Achieving Intended flavor profile

Recently enjoyed drinking my very first home brewed beer. My first run was a True Brew India Pale Ale kit. The beer was tasty but did not resemble the hoppy IPA I was hoping to brew.

Recipe called for 2 3.3lb cans of Muntons Amber Malt Extract. After doing some research I decided to add 1 3/4 of extract. I also added an ounce of loose leaf Willamette hops to my secondary fermentation carboy. The beer has toasty malt notes but very little hop character.

Has anyone brewed this kit before? Is it a flawed recipe or did I do something wrong?

1 theory I had to explain the lack of hoppy flavor was my siphoning job. Fearful of too much sediment I lost a gallon of liquid between primary and secondary fermentation. Could this explain the muted hops?

 

Can you provide the recipe, hops used, boil time and volume? The boil gravity has an affect on hop utilization for bitterness.
As far as dry hopping your process is correct. I'm thinking your ratio of gravity to bitterness units is way too low in the recipe which lead to the lack of that bitter hoppy flavor your looking for.

 

Does not sound like you did anything wrong. IPA did not always have the strong hop character that we have all gotten used to in recent times. So it is a legacy recipe.

To get today's level of what is called hoppy, you'll need to resort to some tricks. There are lots of them. The most important is lots and lots of hops, especially after flameout.

Here is a link to good read on it:
http://www.homebrewtalk.com/top-10-tips-super-hoppy-ipa.html

I like the hop stand method.

 

View attachment ImageUploadedByHome Brew1425159804.150221.jpg

 

This recipe only called for 1oz bittering hops and 1oz finishing. I guess it makes sense that it wasn't incredibly hoppy.

 

The recipe say 17 IBU's which is nowhere in the IPA realm. That's blonde ale territory

 

For an ipa I would've used light malt extract instead of Amber and used more hops

 

Thanks for the advice. Will try this for my next IPA attempt. Good news is friends still like my first beer, we are just calling it a brown ale.

Do you think 2 full cans of light extract for a 5 gallon batch is necessary?

 

It really depends on what you are shooting for. The LME provides 90% of the non-hop flavor (yeast profile dictates the rest) and all of the alcohol producing sugars.

6.6 # of LME only give you about an OG of 1.048'ish so I would suggest using it all.

You really need to be in the 45'ish IBU range (or more), plus the dry hopping to get the hop character you are looking for.

 

I really would suggest going for a good pale ale . Just a little bit simpler but very rewarding. The high hop IPAs can easily become "unbalanced". Get a few good batches under your belt before you go bigger.
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Congratulations on your first brew.
It is likely that you will be tweaking recipes a lot if you continue on brewing beer. You will learn what your recipes need to meet a style profile or what they need to meet your personal taste and modify your ingredients or processes accordingly.
I recommend getting your hands on the BJCP style guidelines. They are a valuable source for profiles for classic and modern styles of beer, mead and cider. The style guidelines give information about flavor, aroma, appearance, mouthfeel, history and ingredients. Also, the guidelines give vital statistics like OG, FG, IBU, ABV, SRM and commercial examples of the style.
I found early on that if I just used ingredients that I thought would make good beer that I was not happy with the results.
I started brewing beer for style and learned a lot about ingredients and processes that eventually brought me to a place where I felt confident enough to start experimenting.
Without the knowledge and experience with the underlying style and base ingredients I would still be throwing money in a pot and hoping for the best.
Good luck and have fun.

 

What a horrible rendition of an ipa. True Brue should be ashamed of themselves. Oak chips?!

I agree with others who say work on a pale ale first. You can make it nice and extra hoppy with those late additions/hop stand/ dry hops.

 

Heavy toast oak chips (they were black like charcoal) added to Amber extract. Nothing pale about it.

 

Maybe add a pound or two of light dme at the beginning of the boil then add the rest of your lme at 15 mins. This should give it a lighter color and make a good session ipa. Don't forget to add more hops.