NE Style IPA, too tough for a beginner?

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marjen

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I am just getting ready to start home brewing. I have been researching for the last year, trying to gain some knowledge before I jump in.

Over that time I have really fallen in love with NE style IPAs. Especially trillium brews like congress st and fort point ale. I have seen some recipes that look to clone these beers but wonder, is this something out of reach for a beginning brewer?

Below is one sample recipe i found. I dont fully understand it all at this point, but should give a ballpark of what I am looking to brew.


EDIT: Updated recipe with exact one JC from Trillium wrote up in a magazine that someone posted. Only subbing a Light DME from the recommended Golden LME.
Fort Point Clone

6 lb Muntons Light DME
1 lb Briess Bavarian Wheat DME
4 oz Briess Carapis Malt
4 oz British crystal 22°L

0.25 oz Columbus Hops @ 60 min
0.75 oz Columbus Hops @ 10 min
1 tsp irish moss @ 10 min
2oz Columbus at hop stand @ 180° for 30’

Wyeast British Ale 1098 Yeast @ 68°. Dry hop as krausen begins falling (day 4-5). (Or try 1056) (or WY 1318)

4oz Galaxy + 1 oz Columbus dry hop (after 4-5 days)
Site for 5 days then bottle.
4 0z? Corn Sugar Priming sugar how to make?
bottle - let sit 10-14 days
 
Looks like a fine recipe. Are you diving in to all grain right off the bat?

If you're not sure, I bet we can convert that to extract for you to make it much much simpler for a beginner.
 
Brewing NEIPA/IPA/APAs is for the most part the same ordeal as any other "regular" recipe. But the late addition of hops, and in particular the whirlpooling/steeping at certain temperatures may take you a few tries to get down.

If you are confident with your chilling techniques, and have a good/accurate thermometer in order to drop the wort to the specified temperate, then by all means go for it.

One thing to keep in mind is that adding so many hops will produce a lot of debris and may give you a hell of a time with clogged siphons/spigots, so consider using a hop spider or loosely-tied hop bags.

Happy brewing!
 
Are you diving in to all grain right off the bat?

I am looking to do extract brewing. See I did not know that was an all grain recipe :( I could use some help to convert. Will it taste similar?
 
Pretty darn similar. I think all those hops will pretty effectively mask any big differences.

So, grain = .75 lbs of liquid malt extract or .60 lbs of dry. I'd sub all the 2-row and the wheat for light extract. That'll be 9.75 lbs of liquid, but if it only comes in 3 or 6 lb containers, you might want to make up the difference with dry. Or just use all dry.

The crushed caramel/carapils malt can be steeped in your brewing water before you add the extract.

The rest is pretty much the same.
 
On the LME option, wheat LME is usually a blend of 2-row and wheat, so you could go 6 lbs light LME and 3 lbs wheat LME and be pretty close. Then make up the difference in gravity as JonM suggested.
 
Which is better liquid or dry? And any brand recommendations? True beginner here so no idea what I am looking for. Thanks I appreciate the help.
 
As others mentioned, it's not much harder to brew an NEIPA than any other American ale. The big difference will be in the amount of money you'll spend on ingredients, namely hops.

As with anything, you'll get better and have more consistent results with some practice. There's a fair chance that your first batch will be great and you'll love it. There's also a chance that something will go wrong and the beer won't be very good. Maybe even so wrong that the beer is bad and you'll dump it down the drain.

So, if the prospect of dumping a batch that you cost you $25 in ingredients hurts a lot less than a batch that cost you $50, consider brewing an APA instead. If that difference in ingredient costs doesn't bother you, brew what you want to drink!

(dollar amounts totally pulled out of the air, but are probably not too far off when buying at a LHBS and paying for hops by the ounce)
 
I say go for it. Just be prepared for a learning curve until you get the hang of things.

Are you kegging or bottling? Kegging is preferred for this style since you can purge the keg to flush out oxygen. Oxygen is the bane of hops. Bottling can still be done but results may be sub-optimal.
 
That's a really good point about costs.

I completely ruined my second batch but it was only $20-25 in ingredients. I got ingredients for a simple IPA last night and it was about $30. Your proposed recipe might push $60. Might be a good idea to get a little practice in before giving it a go with lots of $ on the line.
 
Would something like this be correct?
Light Dry Malt Extract
http://www.homebrewing.org/Muntons-Plain-Extra-Light-DME-3-LBS_p_1431.html

Wheat Dry Malt Extract
http://www.homebrewing.org/Muntons-Plain-Wheat-DME-3-LBS_p_2110.html

Also does this look like a recipe for 5 gallons?

