here is a tricky one

Quadrupel, and IPA are my two favorite types of beer, and i want to make a quadrupel ipa, has anyone ever done this? I am planning on getting a recipe for a comercial quad, and making it a quad ipa.

tips? hints? pointers? moans? complaints?

So you want to add hops to a Quadruppel in order to take it into IPA range. Should be fairly straightforward.

It's going to be a BIG beer. Aerate well and pitch plenty of healthy, viable yeast, preferably slurry from a previous batch. Use yeast nutrient! You need to give the yeast plenty of what they need to do their job. Beers this size are not "dump the smack pack and forget" fermentations. Use a yeast capable of handling such a big beer; I like Wyeast's Trappist High Gravity - it gives a good flavor profile, and it can handle Quads.

Use European noble hops instead of American varieties, use plenty of flavor and aroma additions. You'll probably want to dry-hop the snot out of it, too. Styrian Goldings are nice, as are the German nobles. If you can get it, Strisselspalt has a wonderful aroma I find hypnotic.

Essentially, you're brewing a barleywine, using a Belgian yeast, and dry-hopping with European aroma hops.

Design a grist to produce at least 1.085. Use a relatively large proportion of Vienna and Munich malts in the grist for depth of character and to support the ridiculous hops; I'd do 1/3 Pils, 1/3 Vienna, 1/3 Munich. Use a proportion of Special B to add flavor and color, but don't go overboard. If you want it darker, you can add a tiny amount of Carafa. Do not use roasted malts other than Carafa or another dehusked, debittered black malt. Mash low, or you'll end up with a syrupy mess; no higher than 149.

Then add invert sugar or sucrose to get to 1.095 - 1.100 in the kettle. Personally, I'd use dark candisugar to get that deep amber, almost brown color. That has the added circumstance of raising the OG to the target of 1.100.

Use a high-alpha bittering hops variety with clean flavor; you want a clean bitterness for the flavors from the yeast and late-hops can shine through. Target or Magnum are both good choices. Avoid the obviously American high-alpha varieties like Amarillo, Chinook, etc.; they have an annoying tendency to leave flavor in the beer no matter how long you boil them. Also, it is possible to impart objectionable characteristics by boiling too much vegetable matter; using high-alpha varieties avoids the large quantities of low-alpha hops you need to reach a reasonable IBU on a beer like this.

Oh, and patience. You're going to need a lot of patience. A beer like this could take two to three years in the bottle to calm down enough to be drinkable. Before that it's likely to taste like licking the flight deck of an aircraft carrier.

Anyway, that's how I'd approach the process. I can't say such a project is something I'd take on, but more power to ya!

Cheers,

Bob

Bear in mind that the hop aroma and flavor will fade long before the beer has finished conditioning. I have some bottles of an IPA Brut that were fantastic the first year and just bitterness at two.

You could keg or leave the brew in a carboy for a year, then dry hop.

Sounds a terrific idea - it's not without logistical issues, as the others have pointed out, but just the sort of cool thing homebrewers can do. It might be worth keeping an eye out for this

Chouffe Houblon Dobbelen IPA Tripel from Brasserie d’Achouffe (Moortgat), a Abbey Tripel style beer: An unofficial page for Chouffe Houblon Dobbelen IPA Tripel from Brasserie d’Achouffe (Moortgat) in Achouffe, , Belgium

if you can find it. It's supposed to be a kind of Belgian Imperial IPA, though I've never been able to find anywhere that sells it. Might give you a few general ideas though.

Let us know how you get on.

wow bob thanks a million that was the most in depth post ive seen to one of my questions!

i sell houblon triple and i love that stuff! its just id never seen a quad ipa before but since it sounds like such a huge undertaking (2+ years in the making) i might want to wait and do it all grain! haha.

one thought was just to go to austin home brew and get a chimay grande reserve kit and hop the bejesus out of it but guess that might not work?

as david said, dry hopping in secondary just before bottling will give the best hoppy aroma.

making big beers like that can be done much easier with partial mash, extract, and sugar. it allows you to step up the batch.

basically, start with an all-grain batch, let it ferment for a few days, boil and add your extract, let it ferment a little longer, boil and add your sugar, let it ferment longer and then let it age for a month. this will allow it to ferment quickly and still have plenty of time to condition.

then secondary for a few months and stick some hops in there near the end, then bottle and leave for a year. yes, it takes a while, but it's worth it. i have a dark strong that's been buried under the steps for a year. i can't wait to dig it out next month.

I would definitely use some DME and also make only a 3-4 gallon batch, aerate the bajeebus out of it and use a HUGE starter (1 gallon)

i dont have enough equiptment for partial mash, just a stove and a kettle haha. it'll have to be extract haha.

so just make up a chimay blue, and dry hop the bejesus out of it with some low AA hops near bottling time!?

You could try doing that. It ought to get you where you want to go!

Bob

Thor the Mighty said:

i dont have enough equiptment for partial mash, just a stove and a kettle haha. it'll have to be extract haha.

so just make up a chimay blue, and dry hop the bejesus out of it with some low AA hops near bottling time!?

Click to expand...

all you need is two kettles and a bag to do a partial mash. check the thread in my sig.

awesome thread thanks for that. how did you calculate how much grain to use and how much dme to use?

Ah, how I remember walking into a homebrew store a year or so ago and telling the owner, "I'd like to brew a cross between an IPA and a tripel. Like a Chouffe."

All I got was, "That's impossible, because the trademark IPA hops will clash with the Belgian yeast."

This guy had obviously never had the Tripel IPA that Chouffe makes...

Here's my tip - use Amarillo for your aroma hops. If used in the right amount, it creates a great counterpart to the Belgian yeast, won't overpower it, and still provide that great hop aroma you are looking for from an IPA.