd ditch the carapils and mash at 150. And move the 455 and 30 minute additions back.

I agree about moving citra to the end. I brew a similar beer often and use centennial or Magnum as my bittering hops early in the boil and then go with cascades From 15 to flame out, citra at flame out and citra as dry hop.

100% agree with the above. Citra is friggin awesome. Don't waste it so soon in the boil.

Thanks, all, for the input!! Experience is always key with these things, and I appreciate you sharing yours.

The 2 small-batch BIAB experiments I've brewed were very simple recipes: 2-row and Crystal 60. One was all-nugget with nugget dry-hopping, and the other was all zythos with zythos dry-hopping, all using WLP001. The nugget batch used 3.5# 2-row and 0.5# crystal 60, the zythos batch used 5# 2-row and 1# crystal 60. I got about 55% efficiency with the first, and 65% with the second. I upped the grain bill on the zythos batch to get greater overall yield of sugars, even if I couldn't improve my efficiency. Both batches tasted a bit thin in viscosity and mouthfeel, and I heard that carapils can help with some of this, hence the addition of carapils. I also thought I'd try to layer different crystals to increase the flavor complexity (against the suggestion of my LHBS guru who said that layering lower-rated crystals isn't really that big of a deal, and doesn't really get you a ton in complexity). But hey, I want to try anyway. I'm gonna replace Citra with Magnum (or maybe Nugget, just to extend my experiments in trying to understand basic hop profiles) for bittering, and I'll push any other citra additions later in the boil.

My LHBS guru (he's opening a brewery, he's a font of knowledge gained from experience and brewing school, and I really like his beer, so I'm partial to believe him, even though I am not following his advice with crystal layering) also suggested replacing 60 minute hop additions with slightly more hops at 45, to retain more flavor, any thoughts on that idea?

Option 1: Bitter large at 60 min, then nothing else until your late additions.
Option 2: Bitter small at 60 min, and small at 30 min, blast with late additions.
Option 3: Skip the traditional bittering addition and focus only on a large amount of late additions.
Option 4: Move your 60 min addition to 45 min.
Option 5: First Wort Hop instead of using a traditional bittering addition.
Option 6: First Wort Hop and also use a traditional bittering addition.
Option 7: Continuous hop, using small additions every couple minutes.

For an American IPA, I personally think options 2 and 3 make the most sense. All of these options have their own advantages and disadvantages, though some more than others.

In order from best to worst for me: 2, 3, 5, 1, 6, 4, 7

Thanks, bobbrews! Option 3 sounds intriguing ... with this option, I'm imagining you don't really need a long boil time, no? I am running under the assumption that most of the boil time is really there for hop utilization. Would a 15-20 minute boil suffice, with large amounts of "late additions" that really just start at the beginning of the short boil?

It can be done successfully depending on the rest of the recipe and your goals. I have never boiled any of my worts for only 15-20 minutes, but Yooper has. Ask her or do a search for it.

Great, THANKS!!

Ditch the CaraPils, go with no more than 1.25 lbs Crystal malt.

Bitter at 60 min to about 25 IBU with a neutral hop (Magnum, Galena, Warrior, etc), then do all your good hops at/after 15 mins.

Cheers!

Yup. Keep that crystal to 5-7% of the grist if you want those hops to shine. I don't mind the carapils addition when the crystal is low.

Thanks all for the great input!! I already had the grain purchased and milled together, so I used that. I modified the hop schedule (60 minute boil) in the following way:

1oz citra (13.9%) 15min
1oz cascade (5%) 15min
1oz citra (13.9%) 10min
1 whirlfloc tab 10 min
1oz cascade (5%) 5min
1oz citra (13.9%) flameout
Main boil lost .5 gal

I fermented in the primary for 11 days, racked to secondary onto 1oz whole-cone (hop union) citra hops (15%), and let dry-hop for 6 days before bottling. I let the beer bottle-condition for 15 days, and popped open a few bottles tonight. I must admit, it's a grapefruit bomb, but a really really tasty one. I love it (and I usually don't like grapefruit), and so does my wife (who does like grapefruit), so it's a win-win! From reading around, it sounds like the grapefruit might mellow out over the next week or two, and I'll make sure to keep close watch over the aging process Thanks again for all of the great input! I'll definitely apply all of the grain bill suggestions when building my next IPA. Cheers ::