Brew #3 - American IPA (BJCP 14B)

Brew #3 - American IPA (BJCP - 14B)

Bell Curve IPA

***After a 1 year hiatus, I figure it is time to pick the blog back up.  Here is a post I abandoned half way through construction. Much of it was written in 2014 and updated in 2015***

Of all the styles I brew a lot IPA has given me the most headaches...from brewing and probably also from drinking.

I may brew Pale Ale more than any style, but when I buy beer, it is almost always IPA.  I like to try new IPAs to check what craft brewers are doing with the style. I like trying the new IPAs with crazy freaky hops, but I mostly stick to my favorites.

I like a good, fresh-tasting IPA that has huge fresh aroma, medium-to-high alcohol, clean malt and hop flavor and a nice light body and color.  I like an IPA that is low on residual sugar and with precious little caramel malt influence.  This is the prototypical West Coast IPA and it can be harder to brew that it looks in paper.

Homebrewed IPAs often come off as being just that... Homebrewed IPAs (at least my early efforts did).  There are a lot of reasons for this.  Fermentation problems, heavy-handed recipe formulation, under-attenuation and a host of other process flaws can really impact a homebrewed IPA.  But the primary villain out there waiting to ruin your perfect IPA is Oxygen.

Oxygen can impact the hops flavor and aroma from storage, through fermentation, dry hopping through packaging the finished beer.  It’s the boogie man and it is real.

The other code I needed to crack before creating commercial-quality IPAs was water.  And I’ll be honest, I did more harm than good for a few years. Hard water that is low in alkalinity is best for these pale-hoppy beers.  But going too far with your adjustments can result in an overly harsh, mineral/metallic tasting beer. I’ve done it myself, and if I can help you from making the same mistake, we’ll all have a reason to raise a glass.

The Roadmap:

I mentioned above that I like to stick to my favorites when I shell out $4-5 for a bomber of IPA at the store. Some of the IPAs that inspire me to brew the style are Gigantic IPA, India Pelican Ale (Now called Imperial Pelican Ale) and Firestone Walker Union Jack.

The common characteristics of these beers are all a light color, ABV hitting somewhere from 6.5-7.5%, a big hoppy flavor centered on Cascade/Centennial with some contributions from more edgy hops like Columbus and Chinook and also from newer hops like Simcoe and Amarillo.  These beers are all light in color, with a light body and minimal crystal malt presence.  For that reason, I used these beers as the template for my recipes.

I’ve tried a half dozen or so variations of similar IPA recipes over the past year or so.  I take inspiration from the Union Jack IPA episode of Can You Brew It and a little independent research done on India Pelican Ale (before it was reformulated as Imperial Pelican).  I stick to a very simple grain bill with kettle additions of Centennial/Cascade and multiple massive dry hop additions.

Try as I might, I still haven’t found “The One” as far as IPAs go. The good news is that I get to try new and interesting things. And I will say this recipe is pretty out there for me... creatively.  Who knows how it will work out, but I had fun drawing it up.

The Grain Bill:

Simplicity matters here.  There is so damn much going on in the hop schedule, there is no need to fuss around with the grain bill.  I am just going with a simple clean backbone to prop up the hop additions.  I want to hit that 6.5-7.5% range.  I want to finish dry. I want a light color, body and very little sticky caramel flavor influence.

The Hops:

This beer is all hops and the hops schedule was a freaking blast to conceive.

Some of the key points I wanted to hit with this beer were:

• Smooth bitterness
• Huge hop flavor and aroma

One technique for achieving these goals is to place the larger additions at the end of the boil... Called Hop-Bursting.  I had in mind a constantly escalating hop schedule.  The more I thought about it, the more conceptual I got about it. I thought, “Wouldn’t it be cool if I just stuck with the same 2 hops and just doubled the amounts at each addition.”  Cool idea, but which hops?

I’ve tried so many hop varieties and blends. But I always come back to Centennial and Cascade.  They just fit right for me.

Doubling the additions is a cool idea in the kettle.  But it was not a sustainable idea in the dry hop.  I considered just sticking with a couple ounces of Cascade/Centennial but, I felt I needed to come up with something cool enough to compliment that kettle schedule.  So, if I couldn’t double the additions, why not do the opposite?  I’ve done multiple dry hop additions in the past and it worked very well.

I got it in my head that I could have this sort of Bell Curve approach to the hop profile to this IPA. Minimal additions at the beginning and end of the process, with a huge swell of hops right in the late kettle and early dry hop.

 

The kettle additions are all Cascade/Centennial, but I let myself get a little more daring in the dry hop.  Cascade/Centennial make up the largest contributions again, but have support from Amarillo, Chinook, Simcoe and Columbus. These are some of my favorite IPA hops and I love the potential complexity that they will bring to this beer.

The Yeast:

The old standby again for this beer as well.  WLP-007 is a British yeast, but man .. it ferments the hell out of a big, hoppy American IPA.  It’s virtues are worth mentioning again and again.  Clean ester production, unbeatable fermentation time, unbelievable flocculation...resulting in amazing clarity. Hops sing like a choir of angels with this yeast.

The Water:

I use the same profile for American Pale as I do with IPA.  3:1 Sulfate-to-Chloride ratio and zero alkalinity.  It took me years of ruining beers before I just broke down; ordered a water report, read a book, bought a pH meter and started acidifying my mash and sparge.  It is not beginner stuff.  But it worked wonders for my pale hoppy beers.

