IPA Advice

Hello,

Looking for some words of wisdom on the following IPA recipe:

Steep @ 150 for half hour, then strain/sparge:
4oz American Crystal 60
4oz American Chocolate

Bring volume to 2.5 gallons, bring to boil and add:
7.25# Muntons Extra Light DME
1oz Citra

Boil 30 minutes, then add:
.25oz Citra
.25oz Centennial
.25oz Amarillo

Boil 15 minutes, then add:
.25oz Citra
.25oz Centennial
.25oz Amarillo

Boil 5 minutes, then add:
.25oz Citra
.25oz Centennial
.25oz Amarillo

Boil 5 minutes, then add:
.25oz Citra
.25oz Centennial
.25oz Amarillo

Boil 4 minutes, then add:
.25oz Citra
.25oz Centennial
.25oz Amarillo

Pitch with White Labs California Ale yeast when wort is chilled. Ferment in primary for 5-6 days, rack to secondary and dry hop with:
.25oz Citra
.25oz Centennial
.25oz Amarillo

Leave for 10 days, then bottle priming with corn sugar. Bottle condition for 2-3 weeks.

Batch Size: 5 Gallons
Anticipated OG: @ 1.061
Anticipated FG: @ 1.015
IBU: 48.5
Color: 11 SRM

Used 'beer calculus' calculator.

Any thoughts? I basically took a Dogfish Head 60 IPA recipe and changed some of the hops for a more citrusy hop character with less IBU's (replaced Warrior and Simcoe hops from recipe).

Thanks!

I think it looks good. I think steeping 4 oz of chocolate will darken your beer significantly - which isn't bad if that's what you want. I don't usually add chocolate to IPAs, but it sounds like an interesting experiment.

I had a beer last week at a microbrewery here called Revolution - it was either a hoppy porter or a dark IPA, but in any case, it was very good.

if you want a traditional IPA, drop the chocolate. If you leave it in it will be more like an American Brown Ale, a really hoppy, citrusy American Brown.

primary fermentation time seems a bit short to me

also you have 2 identical 5min hop additions, not sure if 1 is a typo

I hope you like grapefruit juice, it's going to be very citrisy.

I would move the 30 minute addition to flameout or dryhop. If you want the extra ibus put the amarillo or Citra at 60 an the others at dryhop.

Or centennial for that matter...

if you're set on such a short fermentation period, ditch the secondary and dry hop in the primary. not that you'll be able to notice it over the hops, but you're risking acetylhede with such a short primary

They use chocolate in The Sierra Nevada Celebration Ale. I would go 1-2oz. and it will give it a Reddish color. I recently used 4 oz's and found it to be too much chocolate, slightly too dark. The primary has to be longer. I do 2 weeks primary, 1 week secondary with dry-hopping and then into the bottle to condition at least 4 week before the flavors come together properly.
Let us know how it turns out.

Looks tasty.

Citra, FTW.

I got a Citra/Warrior/Centennial IPA going right now.

I too think it looks like a lot of chocolate.

And consider moving the 30 min addition to later in the boil. But that depends on what you like. Hoppin!

I dont have any problem with the 5-6 days for primary. However, instead of transferring the secondary, you should just dryhop in primary after those 5-6 days. After all, with hoppy beers you want as little oxygen hitting it so an extra transfer is unnecessary. I dry hop all of my IPAs in primary and cold crash and never have an issue with clarity. Ive also made an IPA with a 5 day dry hop in 8 days. Kegged it, carbonated it and served it and it was fine.

Personally, I'd bump out the 30 and 60 minute citra addition. Some people (myself included) tend to think that citra acquires a sort of cat pee flavor when it's used as a long-boil addition. I love it as a dry hop and an aroma/finishing hop, but not as a flavor/bittering addition.

Centennial makes a good bittering hop, in my experience, although I also like plain old warrior for a baseline bitterness that you layer the other additions on top of. Half an ounce of warrior at 60, followed by 0.25 oz of citra/ama/cent at 15, 5, dry would be pretty tasty.

My own IPA preferences push the chocolate out and reduce the C60 to C40, but that's just me. Another option would be to use British Pale Chocolate, which is a 200L roast as opposed to the (typically) 350L roast on the regular chocolate roast. It gets a nice toasty flavor and darkening, but is a bit more laid back. If you're just going for color, consider Carafa III instead. A few ounces would be sufficient and add a lot of color with little grain flavor.

Wow - I'm new to the forum and I wasn't expecting 2 pages of great advice so quickly!

This is the first recipe that I made (brewed 2 kits, that's it so far). Looking back at my notes, I'm not sure why I added the chocolate. I think I'll ditch it, but keep the Crystal 60. Good advice by pfooti as well, I'll change Citra to Warrior at 60 minutes...a little research showed mixed results using Citra for long periods, though I hadn't seen 'cat pee' as one of the side effects!

I'm curious as to why the primary fermentation seems short to everyone? My primary is a plastic bucket, secondary is a glass carboy. I thought that if you left it in the primary too long it would develop yeasty flavors?

RallyFanatic said:

I'm curious as to why the primary fermentation seems short to everyone? My primary is a plastic bucket, secondary is a glass carboy. I thought that if you left it in the primary too long it would develop yeasty flavors?

Click to expand...

This post may shed some light. (I'm in the no secondary camp.)

RallyFanatic said:

I'm curious as to why the primary fermentation seems short to everyone? My primary is a plastic bucket, secondary is a glass carboy. I thought that if you left it in the primary too long it would develop yeasty flavors?

Click to expand...

That was the case in the olden days, but the yeast we can buy are much better quality today, and the chance of autolysis is extremely small in anything shorter than a month (some have done up to 6months with no signs of it). Even Jamil and John Palmer recommend not using a secondary anymore. Its an outdated technique that comes with more risk than reward