Spring Session IPA

[thehaze]

Hello all you good people out there,

For the upcoming spring, which I hope is near, I would like to brew a little beer. A Session IPA.

This is what i have come up with: https://www.brewersfriend.com/homebrew/recipe/view/512075/01-session-ipa

I will most probably end up with around 6 gallons at the end, but that is on purpose.

The beer will be a bit Enigma focused, but I hope that's for the best.

I already have the hops and grains, but I am unsure whether the IBUs are OK or if the ABV is too low. Does anything from the recipe look unbalanced?

The beer I have in mind is a light coloured, low bitterness beer, with some hops aroma and flavour, but highly drinkable at under 5% ABV.

Thanks in advance.

 

[pshankstar]

I'm no expert but I would say it looks like a good start. My suggestions/comments are:

• Why a Belgium yeast? I would be concerned of the phenolics taking away from the hops. I would go with WLP-001/WY1056/US-05 to keep the yeast neutral and let the hops shine more.
• The sugar addition might thin out the beer too much. I haven't brewed a session IPA myself, but I want to soon and have been reading about them a lot. The biggest problem I have read and hear on podcasts are the session IPAs are thin and lack any body. I wonder if you cut out the sugar or reduce it and use either carapils and/or wheat to help boost the body some might be a good alternative.

Again, these are just my thoughts and suggestions. Good luck and keep us posted.

 

[thehaze]

S-33 is not Belgian ( Fermentis might want to give a different description of this yeast / I also heard/read somewhere, that the current Duvel yeast is actually derived from this yeast or a similar english yeast ), but actually english and it's said/believed to be the old EDME strain.

It is a crappy yeast, they say. I agree. It lacks proper flocculation and attenuation.

But I've used it last year and although the IPA had an FG of 1.022, the beer ( 5.5% ABV, 75 IBUs, hopped with Amarillo, Simcoe and Chinook, pale malt, munich, biscuit and flaked adjuncts ) did not feel under-attenuated. It was crisp, medium bodied with good mouthfeel and actually a grapefruit juice/grapefruit rind bomb. So imagine my surprise when the yeast crapped out at 1.022 and thinking I would end up with a mess, but in the end, it made a very good beer.

I read it becomes a little estery at higher fermt. temps. I was thinking with the low flocculation of the yeast, low attenuation, some flaked oats and some hops, I could make a session hazy IPA, but not neccessarily a NEIPA. Just a light coloured, medium bodied low ABV beer, with mild bitterness and *hopefully*, hoppy and a tad fruitty.

With regards to the sugar: I would mash high and use some sugar to raise the OG and maybe give the yeast something to chew on. Also, the yeast will probably finish high, so I thought it will not hurt. But, It could be tricky to use sugar in such a low ABV beer.

 

[thehaze]

For such a Low ABV beer, would it be OK to mash high and add some sugar to the boil?

I cannot really decide whether to mash low with this yeast and only use malts for the grain bill OR mash high, add some sugar and hope it will attenuate decent.

I am tempted not ot use any sugar at the end of boil...

 

[thehaze]

This beer will be brewed for an upcoming event, thus the low ABV and the low bitterness. The recipe has been changed a bit and we dropped the flaked oats.

The calculated ABV would be around 4.5% with 37 IBUs. 9 oz hops in the kettle - including whirlpool - and 9 oz for dry hopping. Quick turnaround to be drinkable at 20 days.

We decided we wanted a water profile closer to a NEIPA rather than a classic West Coast IPA, even though there are no flaked anything and will not dry hop during fermentation. I attached the final water profile in the thread.

Can anybody pitch in and share their thoughts/opinions on how it looks?

 

[brewbeerry]

We do a session ipa with more of a NEIPA water profile. I would cut the sugar that would thin it out and mash high. We mash at 162F and pitch .7 E6 cells of 002 and it still chugs down from 1.044 to 1.014. Definitely good idea to use carapils, wheat, oats or more flavorful base malt, or some combo. I prefer the bu:gu ratio of .6 for session hoppy stuff. Not too bitter to thin it out more but enough to seem like an IPA

 

[thehaze]

37 IBUs and an OG of 1.050 has a BU:GU ratio of 0.74 with a soft water profile CL:SO4 / 130:100ppm.

Would it work?