Yes, that will work. 6lbs of light DME and 1 lb of wheat DME would put you just a little short on gravity. Adding an extra pound of light DME would put you over by a bit. Either way should be fine. Yes, that looks like 5 gals. to me.
 
For now I am probably looking to bottle, I figure its easier. If this goes well I will move into kegging. Basically I want to try this a few times to see how it tastes. If I am close to want my goal is then I will ramp up gear and process. But if I am not in the ball park, will probably give up.
 
Something that all first time brewers need to hear: Your fermentation is NOT stuck! Just leave it alone and let the yeast do their thing.
 
Personally, I'd learn to brew something a little more basic. Like a simple IPA, or even a SMASH brew. I agree with what others have said about the cost. Why waste money with high dollar brews when just starting out? Learn to brew first, then get fancy. Start by reading "How to Brew" by Palmer.
 
I too was worried that a D-IPA was "too hard" for me as a beginner. So I got another recipe kit and made a winter ale first and then my D-IPA second. I worried for no reason, the only significant difference was the more aggressive hop schedule. Full disclosure though, both were extract kits.
 
I found a slightly different recipe I think I am going to try first.

Fort Point Clone
10.0# 2-Row
1.5 # wheat
12oz dextrine
4 oz British crystal 22°L
0.25oz Columbus @ 60'
0.75 Columbus @ 10'
2oz Columbus hop stand @ 180° for 30'
4oz Citra dry hop
1oz Columbus dry hop
WLP007/WY1098/VT IPA Yeast @ 68°. Dry hop as krausen begins falling (day 4-5).


Ok So i am trying to figure out a couple parts of the recipe. Since i am going with extract I need to replace this:

10.0# 2-Row
1.5 # wheat
12oz dextrine
4 oz British crystal 22°L

So I think I would substitute 6lb of Muntons Light DME for the 2-row and .9 lb of Briess Bavarian Wheat DME for the wheat. I saw it mentioned above to still use the dextrine and british crystal? Is this true or do i need to substitute? Also I have done a ton of searches on the internet and can't seem to find what either of those last two products are.

I dont see any temps or time for the extract part? Is there like a standard temp that is used? And is the time part of the 60 mins total time? Also what is a 30' hop stand?
 
Below is one sample recipe i found. I dont fully understand it all at this point

If you don't fully understand the recipe, then I would say it's too tough, at least until you fully understand it.

If i were getting started in brewing right now, I would find a local homebrew club, on the web or facebook or ask at the local shop, then I would go to a meeting or post on their FB page asking if someone could use some beginner help on a brewday. Actually watching and helping in the process will make things more clear than hours of web research, and after that you would probably be ready to brew with confidence.
 
If you've been researching for the past year, but don't recognize the difference between all-grain and extract ingredients, I'd advise to read a bit more about those specific differences. A recipe can be all extract, all grain, or a combination of extract with steeping grains. It can also be extract with some mashed grains (partial mash).

The trick to the combination approach is to know which types of malt can be steeped, vs. which need to be mashed.

Mashing is a fairly precise process of cooking milled grains within a particular temperature range for a period of 45-90 minutes, typically averaging 60. Steeping is just soaking the milled grains "around" the mash temperature range for much less time, like 20 minutes.

How To Brew, Brewing With Malt Extract:
http://howtobrew.com/book/section-1

How To Brew, Brewing With Extract and Steeped Grain:
http://howtobrew.com/book/section-2

How To Brew, Brewing All-Grain Beer:
http://howtobrew.com/book/section-3
 
Ok So i am trying to figure out a couple parts of the recipe. Since i am going with extract I need to replace this:

10.0# 2-Row
1.5 # wheat
12oz dextrine
4 oz British crystal 22°L

So I think I would substitute 6lb of Muntons Light DME for the 2-row and .9 lb of Briess Bavarian Wheat DME for the wheat. I saw it mentioned above to still use the dextrine and british crystal? Is this true or do i need to substitute? Also I have done a ton of searches on the internet and can't seem to find what either of those last two products are.

I dont see any temps or time for the extract part? Is there like a standard temp that is used? And is the time part of the 60 mins total time? Also what is a 30' hop stand?

First, the only one of those you need to replace is the 2-row and the wheat. And technically you don't NEED to replace the wheat, but you probably will want to.

The Dextrine malt and the Crystal malt are specialty grains, so you would steep those. Dextrine is a type of malted barley (Carapils is an example of a dextrine malt).

Doing 100% extract is going to lack a lot of complexity, so it's good to have specialty grains for steeping. Plus, there is no such thing as a substitute for some of those things (hence why extract with steeping grains is popular).