The Recipe:

Grain Bill:

14 lbs 8.0 oz	Pale Malt (2 Row) US (2.0 SRM)	Grain
1 lbs	Munich Malt - 10L (10.0 SRM)	Grain
8.0 oz	Cara-Pils/Dextrine (2.0 SRM)	Grain
8.0 oz	Caramel/Crystal Malt - 40L (40.0 SRM)	Grain

Hops Schedule:

0.25 oz	Cascade [8.80 %] - Boil 60.0 min	Hop	7.6 IBUs
0.25 oz	Centennial [10.00 %] - Boil 60.0 min	Hop	8.6 IBUs
0.50 oz	Cascade [8.80 %] - Boil 30.0 min	Hop	7.7 IBUs
0.50 oz	Centennial [10.00 %] - Boil 30.0 min	Hop	8.8 IBUs
1.00 oz	Cascade [8.80 %] - Boil 15.0 min	Hop	8.1 IBUs
1.00 oz	Centennial [10.00 %] - Boil 15.0 min	Hop	9.2 IBUs
2.00 oz	Cascade [8.80 %] - Steep/Whirlpool 20.0 min	Hop	13.4 IBUs
2.00 oz	Centennial [10.00 %] - Steep/Whirlpool 20.0 min	Hop	15.2 IBUs
1.00 oz	Cascade [8.80 %] - Dry Hop 7.0 Days	Hop	0.0 IBUs
1.00 oz	Centennial [10.00 %] - Dry Hop 7.0 Days	Hop	0.0 IBUs
0.50 oz	Chinook [13.00 %] - Dry Hop 5.0 Days	Hop	0.0 IBUs
0.50 oz	Columbus (Tomahawk) [14.00 %] - Dry Hop 5.0 Days	Hop	0.0 IBUs
0.25 oz	Amarillo Gold [8.50 %] - Dry Hop 3.0 Days	Hop	0.0 IBUs
0.25 oz	Simcoe [13.00 %] - Dry Hop 3.0 Days	Hop	0.0 IBUs

A Word About Oxygen:

Oxygen is the IPA killer.  Oxygen is no friend of (fermented) beer.  But it is particularly mean and spiteful to IPAs.  To protect against oxygen, I take a few steps.

• I always flush hops with CO2 before vacuum sealing
• I minimize my contact with the finished beer after fermentation.
• When dry-hopping, I flush hops before adding them to the fermentor.
• Purge all carboys and kegs with CO2
• Push sterile transfers with CO2 as detailed in the APA write up.

Bottle conditioning IPAs never worked for me.  And it was not a lack of effort.  But I have to believe that the exposure to O2 in the bottle bucket and in each individual bottle took their toll.  I also believe the secondary fermentation within the bottle degraded the hop character.  I know of some very good IPAs out there that are bottle conditioned (Bear Republic Racer 5, Bridgeport IPA, Bells Two Hearted come to mind.  But I was not able to achieve positive results until I started kegging.

The Brew Day:

This beer was an absolute blast to brew.  I managed the water profile by adding gypsum and Calcium Chloride to my preferred 3:1 Sulfate to Chloride ratio.  I checked the local water bureau for the most recent alkalinity reading and added lactic acid to reduce that number to zero.

The Mash:
Using my prepared water, I doughed in at a strike temperature calculated to mash at 150f.  This should be a dry beer and I did not want to have too much unfermented sugar left behind. There was a bit of Carapils in the recipe to prevent me from drying things out too far.  This is something I picked up from an interview with Vinnie Cilruzo
of Russian River.  Vinnie's Pliny the Elder is the benchmark for West Coast Double IPA and I would jump off a bridge if he told me it would help my IPA.

Mash 60 min at 152-150f, lauter completely and run out slowly.

I batch sparged in a single second infusion at about 168f.

The Boil:

The ridiculous hop schedule of this beer meant I needed to babysit the kettle more than I normally might.  I used small glass containers to store the hop additions and flushed them with CO2 while they waited.

The Hop Stand:
In this case, I added the final addition at flame out and allowed all the hops to soak in the warm wort for 30 min before chilling.  In the year since I originally write this post and brewed this beer, I have added a March Pump and Morebeer.com Re-Circulation Chiller .  I will make a full post regarding this equipment change the next time I brew an IPA.  But I will simply say, recirculating hops in the whirlpool was worth the investment. And the chilling efficiency is unparalleled.

The Cold Side
Once the beer had been chilled to my pitching temp, I added my yeast starter.  I can see in my notes that the fermentation temp was 64f for this beer. Which is inline with what I typically do for WLP-007.
The dry hop schedule was pretty insane for this beer.  This is the one and only time I have made three separate dry hop additions.  And I don't see myself doing this way again. 
Rather than making three distinct additions to the carboy, I foresee myself making 2 additions to the fermenter and reserving the third for the keg.  Dry hops in the keg create a lasting hop character that I'd previously been able to maintain.  Some people have remarked that dry hops in the keg can cause a grassy flavor over time.  There is absolutely NO chance this beer will ever remain in my keg for longer than 2 weeks. So that is of no concern whatsoever.


Final Thoughts
I clearly remember this beer being the best IPA I had brewed up to that point and I plan on brewing it again very soon.  There were no competitions at the time this beer was brewed so, I did not have it judged. However, I gave a growler to my friend and cicerone Connor Christeson.  He was effusive in his praise and said that he would buy and drink a "lot" of that beer if it were available commercially.  It's always great to receive feedback on your beers and there is no greater compliment than someone drinking 64oz of it in one sitting.