My first original recipe-please critique

[mgregg]

Having recently switched to all-grain I'm now planning on trying my hand at an original recipe. Based on what I have on hand I'm going for an english style ipa. Here's my plan right now:

10lbs maris otter
3lbs 2 row
8oz biscuit
4oz special B
mash at 154 for 60 min.
batch sparge

hops:
2oz cascade 60min
1 oz fuggles 20 min
1 oz fuggles 5 min
1 oz fuggles at flameout.

Nottingham yeast.

Any thoughts or ideas?

 

[Bosh]

Looks fine for me, how big of a batch?

 

[soulsuit]

I'd ditch the 2-row. Just make it 13 lbs of Maris Otter with your biscuit and special B.

 

[mgregg]

Made this yesterday. I used 5 lbs 2 row with 10 of m.o. because that's all the m.o. I had. Other than that I kept the recipe the same as posted. 6 gallons in the fermentor with an o.g. of 1.07. 1 packet of rehydrated Notty. Had a good krausen 8 hours later in my 60 degree basement. Had to pull the airlock and put in a blowoff tube this morning.

 

[JKaranka]

I'd think that's quite a lot of dark specialty malts for EIPA. A bit of amber malt or medium crystal is ok to balance the hops but they do not tend to be malty beers. What are you dry hopping with? Small dry hops around 1-3oz are typical (obviously, they can be bigger).

 

[signpost]

In my opinion, the small amount of specialty malts you have in your recipe are perfectly fine. It's a total of 12 ounces, and most of that isn't even that dark (the biscuit).

1.070 does seem pretty high, though. Probably more of and English IIPA. The main non-English ingredient you used is the Cascade hops, but I'm guessing you did that because it was high enough AA to get the IBUs you were going for. Right?

 

[JKaranka]

Nothing wrong with non-British hops in moderation. Britain has always imported and used foreign hops. Back in the day it was mainly expensive German and Czech hops for finishing and dry hopping, and cheap Belgian and American hops for bittering.