Although temps and time are important for converting starches to sugars in all-grain brewing, in extract those starches have already been converted into sugars (that's the whole point behind extract).

Normally you steep the specialty grains until the water reaches 170F, then remove them (over 170F, starches are no longer converted to sugars and the grain can contribute astringency, which is not desired). When it starts boiling (at 212F), you turn off the heat and add in the extract, stirring it in so it doesn't burn on the bottom of the pot. After it's been mixing in, then you turn the heat back on, wait for the hot break, then start your bittering hop addition, etc. etc. etc..

In extract brewing, times are mainly used for hops. In the typical beer, you have bittering hops for 60 minutes (and sometimes for as long as 90 minutes or even longer). You also have flavoring hops that are usually between 15 and 30 minutes. And you have aroma hops which are 15 minutes or shorter. In recent pale ales and IPAs, there are oftentimes a lot of those within the last 5 minutes such as at flameout. Then there's dry hopping, which is adding dry hops to the fermenter, usually after primary fermentation has ended, for a certain period of time from 3 to 14 days (I usually do 5-7 days, but I've heard of some homebrewers dry-hopping for even longer than 2 weeks).

A hop stand is basically whirlpooling the hops after you turn the heat off at the end of the boil. That might be a bit complicated for your first beer, though.
 
I am watching and reading a ton and getting closer to understanding. I do get the differences between extract and all grain, just was not 100% on the terms. Also researching BIAB. Will probably move to that method later on. This is what I think I have at the moment.

1. Place 12oz dextrine AND 4 oz British crystal 22°L (or similar) in the kettle (6 gallons of water) and get to 150-155 degrees for 30 mins. Then remove from wort.
2. Remove the kettle from burner and mix in the extracts malts.
3. Once the extract malts are mixed in put kettle back on burner and get to boil? Not 100% sure on this temp 212?, boil for 60 mins.
4. Add first hop at right away, next with 10 mins left and final when the burner is shut off.
5. With 15 mins left put chiller in the kettle to help with sanitation.
6. Add hops at flame out and 30 min hop stand to 180 degrees.
7. Bring wort down to room temp with chiller.
8. Once at desired temp, move wart to sanitized fermentation bucket.
9. Introduce air but move the wart back and forth between kettle and fermenter bucket a couple times or from sloshing around fermenter bucket.
10. Add yeast to wort, place lid and blow off valve on.
11. Add first round of dry hop after 4 days. (not sure how to get it in bucket?
12. Add 2nd drop hop after another 4 days.
13. 4 days later bottle it.
14. Boil and create priming sugars.
15. sanitize bottling bucket, bottles, caps, and all tubing
16. drain to bottling bucket.
17. Bottle and cap.
18. leave in bottles for about 10-14 days.
19. Chill one deer and test.
20. Hope I did things correctly and enjoy :D

Did i miss anything?
 
Pretty darn similar. I think all those hops will pretty effectively mask any big differences.

So, grain = .75 lbs of liquid malt extract or .60 lbs of dry. I'd sub all the 2-row and the wheat for light extract. That'll be 9.75 lbs of liquid, but if it only comes in 3 or 6 lb containers, you might want to make up the difference with dry. Or just use all dry.

The crushed caramel/carapils malt can be steeped in your brewing water before you add the extract.

The rest is pretty much the same.

I assume that's a 5 gallon recipe? Use 9 pounds of light LME and scale it back to 4.5 gallons. (multiply all the hops and everything by 0.9)

I recommend starting with a cheaper beer style to learn on. Or a kit from Northern Brewer? Make this one second. :)
 
I recommend starting with a cheaper beer style to learn on

What fun is that :D I say jump in with both feet and see what happens. Worst case I lose a few bucks on ingredients. From what i read as long as I sanitize, sanitize, sanitize, I should not COMPLETELY screw it up. :)

I will be writing out full directions to myself and make sure i go over the entire thing a ton in my head before i brew. I am just ordering all my equipment now, so it will be another couple weeks before i am ready to brew. Also need to get all my ingredients ordered, so far only ordered some of the hops and yeast.
 
It's your beer, you can do whatever you want with it. Probably best to listen to people with more experience though ;)
 
It's been a long time since I did any extract beers, but I think you forgot to remove the dextrine and crystal malt after the half hour steep.

Yes did not write it, i will but know to remove the bag with the specialty malt prior to adding the malt extract. Thanks.
 
It's your beer, you can do whatever you want with it. Probably best to listen to people with more experience though

I am listening to everything everyone is contributing and appreciate all the help, I am learning a lot. That is why I am hoping to have a decent first batch, because of everyones comments and the experience they have contributed.

Oh and how do i determine my alcohol ABV?
 
