IPA recipe help.

[Queequeg]

I am planning my next brew and want to make a single variety (centennial) "westcoast" style IPA.

I want to omit crystal malt and Munich malts entirely. I live in the UK and though UK base malts are excellent they are far sweeter than US 2 row and any addition of crystal even as little as 3% imo makes for a very malt forward profile. I also don't care for the European flavour on Munich and Vennia in this style.

I have made and tasted SMASH's before using Maris Otter, Optic and Golden promise. Of these optic is what I think would match an IPA the most, being it has grassy, floral and hay like qualities. Its also slightly paler than the other two.

My current thinking is to balance the residual sweetness of the UK pale malt against either some rye malt or amber malt or maybe a combination of both.

I know Yooper uses 4% amber in her westcoast style IPA but I am assuming that is with US 2 row.

I have used rye in a IPA before at 18% which is fine when balanced against crystal malt additions and if you want it to be a rye-P-A as opposed to a beer that happens to use rye. Even beers that use 10% rye some to use crystal and even Munich alongside Therefore I am thinking perhaps 5-7% mark.

Something like this

13.5Lbs Optic Pale ale malt
1Lb Rye malt
0.8Lb spelt malt


I want to use spelt as a sub for wheat just as a experiment on head retention.

What are your thoughts? I want to be able to taste the rye and benefit from the drying effect without thinking "that's a rye beer"

Also what do people think of combining rye and amber? I think they are flavours that would go, but there are both drying in effect and would need careful consideration to %.

The hop bill will be hopbursted centennial, with a big hopstand and a big dry hop. I will try to aim for around 60 IBU's and a SG/IBU ratio of 0.9-1

I would probably use 1056 as the yeast.

 

[jerryboy]

I don't know about Optic or Spelt but I use 1 lb of Rye and like that amount. I think it is just enough for a hint but not overwhelming.

I like your recipe, for what it is worth.

 

[Queequeg]

Thanks for the vote of confidence . Does anybody else have anything to comment on

 

[rodwha]

I'm not familiar with Optic or Spelt malts, but I do love rye. However I was looking for an upfront rye pale and used 1.75 lbs in a 5.5 gal batch (~20% IIRC). It certainly had the flavor but wasn't as pronounced as I wanted. I'm planning on revising this recipe this month and changed it to 30%.

I would like to see your intended hop schedule.

I've been greatly reducing the bittering addition and smacking gobs of hops either at 21 and 7 mins or 21, 14, and 7 mins with a dry hop. I recently tried my hand at a whirlpool, but I won't know how it turned out for another month. I also finally quit being so frugal with the dry hop addition and used 4.5 oz of hops in the whirlpool and 4 oz in the dry hop. It's usually 1/2 that and may be why my ~90-110 IBU IPA's don't seem like much more than 50-60.

I've also tried no "bittering" addition (I did a 30 min addition), but it seemed odd as though there wasn't really a bitter there. And not that it was sweet, but just odd.

 

[Queequeg]

The hop bill will look something like:

1.25 oz @ 20, 15, 10, and 5 mins of 9.7%AA centennial pellet.

Then a further 3 oz in a 80°C 45 min stand.

A 5 day dry hop with 2.5 oz at day 16 and A 3 day dry hop with another 2.5oz at day 18.

Given the hop bills lack of speciality malts, I might consider wlp002