Big IPA Recipe (1 lb of hops)
With a couple exceptions I have always been a bit underwhelmed by the quality of my hoppy beers. They are generally solid, but they never taste quite as bright, clean, fresh as the top shelf commercial IPAs (and double IPAs). With hop prices back down close to their "pre-crisis" levels, I though it was time to give another shot at brewing a really hop forward beer.
The malt-bill is loosely based on Russian River's Pliny the Elder, with a gravity walking the line between IPA and Double IPA at 1.071. I want a base beer that will be nice and dry to accent the hop bitterness and flavor (too much crystal in a big IPA and it tastes like a barleywine to me). I used a good ol' American pale malt, which has a neutral, less malty flavor than the English Marris Otter I tend to use for ales. On top of the pale malt I added some carapils for head retention and body and a touch of crystal 40 (since I had a bit left over from another batch). For added dryness I added .75 lbs of clear candi sugar to the kettle during the sparge, normally I would've just used table sugar, but I had the candi sugar left over from my white sugar experiment. As a side note, I recently heard an Interview with Vinnie (the owner/brewer at Russian River) where he indicated that he originally added the combination of carapils and sugar (which work against each other in terms of body) to boost the gravity when his mash tun couldn't handle just doing a beer with more basemalt (but he likes the results so much he has kept on doing it even now when he could just add more basemalt).
I added 5 g of gypsum (Calcium Sulfate) to the strike/sparge water, which assuming my water report is accurate, brought it close to 150 ppm sulfate, which I have found to be a good level to accentuate hop bitterness without making the beer taste minerally. The calcium in gypsum also helps to keep the mash pH in check for such a pale beer with minimal specialty malts.
One of the biggest things I am working on in this batch is keeping oxidation to a minimum, now that I have a kegging system this should be a bit easier. I left the blowoff tube on until I transferred to the keg for secondary (no samples) to ensure that no oxygen gets into the fermenter. I flushed the keg with CO2 twice before I transfer the beer into it for dry hopping, I even flushed the auto-siphon with CO2 to make sure it doesn't add any oxygen to the situation.
I used all pellet hops in the boil to reduce the wort lost to the huge quantity of hops. I went with Columbus for bittering with a mix of Amarillo and Simcoe after that. Nothing terribly ground breaking, but it seems like just about ever great IPA out there uses Amarillo and/or Simcoe (see the bottom of the post). I added the flameout additions in stages over the first few minutes post-boil, adding some after the beer had a chance to cool slightly. The faster you can cool the wort after adding hops the fewer of those precious volatile hop aromatics will be lost.
I used the same three hop combo from the boil for dry hopping as well. I transferred the beer to the a keg after primary fermentation was complete along with 3 oz of whole hops in a mesh bag (whole hops are easier to deal with at this stage and don't give a grassy/vegetal flavor like pellets can with extended exposure). The beer will sit on these hops for 10-14 days at room temperature (since the hop oils are more soluble at those temps). After that I am going to open up the keg and remove the spent hops, replacing them with an identical second dose of hops that will sit in the beer as it force carbonates. This second dose of hops will stay in the keg allowing for a full, bright hop aroma that is fresher than if I had to wait 2 weeks for natural bottle conditioning post-dry hopping.
Hopefully the tweaks to my recipe and technique this time around will result in the hoppy beer I've been dreaming of.
DIPA Bomb
Recipe Specifics (All-Grain)
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Batch Size (Gal): 5.50
Total Grain (Lbs): 15.07
Anticipated OG: 1.071
Anticipated SRM: 4.7
Anticipated IBU: 171.3
Brewhouse Efficiency: 69 %
Wort Boil Time: 100 min
Grain/Sugar
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89.6% 13.50 lbs. American Pale Malt
5.0% 0.75 lbs. Clear Candi Sugar Rocks
5.0% 0.75 lbs. Cara-Pils Dextrine Malt
0.5% 0.07 lbs. Crystal 40L
Hops
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3.00 oz. Columbus (Pellet 11.00% AA) @ 90 min.
