A bit of feedback on my first IPL

[granttheking98]

Hi guys,

I've brewed a whole lot of different beers from extract kits to all grain, to partial mashes and so on. Tried a whole bunch of things, and in the spirit of experimentation I thought I would try this recipe I made myself and see how it turns out.

Batch Size - 15L

Grain
500g Toffee Malt
500g Crystal Malt
100g Red Back Malt
100g Munich Malt
100g Carapils Malt

Extract
Coopers European Lager 1.75kg - Add to fermenter with hot water, top up to around 9-10L

I worked out the IBU's for this as (340 x 1.75kg)/15L = 40 IBU's

Mash Schedule
Mash grains at 155F for 30 mins in 3L of water
Sparge at 155F in 3L of water 155
Boil for 30 mins

Hops
3g Stickelbracht 12.3% AA - First Wort before boil
3g Stickelbracht 12.3% AA - 30 mins
3g Stickelbracht 12.3% AA - 15 mins
3g Stickelbracht 12.3% AA - 5 mins
3g Stickelbracht 12.3% AA - 0 mins

Brewers friend told me this would be around 26 IBU's for 5L

Cool till around 20 Degrees C

Add to fermenter to get it up to 15L

OG before adding yeast was 1.045 - tasting the sample had a good level of bitterness and a heck of a lot of sweetness as was to be expected.

FG I expect to be around 1.010

The yeast I added around 20 Degrees C - Coopers European Lager yeast - it is a true lager yeast strain according to coopers. I'm certainly not fermenting it anyway like a lager with temperature control, but lagering in the bottles for 12 weeks is a definite.

Any suggestions for improvements next time? I'm not sure how to work out the IBU's when I combine the two - would there just be linear relationship - add one to the other and that is your IBU level? I was hoping for around 60-65

 

[smokinghole]

What's IPL?

 

[granttheking98]

an IPA with a lager yeast not an ale yeast

 

[chickypad]

If you know the IBU of the kit then yes, you should be able to just add it in. It looks like the toffee malt is a caramel/crystal malt? That's a heck of a lot of crystal then at like 30% of your grainbill, it's likely going to be sweet. For an IPL I think you're kind of light on the late hop additions and a little low on gravity. I know it's sort of a style in evolution but the ones I'm thinking of are pretty big hoppy lagers, as you said essentially an IPA with lager yeast. If I were aiming for an IPL I would up the late hop additions, up the gravity a bit, and greatly decrease or eliminate the crystal malt. If you're going with a lager yeast I'd also ferment it at proper lager temps, I think one of the attractions of the style is the clean lager yeast to showcase the hops. Just my opinions, I have yet to actually brew one though it's on my list and I brew a lot of IPA's. Are you dry hopping? The timing of that is one of the things I'm trying to figure out, I think I'll probably do it in the keg after lagering.

 

[granttheking98]

any reason why the crystal/toffee malt's would lead to greater sweetness? I thought the sugars in them would ferment out and turn into alcohol? Unless of course these malts are made up of mostly unfermentable sugars.

I was considering dry hopping, still around 30g of stickelbracht left! But my past experiences with it have given good hop aroma, but left me wanting greater depth of flavour from the hops.

In terms of the OG I was surprised by the 1.045 - I would have thought it would have been higher with the amount of extra grain I had used, and the lower level of water (kits normally specify 23L of water).

I guess if anything this may not be an IPA at all - it might just be a specialty lager or something completely weird!

 

[chickypad]

Crystal malts have a good amount of unfermentable sugars especially when steeped and not mashed with a base malt. The max most recipes would use even in something like an amber that usually has a lot of crystal would be around 12-15%, so 30% is a huge amount (actually that's about 36% with the carapils). For an IPA I usually don't use any, but if I did I would keep it under 5%.

Those coopers kits are around 1.040 in 23L of water, but that's with a full kg of sugar right? So if you had added the kg of sugar you would have been around 1.060. Instead you replaced with a kg of malt that was essentially steeped because you have very little base malt there, that's why the low yield (the munich can convert itself but not much more, the red back malt may be similar but even so that's just 0.2 kg of the total). Even if you had a full mash with base malt and around 75% efficiency the correct replacement for 1 kg of sugar would be about 1.66 kg of grain.

So yeah, specialty lager sounds right! Who knows, you may love it.

 

[granttheking98]

Thanks for that! Possibly the most helpful info I've had on malts. Good to know - had a small taste of it today to check the gravity and it's at 1.015 after 6 days. Going to leave it for another week before bottling.

The sample had a lot of the flavours of a lager, a nice cleanness to the flavour that allows the hops to shine through, but also a nice balance between the bitterness and sweetness of the malt. Great depth of flavour.