Looking to make a Belgian/American IPA hybrid

jruffatto · Feb 28, 2011

I made a pretty good American IPA or American Pale Ale type beer and I'd like to marry that with a Belgian. The only Belgian I've ever brewer was from a Brewer's Best kit and it left a lot to be desired. The pale ale was my own recipe and featured Simcoe for 60, then Cascade for 20 and Centennial for 10 followed by a dry hop of Cascade and Simcoe after 7 days in the primary. My question is, could I apply this recipe to something involving a belgian with Saaz hops and candi sugar and some biscuit grains? The pale ale recipe already calls for cara-pils which I've seen in belgian recipes. any help would be appreciated.

cervezarara · Feb 28, 2011

Try what Stone did for their Cali Belgique. I think they just used their IPA recipe and used a belgian yeast to ferment. I'd try WY1214. The yeast will give the estery profile you're looking for.

Cali-Belgique kicks your a$$ and you don't even mind!

RJSkypala · Feb 28, 2011

Yep, if you have a killer IPA recipe just use a yeast like WLP550 of WLP500.

usmclar1 · Feb 28, 2011

I've just changed the yeast, and I've also done some that I've replaced half of the extract bill with pilsen extract. Pretty good stuff.

vicratlhead51 · Mar 1, 2011

Kind of a neat idea but doesn't the higher hop rates of an ipa cover up those flavors from the belgian yeast? or do you still get some of those cool esters coming through?

duckmanco · Mar 1, 2011

^^^ with Cali-Belgique you certainly do get that yeasty fruity duvel thing going on even with all the hops, its a neat combination and well worth trying out.

vicratlhead51 · Mar 1, 2011

I think I'm going to have to, I love belgians and I'm really growing into an IPA fan. I think this sounds like a fun experiment but I might wait til the summer when I can get a little higher fermentation temps. I have some WLP400, think that'd be a good yeast to try for this? I think it might be cool to do an abbeyish malt bill maybe with some special B, I'll have to find a good IPA recipe to steal the hop schedule from.