1.00 oz. Columbus (Pellet 11.00% AA) @ 45 min.
1.00 oz. Simcoe (Pellet 12.40% AA) @ 30 min.
3.00 oz. Amarillo (Pellet 8.60% AA) @ 0 min.
2.00 oz. Simcoe (Pellet 12.40% AA) @ 0 min.
1st Dry Hop
1.00 oz. Columbus (Whole 11.00% AA)
1.00 oz. Amarillo (Whole 8.60% AA)
1.00 oz. Simcoe (Whole 12.70% AA)
2nd Dry Hop
1.00 oz. Columbus (Whole 11.00% AA)
1.00 oz. Amarillo (Whole 8.60% AA)
1.00 oz. Simcoe (Whole 12.70% AA)
Extras
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1.00 Whirlfloc @ 10 Min.(boil)
0.50 Tsp Yeast Nutrient @ 10 Min.(boil)
Yeast
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WYeast 1056 American Ale/Chico
Water Profile
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Profile: Washington DC + 5 g gypsum
Mash Schedule
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Sacch Rest 60 min @ 152
Notes
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Brewed 1/30/10
Made a 1 qrt starter the night before. Yeast was fresh , manufactured about a month earlier.
5 g of gypsum added total, 2 to mash, 3 to sparge
Candi sugar added to the kettle while the wort drained to give it time to dissolve.
Did a fly sparge until the last 1.5 gallons, then did a modified batch sparge stir/vorlauf/drain.
Collected 7.75 gallons of 1.056 wort.
Added 1 oz of Amarillos at flame out, 1 oz each Amarillo/Simcoe right after I started the chiller, and 1 oz of each again 1 minute later.
Cooled to 66, strained, let sit for ~10 minutes to settle before transferring to carboy. Gave 60 seconds of pure O2 and pitched the yeast starter (at full krausen). Still plenty of hop/trub in solution. Left at ~62 ambient.
Strong fermentation after 12 hours. Surprisingly no blow-off needed.
2/5/10 Fermentation looks about finished, beer is moderately clear.
2/6/10 Transferred into a keg with the first 3 oz of dry hops. The gas poppet seemed to be leaking at first, but adding more CO2 seemed to do the tick getting it to seal.
2/15/10 Moved keg to fridge at 40 degrees to help it drop a bit clearer before the second dose of hops is added.
2/16/10 Pulled the dry hops, added the 3 oz of keg hops. Sealed it back up, flushed twice with CO2, and left it to carb at 11 PSI.
2/18/10 Pulled a sample to get rid of some of the yeast and take a gravity reading. Down to 1.010 (86% AA, 8.1% ABV), nice lingering bitterness and a huge hop aroma despite the minimal carbonation.
3/04/10 1st tasting, turned out very well. Big hop aroma and plenty of bitterness, all the work on this one was well worth it.
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Hopping schedule info for great commercial hop bombs, a great place to start if you are looking to clone one of these beers or just try a new hop combination:
Alpine Duet - Simcoe and Amarillo
Alpine Hoppy Birthday - Pacific Jade, Centennial, Amarillo, Columbus, Nelson Sauvin, Citra, and Simcoe.
Alpine Nelson - Nelson Sauvin and Southern Cross
Alpine Pure Hoppiness - Hallertau, Hersbrucker, Tomahawk, Cascade and Centennial
Avery Maharaja - Columbus, Centennial, and Simcoe
Ballast Point Sculpin - Mash hops: Simcoe, Boil: CTZ, Chinook, Cascade, Northern Brewer, Centennial, Galena, Amarillo, Dry Hop: Amarillo & Simcoe. For a 5 gallon batch dry hop with about 3 oz of each.
Bear Republic Racer 5 - Chinook, Cascade, Columbus, and Centennial
Bell's Hopslam - (2007) Hersbrucker, Centennial, Glacier, Vanguard, and Crystal in the kettle, and then dry hopped with Simcoe. In 2009 there is a mention of Amarillo in addition to Simcoe in the dry hop.
