My IPA What do you think?

I have everything cleaned, and ready to brew my IPA tomorrow morning. All I need to do is measure out my ingredients. This is my first brew that is not an ingredients kit. So, I have a few concerns, and I'm seeking advice. This is a recipe inspired by New Belgium's Ranger IPA. Check it out:

5 gallon batch

9 lbs Light Malt Extract (Syrup)
.75 lbs Crystal 80L

1.5 oz Chinook @ 60 min

.75 oz Cascade @ 10 min
.75 oz Chinook @ 10 min
.75 oz Simcoe @ 10 min

1 oz Cascade @ 0 min
1 oz Chinook @ 0 min
1 oz Simcoe @ 0 min

1 oz Cascade Dry Hop

Wyeast 1056

(Thanks to HBT user humann_brewing for helping me with this recipe.)

Here are my concerns:

-Too many hops? tastybrew's recipe calculator gives me a 108 IBU reading. I like a hoppy beer, but will this amount make the beer undrinkable?

-The projected OG is 1.063 and I only have one yeast pack at my disposal. Each Wyeast pack is rated for 1.060 max. Should I knock down the amount of base malt a little bit too?

I would love some feedback. I hope you good people can ponder over this recipe while I go to a beer tasting festival in Charleston tonight, so I can brew first thing in the morning. Peace.

 

I think it sounds delicious. I doubt ranger IPA is 108 IBU's, but I say go for it.

can you make a starter? any chance you have any US-05 dry yeast on hand? If not, the smack pack will be OK.

Just make sure to chill it down to 65 and keep it there.

 

That is a tremendous amount of hops. You could easily halve the 60 min addition and still have a very hoppy beer. 1.063 is a good OG for an IPA, I wouldn't lower it. The smack pack will get the job done. In the future, you should make a starter for it to increase the cell count.

 

Yeah, Ranger's bottle says 70 IBU's, I believe.
I do have some US-05, at the bottom of a primary fermenter for a Pumpkin Ale I'm making. I wasn't planning on going through the trouble of harvesting that, unless I have to. Is it too late to make a starter for tomorrow morning?

 

I was thinking of maybe dropping my bittering hops from 1.5 to 1 oz. That would bring me down to 84 IBU's.

 

Have you ever had Green Flash West Coast IPA (fresh)? To my knowledge that is the single IPA with the highest IBUs listed at 89. However, depending on who you ask, the human tasting threshold is somewhere between 80-110, so it may not make a difference. And IBU calculations are a little sketchy anyways and don't transfer well across different systems.

All in all I think your recipe would be fine as posted, (although it would be more bitter than Ranger). If you wanted to change it though I would only drop hops from the 60 minute addition like you already mentioned.

 

The 10 & zero additions looks delicous. I wish I could try this beer. I never thought of a chinook, cascade, simcoe combo. Cut out some of that early chinook at 60 so that you don't end up too bitter.

Without entering any numbers I'd say .75 (or even .5) of chinook at 60 would be sufficient.

 

A couple of thoughts.

1. No it will not be undrinkable, quite the opposite IMO.
2. You can't really compare your formula IBU's to commercial #'s for high IBU beers. They test their beers to find out the real IBU's and at the high end of the scale, the numbers just don't line up. For example, the pliny the elder recipe I've seen in .pdf format which looks like it came from the brewery, uses 12.5 oz of hops including 3.5oz of 14% CTZ for a 90 minute boil. If you plug that into any software, the IBU # the formula comes up with is off the charts, I forget what exactly, 200+ I think. But Russian River says it's really only 90-100 when you test it. So, don't worry at all about the fact that your beer is 108 calculated.
3. I'd consider moving a little bit of the late hop additions to dry hopping instead. I think a beer like this would do better with at least 2 oz of dry hopping, personally.

 

If it were me I would up the crystal 80L to 1LB. You could always move your first hop addition to 45min instead of 60 to lower your IBU and keep all that hoppy goodness in your beer. Just a thought. I would also move more to dry hop. Just my 2 cent good luck and happy brewing

 

I'd also push an ounce of the late edition hops to dry hop....also maybe use a blend in the dry hop. On my system, I get way more aroma and flavor from dry hops.