closet cleaner, return of the ipa

[klinus]

Hi! Me and my friend have been brewing saisons, esb:s and christmas ales the last batches, and now when the holidays are over, I feel the urge for hoppy beers again. But since the winter's still going strong, I thought I would like a semi dark, malty, biscuity type of ipa (not necessarily high abv though).

So, we have some some scraps of this and that left in the closet, and this is what I've made of it, malt wise:

Pale ale malt: 80%
Caramel 60L (118ebc): 9%
Crystal 50 (50ebc): 4.5%
Carapils: 4%
Black malt: 1.5%

How does that sound to you pro's?

Hopwise, what we got is about 1.5 oz of amarillo, and 1.5 oz Columbus. We have some Saaz as well, but I figure it's to subtle to make it through those other hops, right?
Im thinking add about 1 oz of Columbus/tomahawk at 60 minutes, and then use amarillo at like 10 and 0.
Can we do anything with this, or do we have to go hop shopping you think? If so, what hops would you recommend? Maybe something hard and piney, like simcoe?

any wizard out there with some clever input? Thanks a bunch!

(oh, this is for a 5 gallon batch)

 

[MFWINZLOW]

Not a an expert, but my experience would be that you need more hops.
Way more hops.

 

[alane1]

Way too much crystal IMHO, I would cut the specialty malts to 10% max. As for hops Columbus would work well for bittering. I personally like flavor hops to have a pine/citrus combo. Simcoe and Amarillo play nice together and you could reserve some of the Columbus for flavor additions also. Cheers

 

[klinus]

Way too much crystal IMHO, I would cut the specialty malts to 10% max. As for hops Columbus would work well for bittering. I personally like flavor hops to have a pine/citrus combo. Simcoe and Amarillo play nice together and you could reserve some of the Columbus for flavor additions also. Cheers

Ok, interesting! Thanks! If I want it a tad darker and fuller/sweeter than the general ipa, should I still do just 10% speciality malts, but with darker caramel and higher mash temp instead? If I look at some english ipa recipes they seem to have around 20% speciality, maybe that is what I'm dreaming about, an english ipa, but with american hops?

 

[alane1]

Here's a good read on English IPA's https://byo.com/stories/issue/item/3270-brewing-british-ipa As for darker, more residual sweetness, one pound of crystal 60, 3-4 ounces of black patent, and a less attenuative yeast strain like Wyeast 1968/White labs 002 would provide a good malt backbone and plenty of color.