Bell's Two Hearted - Centennial
Boulevard Double Wide - Zeus, Bravo, Chinook, Centennial, Cascade
Brew Kettle White Raja - Citra, Centennial, and Summit
Captain Lawrence Captain's Reserve - Columbus, Chinook, and Cascade
Cigar City Jai Alai - Kettle hops: Ahtanum, Columbus, Cascade, Amarillo, and Centennial. Dry hopped with Simcoe.
Coast The Boy King - Citra, Chinook, Nugget, Cascade, Centennial and Columbus.
DC Brau On the Wings of Armegeddon - Falconer's Flight (blend)
Fat Head's Head Hunter - Simcoe, Columbus, and Cascade
Firestone Walker Double Jack - Bittering: Warrior, Columbus; Late Kettle: Cascade, and Centennial;
Dry Hops: Amarillo, Cascade, and Centennial
Firestone Walker Union Jack - Bittering: Magnum; Late Kettle: Cascade, Centennial; Dry Hops: Amarillo, Cascade, Centennial, Citra, Chinook, and Simcoe
Flying Fish Exit 16 - FW: Citra, Boil: Columbus, 5 min: Centennial: 3 min: Simcoe, WP: Citra, First DH: 50% chinook, 50% Citra, Second DH: 75% Citra, 25% Columbus
Great Lakes Commodore Perry - Simcoe, Willamette, and Cascade
Green Flash Le Freak - Kettle: Summit and Nugget. Amarillo dry hop during fermentation
Green Flash West Coast IPA - Simcoe, Columbus, Centennial, and Cascade
Hill Farmstead Abner - Centennial, Chinook, Columbus, Simcoe, and Warrior
Hill Farmstead Ephraim - Centennial, Chinook, Columbus, Simcoe, and Warrior
Hill Farmstead Double Galaxy - Galaxy
Ithaca Flower Power - Kettle: Simcoe, Cascade, Ahtanum, and Centennial. Dry-Hop: Simcoe, Amarillo, and Chinook
Kern River Citra Double IPA - Nugget to bitter, Citra in the kettle, and Citra and Amarillo dry hop
Lagunitas Sucks - Chinook, Simcoe, Apollo, Summit, Nugget, and HBC342
Port Hop 15 - Kettle: Challenger, Golding, Chinook, Tettnang, Magnum, Phoenix, Sterling, Cascade, Centennial, Simcoe, Columbus, Galena, Amarillo, Saaz, and Aurora. Dry hop: Simcoe and Centennial.
Russian River Pliny the Elder - Kettle hop extract, Simcoe, Columbus, Centennial, and Amarillo. Dry Hop Simcoe, Columbus, and Centennial.
Russian River Pliny the Younger - Bittered with extract, Amarillo extract mid-boil, Amarillo and Simcoe (plus others?) in the boil.
Dry Hop Schedule
DH 1 Simcoe, Amarillo, Centennial for one week and remove
DH 2 Amarillo, Centennial for one week and remove
DH 3 Simcoe for one week and remove
DH 4 Simcoe, Amarillo Dry Hop in Keg
Smuttynose Big A IPA - 2008: Nugget, Cascade, Centennial, Crystal, Chinook, Sterling. 2006: Warrior, Cascade, Centennial, Crystal, Horizon, Amarillo, Ahtanum
Smuttynose "Finestkind" - Bittering: Magnum; Flavoring: Simcoe, Centennial, Santiam; Dry hops: Amarillo
Southern Tier Unearthly IPA - Kettle Hops: Chinook and Cascade, Hop Back: Styrian Golding, Dry Hopped: Cascade, Centennial, and Chinook
Stone 10th Anniversary - Bittering: Summit. Whirlpool: Chinook and Crystal. Dry hop: Simcoe and Crystal.
Stone IPA - Chinook, Columbus, Centennial
Stone Ruination - Bittering: Columbus. Whirlpool: Centennial. Dry hop: Centennial
Surly 16 Grit/Abrasive - Warrior, Citra (Previously CTZ bittering extract, Amarillo, and Columbus. Before that, kettle hopped with CTZ extract, Amarillo and Glacier hops. Twice dry-hopped with Glacier and Amarillo).
