Session IPA with one type of hops

[loeks]

I really don't understand adding hops every 10 minutes; it seems to be an American IPA thing. I like simple recipes with just a few ingredients and just a few steps. It's a lot easier to tweak them if I want to brew it again but use a different yeast or hop or whatever. I don't think I ever use more than 2 hop varieties in a beer.

I'm not really crazy about American IPA's either but this one was a special request from a friend. This is a bit of a unique hop schedule because there is no 60 min. bittering addition; all of the bittering comes from the larger amount that is all added at 20 and later.

 

[loeks]

I took a sample the other day and it had a good amount of aroma, but not as much bitterness as I was expecting. Since I have never brewed an IPA, I'm not sure if that's normal. Will I get a little more perceived bitterness once it's all said and done or not?

 

[joshesmusica]

I took a sample the other day and it had a good amount of aroma, but not as much bitterness as I was expecting. Since I have never brewed an IPA, I'm not sure if that's normal. Will I get a little more perceived bitterness once it's all said and done or not?

it depends. how far along is it? is it still in the fermenter? or is it bottled and fully carbed?

once you get it bottled and fully carbed, the perceived bitterness go up a bit more.

 

[loeks]

it depends. how far along is it? is it still in the fermenter? or is it bottled and fully carbed?

once you get it bottled and fully carbed, the perceived bitterness go up a bit more.

It's still in the fermenter and has been there for almost exactly a week and a half.

 

[joshesmusica]

once you bottle it, let it carbonate/condition for three weeks. then see if there's a difference.
a fun experiment you could do is chill it 1 week after bottling, 2 weeks, then 3 weeks, hell maybe even 4 and 5 weeks if you really wanna get crazy. then taste all 3 (or 4 or 5) in the same sitting. it will give you an idea how flavors develop with some time.

 

[gregkeller]

The beer will taste very different carbonated. Not sure if "more bitter" is the term i'd use, but the co2 dissolved in solution, will be adding carbonic acid. That gives it a sharper flavor, that maybe could be considered more bitter. Basically it will be a lot crisper once carbed up.

 

[schematix]

what's your water like? did you add any gypsum? I always found my PA/APA/IPA type beers to lack the hop punch until i started to add additional sulfates.

 

[E-Rodge]

No downside... some people say single hop beers lack "depth" but I don't find that to be the case.

1 hop variety can impart several different flavor/aroma notes... go for it.

I just did a Marris Otter/Amarillo SMaSH (single malt and single hop), a lot of people make these types of beers. Worth looking into if not just for some added info/research.

+1
When looking to understand the ingredients, single hop can show you a lot and be just as good as many of the complex ipas. I just finished my second MO/Amarillo smash in the last 4 brews (but diff yeast) and am thoroughly impressed by this combo!

 

[loeks]

once you bottle it, let it carbonate/condition for three weeks. then see if there's a difference.
a fun experiment you could do is chill it 1 week after bottling, 2 weeks, then 3 weeks, hell maybe even 4 and 5 weeks if you really wanna get crazy. then taste all 3 (or 4 or 5) in the same sitting. it will give you an idea how flavors develop with some time.

That's a cool idea. I might do that.

 

[loeks]

The beer will taste very different carbonated. Not sure if "more bitter" is the term i'd use, but the co2 dissolved in solution, will be adding carbonic acid. That gives it a sharper flavor, that maybe could be considered more bitter. Basically it will be a lot crisper once carbed up.

Also a good point. Thanks.

 

[loeks]

what's your water like? did you add any gypsum? I always found my PA/APA/IPA type beers to lack the hop punch until i started to add additional sulfates.

Water here is pretty good. About a mile away from Lake Michigan. Tap water that I use doesn't have any bad flavors to it.

 

[schematix]

Water here is pretty good. About a mile away from Lake Michigan. Tap water that I use doesn't have any bad flavors to it.

Good tasting/smelling tap water doesn't necessarily make great beer. Bad tasting/smelling tap water will make bad beer.

You may want to take a trip over the the brew science forum and read up on water. Hop forward beers are greatly accentuated by the addition of sulfate. Without it they just taste flat. It's kind of like eating food without any salt.

I can say from experience that I've made a lot of good beer with plain filtered tap water. I never made a great beer until i tweaked it though, and didn't make an outstanding beer until i used reverse osmosis water and added the minerals to it.

 

[z-bob]

The tap water here tastes good but it's a nightmare for brewing. Most of the homebrewers just buy bottled water. Someday I'll work on water treatment, but that's a whole big project in itself and I'd rather work on my brewing for now.

 

[loeks]

The tap water here tastes good but it's a nightmare for brewing. Most of the homebrewers just buy bottled water. Someday I'll work on water treatment, but that's a whole big project in itself and I'd rather work on my brewing for now.

That's basically how I feel. I'm sure I could get better tasting beer if I messed with water treatment but for now, I'm not going to worry too much about it. Call me crazy, but I'd rather keep things as simple as possible even if the flavor of my beer suffers a little bit. I'm not trying to impress anyone.

 

[loeks]

Update on this beer for anyone who is curious about how things are going:

I dumped 2oz. of Centennial into my primary after it had been fermenting for 2 1/2 weeks. Dryhopped for 4 days and bottled after it had been in primary for exactly three weeks.

This was my first time dryhopping, and I didn't take into consideration that I didn't want to get hop pellet bits in the bottles. I thought about cold crashing the glass carboy in my fridge, but I was afraid it would be too heavy for the glass drawers on the bottom of the fridge. On bottling day, I just put my BIAB bag in my bottling bucket to catch as much of the hops as possible.

I set the carboy on a chair to transfer to the bottling bucket and only got three gallons in the bucket. Afterwards I realized that the chair tilted the carboy so the side I was looking at when I was racking looked like a lower level of beer above the yeast cake. If I had been looking at the other side (the side that tilted more towards the ground), I would have ended up with at least another half gallon of beer in the bucket. Oh well.

I used just under 3 oz. of priming sugar for three gallons, and I ended up with 33 bottles when it was all said and done.

So tomorrow will be two weeks since I bottled... I couldn't help myself and drank two of them last night, and it was really good. Could have been a little more carbed, but it's still a bit early, and I was really afraid of having bombs. The malt profile was awesome. The bitterness was great for me. Probably not quite as hoppy as a session IPA should be, but I'm good with that.

So, that's where I'm at. Thanks for all of the pointers and suggestions along the way y'all.

 

[loeks]

Forgot to mention, the ABV ended up around 4.5%. Not bad.