What fun is that :D I say jump in with both feet and see what happens. Worst case I lose a few bucks on ingredients. From what i read as long as I sanitize, sanitize, sanitize, I should not COMPLETELY screw it up. :)

I will be writing out full directions to myself and make sure i go over the entire thing a ton in my head before i brew. I am just ordering all my equipment now, so it will be another couple weeks before i am ready to brew. Also need to get all my ingredients ordered, so far only ordered some of the hops and yeast.

Sanitation is only one of many potential problems.

My first beer wasn't very good, but it had nothing to do with sanitation. In fact, just about everything in the boil itself went fine. My sanitation procedures were perfect too. But the two biggest problems I had with that beer were not getting the wort's temperature down quick enough for the cold break and not being able to control the fermentation temperature, which caused tons of off-flavors, which basically ruined the flavor.

Just a few things to keep in mind. If you do this as your first beer and it turns out good, that's great, but it does look like a pretty expensive beer to risk it on.
 
It looks like ingredients will run about $55. So yes losing $55 will suck if it does not go well, but so would losing $25-30. I still want to give it a go. Its tax return season after all!

The yeast says it needs to be between 64 and 75 degrees. Does that mean anywhere in that range and it will be fine? Or does it need to preferably stay within a couple degrees? And is that just until bottling?
 
WY 1318, London Ale III... there are plenty of brewers who use that and have experience with it, including me. No, it's not okay to keep it literally "anywhere" in that large range, especially the part above 70F. I would adjust to anywhere between 63-70F, starting on the lower end and allowing (encouraging) it to climb after 2 days of fermentation to around 68F.
 
As others mentioned, it's not much harder to brew an NEIPA than any other American ale. The big difference will be in the amount of money you'll spend on ingredients, namely hops.

As with anything, you'll get better and have more consistent results with some practice. There's a fair chance that your first batch will be great and you'll love it. There's also a chance that something will go wrong and the beer won't be very good. Maybe even so wrong that the beer is bad and you'll dump it down the drain.

So, if the prospect of dumping a batch that you cost you $25 in ingredients hurts a lot less than a batch that cost you $50, consider brewing an APA instead. If that difference in ingredient costs doesn't bother you, brew what you want to drink!

(dollar amounts totally pulled out of the air, but are probably not too far off when buying at a LHBS and paying for hops by the ounce)


Fully agree with this. No offence, but you didn't even know that the sample recipe was all-grain. It would be terrible to spend all that money and effort to have forgotten to sanitize your fermenter or chiller because you're not used to the routine. Start with a simple extract IPA (tons of awesome recipes on here with as little as 3 hop additions), get the routine down, get to know your equipment and then jump into having 3 different timers going while trying to tame the temperatures for hop additions.
 
Fully agree with this. No offence, but you didn't even know that the sample recipe was all-grain. It would be terrible to spend all that money and effort to have forgotten to sanitize your fermenter or chiller because you're not used to the routine. Start with a simple extract IPA (tons of awesome recipes on here with as little as 3 hop additions), get the routine down, get to know your equipment and then jump into having 3 different timers going while trying to tame the temperatures for hop additions.

Agree 100%. Learn to crawl before you run. You'll have enough going on your first brew that you are trying to remember or figure out, why complicate things? Figure out what you are doing and how to do it with a simple recipe. Or jump in head first, get discouraged because you expect the world of your first brew that it comes out less than expected and quit brewing. That's what makes home brew great, you can do what you want. :rockin:
 
It looks like ingredients will run about $55. So yes losing $55 will suck if it does not go well, but so would losing $25-30. I still want to give it a go. Its tax return season after all!

The yeast says it needs to be between 64 and 75 degrees. Does that mean anywhere in that range and it will be fine? Or does it need to preferably stay within a couple degrees? And is that just until bottling?

Depends on the yeast. That's for the first few days of fermentation, when when off flavors would develop if at the wrong temps. Something else to consider, fermentation produces heat, so the air temp might be 65, but your wort is going to be near 70.
 
Sanitation is only one of many potential problems.

My first beer wasn't very good, but it had nothing to do with sanitation. In fact, just about everything in the boil itself went fine. My sanitation procedures were perfect too. But the two biggest problems I had with that beer were not getting the wort's temperature down quick enough for the cold break and not being able to control the fermentation temperature, which caused tons of off-flavors, which basically ruined the flavor.

Just a few things to keep in mind. If you do this as your first beer and it turns out good, that's great, but it does look like a pretty expensive beer to risk it on.