Surly Furious - Warrior, Ahtanum, Simcoe, and Amarillo
Three Floyds Dreadnaught - Warrior, Simcoe, Centennial, and Cascade
Three Floyds Zombie Dust - Citra
Town Hall Masala Mama - Amarillo, Cascade, Centennial, and Mt. Hood
Posts
39 comments:
Is this the first hop forward beer you've done since getting the kegerator?
I think it's really hard to make a decent IPA unless your force carbonating
Pretty close, the saison I kegged a month or two back was pretty hoppy (Saaz), but nothing like this.
Northern Brewer sells the Hopshot if you're ever interested in using the same hop extract that Pliny uses in the boil. I'm 99.9% sure it's the exact product he's using just repackaged. I just bought 5 of them to share between me and a friend. I'm going to try an malt extract pale ale with all hop extract and dry yeast pretty soon.
(Should have said that Vinnie uses in the boil FOR Pliny.)
is that Hopslam hopping schedule confirmed?
I got the Hop Slam hop schedule off a message board at some point, but something that weird strikes me as legitimate.
I had been eying that extract at some point, but I had so much Columbus in my freezer it didn't seem worth it this time around. I'd love to brew the same recipe again and just make the change to bittering extract to see what difference it makes. The way Vinnie talks about it, not only does it save wort but it also reduces the grassy character of the beer. I'll be interested to see the results on your blog.
Mike I live in SE Michigan and I've found some wild hops growing near my home. They have a great fresh smell. Should I try and harvest them and make a beer or mead out of them?
Chris, go for it! Either use them fresh and green right after harvest, or dry them first. The hard part will be figuring out how bitter they are, so you might want to use commercial hops for the first addition, and the wild hops for the additions near flameout. Good luck, hopefully they are tasty enough that you can go back to the same spot every fall to get some for an annual batch. Good luck.
I happen to live down the street from the head brewer from Three Floyds, and he gave me a nice tip as to getting that super green fresh hop flavor that craft beers have. The main thing to aim for is not so much HOW MANY hops you use, but WHEN you use them. Essentially, he recommended trying to get 50% to 75% of your IBU's from the flavor and aroma additions. Meaning, you're basically going to end up with a pretty small bittering charge, and most of the hops will end up being put in the beer in the last 15 minutes.
Following this one closely - I'm a big fan of a specific variety of hopbomb, i.e., the intensely dry, full of hop flavor but not overly pungent or bitter west coast variety (Sculpin, Alesmith IPA, PtE, etc.). I've long thought along the lines of Kevin that leaning towards late hop additions (as well as freshness) are the key to this (the brewer at Alpine once said something very similar), but the wife and I are just now starting down the road to all-grain brewing, so it may finally be time to test these ideas. The extract discussion is interesting as well.
Looks like this will be a good one. Where had you heard that pellet hops will give a grassy/vegetal flavor? There's plenty of debate about grassy flavors from dry-hops, but I haven't heard anything specifically about pellets. Also, your wort look like it has a lot of settling to do... do you remove the hot/cold break? If not, are you tasting any off-flavors?
It is turning out very nicely, just had my first partially carbed sample over the weekend. Huge pine forward hoppy nose, lingering bitterness, deceptive alcohol etc...
That pellet hops giving a grassy flavor is an observation I've made. It makes sense as the pellets are broken into smaller pieces and the cell structure is damaged making chlorophyll (which I assume is responsible for the grassy flavor) more available for pick-up by the beer. It would be an interesting side-by-side experiment to dry hop to portions of the same batch with an equal amount of pellets and cones and taste them over the course of a month or two to see how the flavor changes.
I strain the wort through a sieve post-cooling to remove most of the hops and some of the break material. Never had any off-flavors (to my knowledge) from not doing a better job to remove the break material.
