Imperial IPA recipe - Feedback appreciated!

[floatyfish]

Hi all,

This is my first time brewing a non-kit beer, and I was wondering if you all would be able to give me some feedback on the imperial IPA I'm attempting to make this weekend. I was heavily inspired by this thread, but wanted to put my own spin on the recipe.

Recipe type: Extract
Batch size: 5.00 gallons
Boil length: 60 minutes

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Ingredients
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10 lbs pale liquid extract (78.4%)
.5 lbs Briess crystal 40l (3.9%)
.25 lbs Honey malt (2.0%)
1 oz Galaxy pellet [14%] at beginning of boil
.75 oz Amarillo pellet [8.5%] w/20 min left
.75 oz Citra pellet [12%] w/20 minutes left
.75 oz Amarillo pellet [8.5%] w/10 min left
.75 oz Citra pellet [12%] w/10 minutes left
2 lbs of honey (15.7%) w/8 minutes left
.75 oz Amarillo pellet [8.5%] w/5 min left
.75 oz Citra pellet [12%] w/5 minutes left
.75 oz Amarillo pellet [8.5%] w/1 min left
.75 oz Citra pellet [12%] w/1 minutes left

Dry hop with an ounce of Amarillo and Citra each in the secondary for a week.

Est. OG: 1.086
Est. FG: 1.016
Est. ABV: 9.4%
Est. IBUs: 90.8
Color: 11.5 RBM

Thanks!

 

[othevad]

Hey man.

The first thing I noticed when looking at your hop schedule is that the IBU's seemed to be really high for where most of the additions were (20 mins and later besides the original galaxy at 60 mins) So I entered the recipe into beersmith and I ended up coming up with 66.4 IBU's total. All of my other calculations came out equivalent to yours, so I would maybe go back and double check that you entered your additions in their correct amounts and time during the boil.

The other thing that caught my eye was the honey added near the end of the boil. It sounds interesting and this would probably be a fairly sweet and not so dry ipa. It's interesting for sure and looks pretty good besides that. If you do want some of your honey more forward in the beer I would probably recommend adding it to the primary after the first couple days of fermentation much like one would do with honey or candi sugar in a belgian (at least that's what I've been told to do and had fairly good success with the few times that I have used honey.)

But overall cool. Even if you made it as is, it will probably make a tasty brew, just double check those hop additions to make sure everything in on par.
be good

 

[floatyfish]

Thanks for the feedback! Can I ask what profile in Beersmith you were using to get the 66.4 IBU's? I had the equipment set as the 5 gallon mini BIAB with the batch size at 5 gallons and that's how I ended up with my original IBU estimate.

Adding the honey into the primary a couple days after it started fermenting is interesting and I didn't really think about that at all. Would I still be able to stick with the 2 lbs that I originally had, or would it be better if the amount was reduced in order to make it it not sickeningly sweet?

 

[othevad]

I think I had it set for the standard 5 gallon extract batch in beersmith. I really wouldn't consider that a BIAB recipe as you are only using a total of .75 lbs of specialty malts in your entire recipe.

As far as the honey in the fermenter, I'm not really sure what you are going for, so it's hard to tell. The one beer I remember for sure that I used 2lbs of honey after a couple days of fermentation was a (sort of) clone of La Fin Du Monde that I had found here on maybe on another site. I generally wouldn't think of using honey in an IIPA, but then again, it might work well. I would just go for it and see what happens. Regardless, I'm sure even if you did your batch as is, it would still make a pretty good beer, even if it wasn't exactly what you might be aiming for.

Whatever you do, post an update when you get it rolling.
Oh yeah and also... use a blowoff. Honey can get pretty gnarly if you have a vigorous fermentation and it gets all gunked up into the airlock.
!
yeah!

 

[BridgeBrew]

Floaty, i think this recipe should be an extract with steeping grains. Plug it into beersmith that way.

As for your recipe, i think you will have a nice DIPA. The honey addition will dry out you beer and leave you with little honey flavor from it. The amount of honey malt you have should give you a touch of that honey flavor. Ive used 4 ounces of honey malt before and i enjoy that amount. You could bump up your dry hops a bit, but thats not a big deal. I happen to love aroma so i usually add 3-4 ounces to my IPA's

If you are going for a big honey flavor add one pound of honey to the boil, and then add the second pound to the fermentor at about day 3. That will give you quite a bit of flavor, so you have to decide what you are shooting for in this recipe. Good luck and happy brewing!

 

[Herky21]

Floaty, i think this recipe should be an extract with steeping grains. Plug it into beersmith that way.

As for your recipe, i think you will have a nice DIPA. The honey addition will dry out you beer and leave you with little honey flavor from it. The amount of honey malt you have should give you a touch of that honey flavor. Ive used 4 ounces of honey malt before and i enjoy that amount. You could bump up your dry hops a bit, but thats not a big deal. I happen to love aroma so i usually add 3-4 ounces to my IPA's

If you are going for a big honey flavor add one pound of honey to the boil, and then add the second pound to the fermentor at about day 3. That will give you quite a bit of flavor, so you have to decide what you are shooting for in this recipe. Good luck and happy brewing!

The honey won't leave much flavor. Some varieties ive used leave some aroma, but in a DIIPA it will be lost. I've used the honey malt 4 or 5 times and fully agree that 4 oz. Will give a good amount of flavor. It is sickeningly sweet in higher proportions.

 

[BridgeBrew]

I agrew with you on using too much honey malt Herky. It gets a bit funky when you get up to a half pound. I did a few honey ales and the one i added 2 pound buring the boil and it dried that beer out and it was almost champagne like. A different one i added one pound during the boil and one pound 3 days into fermentation and that one left a nice subtle honey flavor and aroma. BUT that was in a blonde ale so that sublety might be lost in the big hop aroma of a DIPA.