Developing a Recipe from Mitch Steele's IPA: Brewing Techniques, Recipes...

[kiwihomebrew]

I'm sure this is on here somewhere, but I can't find it.

I've finally got my brewing kit out of storage after moving into our new house. In my time between houses I read Mitch Steele's IPA: Brewing Techniques...Great book, especially love the look of all the historical IPA. So, I've decided to input one of the recipes into Beer Alchemy and see what I come up with. I've gone with an easy one to start with - Worthington's White Shield.

Malts seem pretty easy to work out. Recipe says 97% Pale Ale and 3% Crystal. So no drama there. Plug in the OG and the percentages to Beer Alchemy and I have my malt bill for my system.

The hops is where everyone has an issue with these recipes. I think I understand but would like to make sure. Earlier in the recipe chapter Mitch explains that the "percentages of hops are based on total weight". So using Beer Alchemy again I have assumed that there are 100g of hops total to start off with. The recipe calls for the following:

45.5% Fuggles (4%AA) and 20% Challenger (7.4%AA) @ 90mins and a final 34.5% Fuggles addition at 5mins. So, if the percentages are based on total weight that = 100% = 100g. Of course, that gives more than the 40 IBU required for the recipe, so from there I can just scale it back to 40 IBU which gives me my actual hop charges.

Finally, there's an addition of invert sugar in the whirlpool. Now, I don't have a whirlpool (yet...) so I was just going to add it towards the end of the boil. Recipe calls for 1.13 oz/Gal.

This is what I came up with...for a 5 Gal. final brew (in the keg)...

5.2kg Marris Otter
0.16kg Pale Crystal
0.16kg Invert Sugar (based on 1.13 oz/Gal 5 Gal)

37g Fuggles (4%AA) @ 90mins
16g Challenger (7.4%AA) @ 90mins
28g Northdown @ 5mins

Do those proportions look right to you? Have I understood the recipe correctly?

Cheers

 

[rlr]

Kiwi
Did you try brewing the IPA? If so, how did it turn out? I am clearly not smart enough to figure out the measurements from what the author gives so I was hoping somebody could figure it out fo me for a 5 gal. batch.

 

[kiwihomebrew]

Kiwi
Did you try brewing the IPA? If so, how did it turn out? I am clearly not smart enough to figure out the measurements from what the author gives so I was hoping somebody could figure it out fo me for a 5 gal. batch.

Hey. Yeah I did end up brewing it. Served it at a man night with 5 other blokes and we kicked the keg in about 4 hours. It was really good.

I went pretty hard on the salt in the mask hand kettle...not quite as heavy handed as the book suggests though. And I carbonated to 2 vol. with priming sugar. Left it to age in the keg for about 5 or 6 weeks. Could have gone shorter, but the date of the party got moved a couple of times.

I would say my method is pretty solid...no one has said I was wrong! And the beer was good. Plan on brewing a few more of these recipes this year!