Speaking of hop extract, I believe Hop Stoopid by lagunitas uses extract as well (according to the label of the bottles I have had)...although I don't know where in the process. It has an awesome hop aroma and taste. I would assume with the extract they also use tons of late hops like lots of the hop bombs these days do.
How much liquid did you leave in the kettle? I find with beers with lots of hops I am better off bumping up the recipe volume an extra .5 gallons or so due to hops soaking up wort and also not wanting to clog ball valves and chillers.
btw...first comment on this blog, but have been reading for quite a while. cheers!
If I recall correctly Lagunitas actually makes their own hop extract and uses it for all of their additions. That is certainly something that not many other breweries are doing.
Despite the recipe for 5.5 gallons I was at only 5 when i racked to the fermenter. I dump my wort through a sieve, but with 10 oz of hops I lost a good deal to absorption.
How did this beer turn out? It looks like its a nice one.:) I've got a few IPA's on my blog you might fancy trying? Did you get on any further with the brewery upgrade you were planning?
http://bennachiebrewery.blogspot.com/
(commenting on an old post because my question is relevant to this recipe)
I was recently given 11 lbs of Slovenian Celeia hops (2.8% aa) and i am really at a loss with what i should do with all of them especially considering the low aa percentage and the fact that i have never heard of them before.
i plan on giving half of them to freinds of mine that brews but that still leaves me with some 5.5 lbs of hops.
ideally i would like to use as much as i can in one batch but i am extremely burnt out on ipas as of the moment.
which direction style/recipe wise would you go with these. i was thinking something along the lines of an imperial hopped up pilsner (i have never made a lager) or a strong ale / barley wine.
what do you think?
Never used them, but there are some great Noble hop bombs out there (Sam Adams Imperial Pils for example). A guy in my homebrew club did a relatively light beer with 1 lb of Hallertau, I was surprised at how moderate the hop character was compared to an American IPA with a much lower amount of hops (can’t remember what his schedule was like). I’d go with a pale, moderate gravity beer and load it up with the hops and see how it turns out. I’m sure they’d also work in a pils if you wanted to go that direction.
Worse comes to worse maybe a local brew pub or homebrew shop would trade you for a couple pounds of another variety.
I've never thought of staggering my knock out hops as you do here. What effect do you feel it has, and is there any increased risk of hot side oxidation.
I've never done a side-by-side to measure the effect, but my hope is that staggering the additions gives more hop complexity since you have hops that are exposed to heat for different lengths of times. In more recent batches I've added flame-out hops and then waited 10-20 minutes (more closely mimicking the whirlpool addition many craft brewers do) before proceeding with another addition and chilling. I was actually surprised how little hop aroma I had before dry hopping my last Pliny the Younger clone which had three additions of 3 oz of end of boil hops, I seemed to have better results with the faux-whirlpool addition in my India Red Ale.
I don't think hot side aeration is a big issue for homebrewers unless you are filtering (especially not in a hoppy beer that will be consumed quickly).
About to do another series of hoppy beers, so more opportunities to try out new schedules.
I was given the Hopslam hop bill by a Bells rep. Here is the entire reply: "We use Hersbrucker, Centennial, Glacier, Vanguard, & Crystal in the kettle, and then dry hop with Simcoe. Hopslam has an unusually high degree of fermentation, so you also encounter a fermentation profile that you wouldn't find in many of our other beers. Our internal taste panels regularly identify a peach aroma that is unique among our brands to Hopslam. That, in concert with the various hops, may be the tropical flavor you asked about."
I plan to do a double batch of this recipe tomorrow to split with a friend, and wanted to know if you have made any further tweaks that you are happy with. I think we will be using corn sugar rather than candy sugar to keep from having residual sweetness or flavor impact, which I assume is only in the recipe to step up the ABV.
Exactly, corn sugar is a fine substitute for the candi sugar. No tweaks for the recipe, but this Galaxy DIPA post has some tips on brewing hoppy beers in general. I also would consider adding that first dose of flame out hops and letting them steep for 20-30 minutes before you proceed with chilling and the other additions.
Good luck, and let me know how it turns out!
