IPA Recipe Critique

[SabresBrewer]

As the snow begins to thaw in Buffalo NY and the sun begins to make an appearance it means its time to start up the home brewery production again! I started doing my own recipes last year with great success due to all the great feed back and suggestions from fellow brewers on HomeBrewTalk (Thank You!) I was looking for some feed back on this IPA recipe. Plugged it in to BrewSmith and it looks pretty good so far any feed back would be great. Thanks!

IPA
Mash at 150 for 90 minutes with recirculation and fly sparge
12.5 lbs 2 Row
0.75 lbs Munich Malt
0.75 lbs Crystal 20
0.5 lbs Crystal 40
0.5 White Wheat Malt

Hops
60 Minutes 1 oz Columbus Hops
30 Minutes 0.5 oz Citra Hops
15 Minutes 0.5 oz Cascade Hops
10 Minutes 0.25 oz Cascade Hops
10 Minutes 0.25 oz Chinook Hops
5 Minutes 0.25 oz Cascade Hops
5 Minutes 0.25 oz Cascade Hops
Dry Hop
1 oz Columbus Hops 14 Days
1 oz Simcoe Hops 14 Days

Yeast
Wyeast 1056 with starter

 

[progmac]

Personally, I would do a 60 minute addition for bittering and then not add any more hops until 15 minutes at the earliest. Also, I think using a strongly flavorful and aromatic hop at 30 minutes kind of wastes the best attributes of that hop. Given the same amount of the same hops, I would do this:

Hops
60 Minutes 1 oz Columbus Hops
10 Minutes 0.5 oz Cascade Hops
5 Minutes 0.5 oz Cascade Hops
0 Minutes 0.25 oz Chinook Hops
0 Minutes 0.25 oz Cascade Hops
0 Minutes 0.5 oz Citra Hops
Dry Hop
1 oz Columbus Hops 14 Days
1 oz Simcoe Hops 14 Days

Regarding the grain bill, personally, I like to keep things simple. So if I want to do an IPA with crystal, I would do 95% 2-row and 5% crystal 40, for example.

Food for thought, anyways. good luck!

 

[kombat]

This is for a 5 gallon batch? I would adjust to progmac's hop schedule and double all of the hop additions except for the bittering (60 minute) one.

 

[rcsoccer]

I would drop the Crystal 40 and bump up the Munich instead. I personally think crystal malts should be kept to a minimum in an IPA (around 5%). Also, simpler is better when it comes to IPAs. The hops are the star in this style with enough malt flavors to balance it out. Good choice of hops. I would always keep it to 3 types for aroma, or less.

As for the hops, I would add more. You are only adding 2 oz. of hops for the flavor aroma additions. My standard IPA recipe has around 6-8 oz. of hops for the aroma only. I agree with progmac about the middle boil addition. Move that to the end and add equal amounts of all three of your hop varieties at flameout ONLY, do a whirlpool, cover, and let it sit for 15-20 mins. Then run it through a plate chiller. If you don't have a plate chiller, buy one! Or, if you are using an immersion chiller, just put it in after you stir the wort into a whirlpool. It will still be hot enough to sanitize the chiller.

In summary:

12.5 lbs 2 Row
1.25 lbs Munich Malt
0.75 lbs Crystal 20
0.5 White Wheat Malt

1 oz. Columbus (60 mins)
2-3 oz. each of Citra, Chinook, and Cascade (flameout, whirlpool and let stand for 15 mins)

Also, I would only dry hop for 10 days max. You could do something like Vinne does with Pliny the Elder and add some dry hops, wait 3-4 days, then add more for an additional 3-4 days, then keg/bottle. Also, I would use the same hops that you used in the boil. Equal amounts for each. Maybe 0.5 oz of each hop variety for each of the 2 stages of dry hopping.

Hope that helps.

Cheers!

 

[bobbrews]

We need more information... What is your batch size? Are you doing a full volume boil with no top off water?



If this is a 6.5 gallon full volume boil / 5 gallon batch, I am projecting 1.077 OG / 1.014 FG at 70% efficiency.

What I can say for certain is that you should look into reducing the crystal malt %. As is, the crystal malt is over 8% of the grist. Reduce that to 3-5% if possible.

3.3% White Wheat won't do much for you either. Bump that up to 5-6% if you want to use it for head retention purposes. It also seems that you really wish to dry out this beer with a 90 minute mash at 150F. To aid in this effort, replace 5-6% of the 2-row with corn sugar added at flameout. The corn sugar replacement will aid with dryness since it is fully fermentable.

Lastly, instead of relying on adding hops multiple times throughout the boil, you're better off blasting it at boil start with a cheap, high alpha hop or hop extract, followed by 25-40% total recipe hops by weight to hold as a hopstand after the boil, and 40-50% total recipe hops by weight for the dryhop. Dryhop 4-5 days at 0.80 to 1.0 oz. dryhops per gallon of IIPA.

 

[SabresBrewer]

Thanks for the advice and yes it is for a 5 gallon batch. Full boil no top off.

 

[Calder]

0.75 lbs too much crystal, and not enough hops.

I like the Munich. Ads a little malt flavor, if you like that in your IPA. If I was adding Munich, I think I'd have gone at least 2 lbs to make it noticeable.

If you like it dry, you could also add a pound of plain table sugar.