Recipe Advice

[Steve SPF]

So my darker, malty, English style beers are really where I want them. I have a 6% traditional IPA just finishing up and am really, really pleased with it plus a couple of others that I wouldn't change.

I keep trying to brew what I think of as a 'new world' IPA which I want to be clean and crisp with lots of citrusy and juicy flavours and can't quite get one that hits the spot and am wondering what I have wrong.

I do use the same base malt, so am wondering if that's a problem, and also use plenty of Cascade and am becoming suspicous of those.

None of the beers are dumpers, but I haven't come up with one that makes me go 'wow' just yet. Any thoughts on where I might be going wrong or, alternatively, any recipes that might get me on the right track?

Thanks in advance for help, as ever.

 

[BOB357]

Recipe?

 

[Steve SPF]

This one ain't great. Hoping it will improve but miles away from where I wanted it to be:

https://www.brewersfriend.com/homebrew/recipe/view/919450/citrade-ipa

It didn't get the second dry hop addition so it got 200gm at flameout and 100gm on day 3. No bittering hop so a complete experiment for me but surprisingly bad.

https://www.brewersfriend.com/homebrew/recipe/view/886475/cascitra-ipa

This one is better but there's nothing wow about it. A little too shrp and bitter. Drinkable but not brilliant.

 

[HighVoltageMan!]

Your first recipe is is low on bitterness, the second is really low on gravity. If you bumped up the gravity a hair on the first one and used the hop bill from the second, it would closer to the style.

Here's a copy of my Pale Ale recipe, it can be modified to suit the hops and malt available to you. S04 yeast would work well for this beer. This beer is pretty hoppy, just bordering on being a West Coast IPA.

Use 100% RO or distilled water to prevent the bitterness from getting too sharp or harsh. You can add 2 grams of calcium chloride and 4 grams of calcium sulfate per 5 gallons (19 liters) to get a good level of calcium and a chloride to sulfate ratio that will work well for an IPA/PA.

https://www.brewersfriend.com/homebrew/recipe/view/253526/wayner-s-pale-ale

 

[BOB357]

This one ain't great. Hoping it will improve but miles away from where I wanted it to be:

https://www.brewersfriend.com/homebrew/recipe/view/919450/citrade-ipa

It didn't get the second dry hop addition so it got 200gm at flameout and 100gm on day 3. No bittering hop so a complete experiment for me but surprisingly bad.

https://www.brewersfriend.com/homebrew/recipe/view/886475/cascitra-ipa

This one is better but there's nothing wow about it. A little too shrp and bitter. Drinkable but not brilliant.

Wasn't sure what you meant by New World IPA. Looks like you're shooting for an NEIPA with the Oats and wheat. Sorry, but I'm an old fashioned West Coast IPA guy, and not one to give advice on beers I don't care for, let alone brew. Now, if you were looking for a crisp, clean and hoppy IPA or something dank, I could help.

 

[Mark Farrall]

Grains look fine to me for a hazy type of IPA.

For the hop mix you could try replacing the Cascade with one of the fruitier varieties like Mosaic, Galaxy, Azacca, etc. There's a bunch more that I haven't tried and more each year. I've got a beer conditioning with Sabro. A hop that gives you coconut flavours? Weird.

As hop bitterness is getting so much more complicated, how is it too bitter? Too much harsh, maybe even vegetative, bitterness? Or is it too much of a clean sharp bitterness? Clean sharp is generally the boil additions and sometimes the flameout additions. Harsh, vegetative is often too long a dry hop.

It's really hard to comment on the flameout IBU numbers. I've got one recipe with a calculated IBU of around 15 that's too bitter for a bunch of people who've tried it. That's with 5% utilisation starting at 100C. What utilisation and temperature are you using on the recipe and how long are you leaving the wort once you hit flameout?

Also you generally don't get a lot of aroma from flameout. It's generally dry hop that gives you that. Flameout additions maybe aren't as special as I like to think, though it's probably responsible for creating more proteins in the beer that the dry hop can stick too.

Some of the flameout hopping trend is probably from copying commercial brewers. But as their whirlpool/knockout process can take a few hours, they have quite a bit of time above 80C generating the bitterness that we'll never have (unless we deliberately leave it to steep).

Your dry hop is about 3g/L or lower. I'm currently using 6g/L and I definitely noticed a difference moving up from around 3g/L. Many brewers are playing with even higher numbers and I've seen insane dry hop levels at 50g/L in commercial beers. So you could try more dry hop for shorter periods of time. Those fruity flavours/aromas in the new wave of hops are generally at peak by day 2 of a dry hop and can get swamped by other hop materials if the dry hop goes on longer.

And if you want to dissapear down the rabbit hole on dry hopping I found this really interesting - http://scottjanish.com/a-case-for-short-and-cool-dry-hopping/

 

[Steve SPF]

Wasn't sure what you meant by New World IPA. Looks like you're shooting for an NEIPA with the Oats and wheat. Sorry, but I'm an old fashioned West Coast IPA guy, and not one to give advice on beers I don't care for, let alone brew. Now, if you were looking for a crisp, clean and hoppy IPA or something dank, I could help.

Crisp, clean and hoppy really interest me so fire away. I want to brew again this weekend so maybe a West Coast IPA would be a good fit? Definitely game for giving it a crack

 

[Steve SPF]

@Mark Farrall

The bitterness is crisp and clean so is coming from the Magnum bittering addition.

The haze from the oats and wheat is exactly what I was after so am pleased with that. I'm wondering if the base malt needs changing.

Flameout hops are added at flameout literally and then given a 30 minute whirlpool/hop stand.

I did allow this one to cool overnight before pitching so maybe a much longer hop stand than I'm thinking?