Well it looks like something went wrong with the batch. My friend's system generally gets around 78% efficiency. The recipe was adjusted for his system, but we only ended up at 1060 OG.
I suspect the issue happened during the sparge. This is a brutus type system, and the ball valve allowing water in from the HLT was flowing at a faster rate than the wort was leaving the MT. Combine that with too much talking and not enough watching, and what you end up with is an overflowing MT. We caught it immediately, but I believe that messed up the grain bed and probably allowed for more sparge water than wort to make its way into the BK.
Looks like we're going to have a hopped out low ABV beer :)
The huge amount of wort that the hops suck up could also have something to do with it. I often drop 5-10% efficiency when doing highly hopped beers. It should still be delicious (and you could always add some DME if you want to boost the gravity).
I'm not quite following how wort loss to hops would affect gravity efficiency? Can you explain? I understand the volume loss to the thirsty hops, but it would seem that hops would soak up more water than dissolved solids, and if anything might further concentrate the wort. Of course, this is based on assumptions and not science.
Not to dredge up a 3 year old post, but how would you change your dry hop schedule if you were to bottle condition? I am kegless
I'd probably do two 4-5 day dry hops. Pull the first dose of hops when you add the second. After that, bottle ASAP. As soon as it is carbonated, get the bottles into the fridge and enjoy!
not that it really matters but theres no citra in abner. edward, abner, and ephraim are essentially the same beer but boozier and hopper the further you go down the line, except for with the addition of corn sugar to abner and eprhaim and the omission of crystal from ephraim
Thanks. FWIW Citra was listed previously on their webite. Maybe the recipe was changed with the continued scarcity of Citra?
Question. So my first batch of keg hops are in the keg. I purged the headspace a few times and have like 12 psi of CO2 in there. Don't have the CO2 attached. Will this get absorbed? Wondering if this initial pressurization started to carbonate my brew.
The pressure in the head and beer will equalize (i.e., some of the CO2 will dissolve in the beer), but given the ratio of beer to head-space it won't be very carbonated from the initial pressurization.
Hi there, how are you? so i will try 2 of your beers this week, i have a question...
Can you send my de water profile of this Big IPA and the water of your India Red Ale Recipe?
Thanks
I wouldn't worry too much about trying to hit a specific target. My local water has more carbonate than I'd intentionally add to a pale beer like this, in fact usually I dilute it with distilled water. In this case I'd add gypsum to get to 150 PPM. That will give you a good amount of calcium as well. I'd keep sodium, magnesium, and chloride low.
For the red IPA my target was similar, around 130 PPM sulfate. A little carbonate wouldn't be as bad with the darker malts to acidify the mash though. Hitting a target mash pH is more important than the specific amounts.
ok, beacuse in Brazil we have a light water i have here
CA 5 ppm
Mg 7 ppm
Na 5 ppm
Ci 0 ppm
So 15 ppm
Hco3 5 ppm
Hey, love the blog.
Is it possible to post the final water chemistry table for each beer like you did in the NEIPA: Lupulin Edition recipe.
It's handy to know what the finished mineral content should be so i can adjust my local water to hit those numbers. I understand posting the quantities of gypsum etc is perfect if you are modifying distilled water but if I was to modify my local tap water this would be different.
Cheers, keep up the good work
It's too much of a pain to go back to old recipes and add that info. You can certainly reverse engineer the profile using my local water and notes about dilution. I was long resistant to posting water profiles because I view them as estimated compromises, not necessarily something to be mimicked. For example, I wouldn't add bicarbonate for a pale beer if your water has less than mine. Best of luck!
Washington, DC
Calcium: 46.00 ppm
Sulfate: 54.00 ppm
Magnesium: 10.00 ppm
Chloride: 32.00 ppm
Sodium: 16.00 ppm
Bicarbonate: 90.00 ppm
Awesome, cheers
I Just brewed this recipe.
Mashed at 149 and hit 1.070 OG and 1.007 FG. It is the best beer I've ever brewed. Thank you for the recipe. The reduction in Crystal really helped this beer.
Thanks
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