Grapefruit IPA feedback

[jrobertson]

Hoping for some feedback on my first attempt to come up with my own recipe.

5 gallon extract batch:
6.6# light LME
1# light DME
.5# honey
1# 6 row
1# crystal 30L
1oz centennial (60 min)
1oz cascade (30)
1oz cascade (0)
1oz cascade (dry hop)
1# of pealed grapefruit with zest (end of boil and ferment in carboy)
white Labs WLP041 pacific ale yeast

Targets
OG 1.064
FG 1.021
ABV 5.6%

I'm looking to balance sweet and bitter.

Any thoughts?
Thanks all

 

[scutiger]

The recipe looks pretty good. But a couple of thoughts I had, not trying to say don't do it one way or another, more so I'm just thinking out loud:
The final gravity seems to be pretty high, especially given the types of fermentables you've chosen. I would expect it to finish more around 1.014-1.016, bumping it up over 6%. Second, I like a good bit of citrus flavor in my IPA's, but I've never actually added the fruit to get it. The centennials and cascades carry a lot of grapefruit flavor, and the yeast strain should help accentuate that by making some nice fruity esters. I might suggest adding some more of the peel along with your dry hops if you're looking for a lot more of the aroma, since a good bit of that will dissipate with the boil and primary fermentation.

 

[jrobertson]

Thanks for the advice.

I've brewed 4 recipes using fruit (mostly from Extreme Brewing from Sam Calagione) and they have turned out to be the better beers I've brewed. I wanted to come up with some hops that would both enhance the grapefruit flavor but not overpower it (I don't want to drink fermented grapefruit juice). Maybe I can amp up some bittering hops to balance out the honey, cascades, and fruit?

 

[BinghamtonEd]

I made an IPA that was very grapefruity, it was bittered with nugget and had additions of 1oz Cascade and 1 oz Willamette at 15, 5, and 1 minutes, and again for a 5-day dry hop. It smelled and tasted like grapefruit, with a little earthiness to it, no actual fruit was used.

The local nano-brewery has done a whole series of single-hop beers, and their citra hop-bomb was extremely grapefruity.

 

[motorneuron]

Agree with scutiger above. I'd also add that people often find summit and amarillo to have citrusy kinds of flavors, so you might mix those in too. I personally don't think that citra has as much grapefruit or citrus--to me, it's much more "tropical" (like a mango).