Not only that, but it's complicated. 9 different hops additions to keep track of! Maybe I'm just stupid, but I've gotten confused before with just 2 hops (a half ounce of Magnum and a half ounce of something else, I'll say Willamette) I had them both measured out, and I thought I knew which was which but I wasn't certain -- so I threw them both out because I had more available. I learned a lesson pretty cheap (weigh out the hops as you use them, not before. Or label each little bowl of pellets.)

Chilling the hot wort is also something that takes practice. If you're not going to do a simple inexpensive beer first, practice with boiling water. Heck, practice chilling a kettle of boiling water first even if you are going to do something simple. It's not easy to get right the first time.
 
I appreciate the feedback and concerns. I plan to do a dry run first. with just water. It will give me a sense of the burn off and how long things will take, let me check the time of the hop drop, get to use the wort chiller etc.

To me making 2 cases of beer that even if it comes out perfect I am not going to be jazzed up to drink, that is more of a waste than potentially brewing a subpar first batch NE IPA.

I still have a ways to go until first brew. Just ordered most of my equipment, still have more to get, then I need to order all of my ingredients. Also the local brew supply store is having a session on making NE IPA's the beginning of next month so I am going to attend that as well. We give me a chance to watch the process and ask a ton of questions. Maybe I will shoot for my first brew day the day after the session.
 
Not only that, but it's complicated. 9 different hops additions to keep track of! Maybe I'm just stupid, but I've gotten confused before with just 2 hops (a half ounce of Magnum and a half ounce of something else, I'll say Willamette) I had them both measured out, and I thought I knew which was which but I wasn't certain -- so I threw them both out because I had more available. I learned a lesson pretty cheap (weigh out the hops as you use them, not before. Or label each little bowl of pellets.)

Chilling the hot wort is also something that takes practice. If you're not going to do a simple inexpensive beer first, practice with boiling water. Heck, practice chilling a kettle of boiling water first even if you are going to do something simple. It's not easy to get right the first time.

Right. I just designed a recipe recently that uses 6 different hop additions, which I'm planning on doing in about a week from now. Even after years of brewing, it's still something that I need to be really careful about, and it's one of the reasons I never drink while I'm brewing. The chances of screwing up a hop addition (or something in the mash) is too high. By now, a mistake like that will still result in a tasty beer, but it won't be the beer that I carefully designed. When I first started out, stuff like that could have totally ruined my beer.

OP: I just saw your most recent post and you do seem dedicated, so I gotta give you props for that. Just keep in mind that we're trying to give you as much info as possible to ensure you have a good brew day with plenty of learning and, hopefully, a great beer to drink in the end. :) IPAs and pale ales are one of my favorite beer styles, so I really hope that your beer turns out awesome. But if it doesn't, don't give up. Just learn from the experience and make a better beer with your next batch.
 
Not to throw more into the mix, but water quality is a key factor too..
Also, fermentation temp control is probably one thing once a Homebrewer has, they tend to say "why didn't I start with that?"
 
You're very brave!

If you've never seen the actual mechanics of how beer is (home)brewed, definitely attend that NEIPA brew session at your LHBS, or "assist" another brewer to see how it's done and learn some nitty gritties. It will be a real eye opener!
Also, keep in mind, processes can be largely individual, you don't know if they're doing it right, and you don't get to see the handling of the beer later, dry hopping, racking, bottling, which is just as or even more important.

For a 5 gallon batch of a NE IPA you'll need at least an 8 gallon kettle, 10 gallon is better and more future proof when you go all grain. You also need a heating source that can boil that size comfortably.

Count on losing 1/2 a gallon to trub and hop matter in the kettle. After dry hopping, a technique on it's own to do correctly, you'll lose another 1/2 gallon to hop debris. So you should brew 6 gallons to end up with 5 in bottles, at best.

Water wise, use RO water from your local supermarket or Walmart.

Instead of a "dry run" with water, you'd be better off brewing a simpler batch, like an APA or IPA. It gives you the hands on practice that's invaluable.

Sanitation practices need to become second nature. You also need to think ahead before doing anything. For example, taking a sample out of the fermentor sounds simple. But what about the air (oxygen) that gets into the fermentor while you're taking the sample, and how about the sample volume it replaces? How about lifting a bucket lid? Racking?
 
Not to throw more into the mix, but water quality is a key factor too..

Water is important for an all grain version of this beer.... but it is not hard.

1 level tsp of Calcium Chloride and 1 level tsp of Gypsum per 5 gallons of Reverse Osmosis water that you use (mash and sparge water).

You can get the minerals cheap at home-brew store. Use "refill" stations to fill 3-5 gallon jugs at walmart/grocery store.

If you add those minerals in that amount to RO water - you will have the right profile and pH for your beer.
 
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