IPA Grain Bill

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schy13

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I am making an IPA and my grain bill is as follows:

11 lbs 2-row
1 lb flaked wheat
1 lb caramel 20
0.25 lb carapils

Beersmith says that its gonna be 7.1% ABV and 6.4 SRM. I am going to use chinook, columbus, and cascade and try to get the IBUs around 80 IBUs. I plan on using columbus for the bittering hop and then do late hop additions of of all three hops.I am then going to dry hop with the same hops. I just want some feedback on my grain bill and whether it sounds good and possibly a hoping schedule. I also would like to hear what you guys do for your IPA recipes.

Thanks
 
Since you're using a pound of flaked wheat, I'd suggest ditching the carapils. You don't need it, and it's more than redundant.

I don't normally use much crystal malt in my IPAs, but up to a pound or so is ok if you like it. I don't use more than about .5 pound wheat malt for head retention, but a whole pound is ok. I'd probably simplify it a bit, and go with:


11 lbs 2-row
.5 lb flaked wheat
.5 lb caramel 20

For the hopping, I'd use bittering hops at 60 minutes (or FWH) to 40 IBUs, and then use the flavor and aroma hops at 15/10/5/0/dryhopping for the most flavor and aroma that I love in IPAs.
 
I was using the crystal to impart some color and maltiness, i still want the hops to be prodominant though. What other malts have you used for this? I was thinking Victory, Munich, Vienna, but i dont know how much to use.
 
I use a little Munich and a touch of crystal 40 in my pales / IPAs. I use ~8% Munich and 4% or less of Crystal 40.

You can go higher on the Munich or Vienna as they're base malts. If you use victory I'd keep it definitely less than 5%. I'd probably toss in 2-3% if I were going to use it.
 
Will chinook and columbus flavor and aroma additions be good? Do they have to high alpha acids or anything that would cause them to give an unpleasant flavors. Are they good to dry hop with? I like the grapefruit/citrus flavor of cascade, but I want to combine it flavor along with a dank/resin/pine flavor.
 
schy13 said:
Will chinook and columbus flavor and aroma additions be good? Do they have to high alpha acids or anything that would cause them to give an unpleasant flavors. Are they good to dry hop with? I like the grapefruit/citrus flavor of cascade, but I want to combine it flavor along with a dank/resin/pine flavor.

Sounds like those hops will get you where you want. You only need to worry about alpha acids when calculating IBUs, for flavor and aroma potency you pay more attention to the essential oil content of a hop.

Chinook and Cascade is an excellent combo and I use it often myself. I don't have much experience late hopping with Columbus but everything I've heard points to it having a pretty potent dankness to it, so you might want to use a little less of it the first time around until you get a
feel for it.

Oh and my comment earlier about using Munich assumes you're referring to Munich 10L. If you have a darker Munich then you would need to be more careful with the amounts.
 
I have Stone AB clone that uses Crystal 150 and Special B. Much more inline with an old ale. It's been in my primary since Sunday. Almost straight chinook hops but I had to add a little columbus to the mix when I ran out of chinook.
 
Ok. I made a rough outline of my ipa:

10 lbs 2-row
2 lbs Vienna malt
0.75 lbs crystal 20
0.5 lbs flaked wheat

60 min 1.0 oz Columbus

10 min 1.0 oz Cascade
0.5 oz Chinook
0.5 oz Columbus

5 min 1.0 oz Cascade
0.5 oz Chinook
0.5 oz Columbus

0 min 1.0 oz Cascade
1.0 oz Chinook

Dry Hop with 1.0 oz Cascade, Chinook, & Columbus

Does the hoping schedule look ok? I sometimes get crazy with hops and think I need to do more then I actually need to do to get the flavors and aromas I want.
 
Naw it looks good. Roll with it, brew this one up and then tweak it one step at a time until you get it where you want it.
 
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