IPA recipe critique

[somerandomguy]

Brewing another IPA tomorrow… heres what I am planning so far. Hoping for something thats well balanced with a slightly piny hop backbone (a la Simcoe) and citrus/floral on top.

12# Pale 2 row
0.75# crystal 20L
.25# crystal 60L

1oz Simcoe 60min
1oz Cascade 25min
1oz Cascade 15min
1oz Cascade Flameout
1oz Ahtanum dry hop 7 days in secondary

US05 yeast

Beersmith has this coming in at…

OG 1.068
70.7 IBU
7.4 SRM
7% ABV

Since I have some on hand, I am toying with the idea of adding a small amount of crystal 80L (maybe only 0.1# - 0.25# at most) to bring the color up a tad. However, I wonder if this may bring sweetness/caramel notes a tad too high and drown some of the hops.

Suggestions, comments, critiques are much appreciated.
-Cheers

 

[rexbanner]

Grain bill is solid, go ahead and use the crystal 80 if you'd like.

Move all hop additions to either 60 or 2 min/flameout additions, and dry hops. You need at least 3 oz flameout and 3 oz dry hops for a 5g batch of IPA.

 

[Poobah58]

All I would do is move the 25 min to 20 min and the 15 min to 10 min. Give it a shot. Leave the C-80 out! If not hoppy or bitter enough follow rexbanner's suggestion for the next batch...

 

[CBelli]

If you want Simcoe flavor then DON'T use it at 60 minutes...

the 60 minute addition serves for bittering only. I would use something cheap and high alpha like CTZ.

Move the simcoe to 2-5 min. and some in flame out

 

[RonPopeil]

Basically, what you have will work fine. Like the others, I'll give my twist on things.

Scratch the C20 and go with .5# C60. Move your late additions to 15,5,0. Change your dosage to

.5 Cascade @ 15
1.0 Cascade @ 5
1.5 Cascade @ 0

Ahtanum should have a nice citrus flavor as well so you could also spit that and add at 5 and 0 since this method is going to drop your IBU's to around 50's.

 

[somerandomguy]

Thanks to all who responded. As I am pretty new to designing my own recipes (and brewing in general really) I decided to pretty much stick to the original recipe and see how it turned out. I decided against adding the crystal 80, but I did end up using a whole pound of crystal 20. I was a little bit short on my pre-boil OG (1.046 instead of 1.052). I think this is really just a matter of me getting my water volumes dialed in with the new equipment more than anything else though. So I added 1lB of Briess Sparkling amber DME (all I had on hand) to the boil and then went with the following hop schedule…

1oz simcoe 60min
1oz cascade 30min
1oz cascade 10 min
1 oz cascade at flameout, steep about 10min before cooling

Ended up with ~5.7 gallons with an OG of 1.066, just shy of my target 1.069 for 5 gallons. Fermentation is off to a good start with a nice thick krausen. The hydrometer samples were QUITE bitter, and had a nice bready/slightly caramel sweet undertone.

Still planning on dry hop with Ahtanum but I may decide to add more than 1oz or possibly another hop as well. I will wait and see what it tastes like after primary, and let you guys know how it turns out.

Thanks again for all of the suggestions. It is great to have such a great resource as HBT!

 

[somerandomguy]

So after reading my last post I realized that I did not really take anyone's suggestions in this particular batch, aside from skipping the crystal 80. Rest assured all of your comments were well received. If this batch doesn't turn out quite the way I was hoping, then I will definitely try some of the hop schedule suggestions on the next round. Especially moving simcoe to much later additions for the piney flavor/aroma.

I find that the best way to learn something is to mess it up first! If this recipe turns out to be not quite what I was looking for then I am sure some of the suggested tweaks will make it that much better on the next batch.

Cheers

 

[somerandomguy]

Thought I would follow up and let you know how this beer turned out. I was very pleased with the malt backbone. I actually think that the sparkling amber DME that I had to add to bring up the gravity worked out really well. I was a little worried about this but it seemed to add just the right amount of color and malt sweetness backbone that I was looking for.

I ended up dry hopping with 1oz whole leaf ahtanum and 2oz centennial pellets. Initially the beer had a lot of centennial aroma on the nose, and was surprisingly lacking in bitterness. Taste was reminiscent of straight centennial hops but with an almost peach or mango undertone which I assume came from the ahtanum. Could have also been the fermentation temperature as I kept this on the lower end (~62F) with US-05 which I have heard can result in peach flavors, but I am pretty sure it was the hops more than the yeast. I drank most of the batch within ~3weeks but kept a sixer behind to see how she aged. Surprisingly, for an IPA I think this one actually got better at about the 1 1/2 month mark. That fruity aroma kinda faded and I was left with a herbal centennial aroma and slightly more bitterness.

Lessons learned…

1. use a muslin bag and sink whole leaf hops with marbles. What a pain in the ass racking and bottling with those whole leafs was!

2. Fermentation scrubbed a ton of bitterness! My pre-fermentation hydro samples were so bitter, but after the yeast did their job I was a little disappointed in the bitterness. Beersmith had this at ~72IBU's but I don't think it tasted at all that high. I would probably shoot for around 90 IBU next time on this batch.


I think on the next batch I will try rex and CBellis' advice in moving hops toward more bittering and flameout additions and eliminating the middle additions, as well as going with a cheap CTZ for bittering and trying the simcoe more towards flameout.



chocolate porter in bottles, and oatmeal cookie brown getting brewed this weekend. Man I love making beer!