Aromas are ok on both beers to be fair. It's really the flavours that disappoint. I am more and more suspicious of the Cascade, it's just got such amazing aromas out of the bag!

 

[Steve SPF]

@HighVoltageMan!

I will have a look at that recipe when I get home, thanks for that.

The water I'm very curious about now and haven't given it much thought so far. I'm having trouble getting a water profile from our local supplier and my thoughts so far have been that if I don't know what my starting point is how can I know what adjustments to make?

All I do currently is draw mains water the night before brewday and allow the chlorine to dissipate by leaving the lid off the vessel a little bit.

 

[BOB357]

Crisp, clean and hoppy really interest me so fire away. I want to brew again this weekend so maybe a West Coast IPA would be a good fit? Definitely game for giving it a crack

This is one I really like. If you prefer a bit more color, replace the Dextrin malt with 10 or 15L Crystal malt. Magnum will work in place of Warrior for the 60 minute addition and the Crystal hops can be replaced with Perle if need be. For this one, I like to wait until the beer drops clear and then dry hop at about 60F. I add gelatin when it goes into the keg.

 

[Steve SPF]

@BOB357

All the water additions:

Are you adjusting from a water profile you have to a water profile to suit the beer? Or are those just additions that add something to the end product regardless of the starting point?

I really need to get my head around water!

 

[Steve SPF]

...

Here's a copy of my Pale Ale recipe, it can be modified to suit the hops and malt available to you. S04 yeast would work well for this beer. This beer is pretty hoppy, just bordering on being a West Coast IPA.

Use 100% RO or distilled water to prevent the bitterness from getting too sharp or harsh. You can add 2 grams of calcium chloride and 4 grams of calcium sulfate per 5 gallons (19 liters) to get a good level of calcium and a chloride to sulfate ratio that will work well for an IPA/PA.

https://www.brewersfriend.com/homebrew/recipe/view/253526/wayner-s-pale-ale

Lupulin pellets are new to me but I'm guesssing we can just use pellet hops?

My batch sizes kind of prohibit using distilled water. I've just found the water profile for my area so will have a look at that and see if I can understand it well enough to figure out where I'm starting from.

The last hop addition at 0 days has me a bit confused, can you elaborate there?

 

[BOB357]

@BOB357

All the water additions:

Are you adjusting from a water profile you have to a water profile to suit the beer? Or are those just additions that add something to the end product regardless of the starting point?

I really need to get my head around water!

RO (Reverse Osmosis) water. Thought it was listed as an ingredient. It's very close to distilled, so I start out with a clean slate and add the brewing salts. The resulting profile is one that I use for most of my hoppy pale ales and IPAs. Most larger grocery stores here in the states have dispensing machines where you fill your own containers for about $ .40/gallon..

 

[Steve SPF]

Ah, ok. I'm not sure that we have that over here. Not that I'm aware of at least. Wouldn't be practical for me either so if I'm looking at water chemistry I need to start by understanding my local supply I guess.

 

[HighVoltageMan!]

Lupulin pellets are new to me but I'm guesssing we can just use pellet hops?

My batch sizes kind of prohibit using distilled water. I've just found the water profile for my area so will have a look at that and see if I can understand it well enough to figure out where I'm starting from.

The last hop addition at 0 days has me a bit confused, can you elaborate there?

0 days was a typo, it should be 3 days. Hard water should be avoided on both West Coast IPA's and NEIPA's as it causes harsh bitterness. Water treatment is way overblown and not really that difficult. You want about 70-100ppm of calcium and the right balance between sulfate and chlorides. The ratio will work anywhere from 1:1 for NEIPA to 3:1 for a West Coast (sulfate:chloride). I use 2:1 for most IPA/PA's. If you can't use distilled, RO water will work just fine. If your lucky enough to have water with less than 25ppm of hardness, then use that. All these different types of water need additions of calcium sulfate and calcium chloride.

The lupulin pellets are just concentrated hops, typically it will take 1.5 to 2 grams of standard T90 hops to replace 1 gram of the lupulin (cryo) hops.

 

[BarbarianBrewer]

All I do currently is draw mains water the night before brewday and allow the chlorine to dissipate by leaving the lid off the vessel a little bit.

Here in the US many water supplies now disinfect with chloramine instead of chlorine because it doesn't break down as fast. That means it won't evaporate overnight. You need to use campden tablets (potassium metabisulfite) to remove it. I would expect chlorine/chloramine would be listed on a water report.


Wikipedia Fun Fact #1:
The name Campden tablet comes from the town of Chipping Campden in Gloucestershire, England, where the original solution was developed in the 1920s by the Fruit and Vegetable Preserving Research Station - now Campden BRI.[4] The idea was then taken up by the Boots Co., who developed the tablet.

Wikipedia Fun Fact #2:
Campden tablets are also useful in decontamination and neutralization after exposure to tear gas[5].

 

[BOB357]

Ah, ok. I'm not sure that we have that over here. Not that I'm aware of at least. Wouldn't be practical for me either so if I'm looking at water chemistry I need to start by understanding my local supply I guess.

I have no choice with the tap water here. Would need to dilute it 3 to 1 or better just to bring the sodium down into a reasonable range for brewing, so just use 100% RO. Only adds about $4/batch.

Many municipal water reports only list things health related. Hopefully, yours contains the information you need to know. I'm not a real water wizard, but if you post the report, I'm sure someone here will be able to offer the help you need for the more complex things. I understand that this web site has good water tools as well.

 

[Steve SPF]

Wikipedia Fun Fact #2:
Campden tablets are also useful in decontamination and neutralization after exposure to tear gas[5].

I will definitely keep a supply of those in then, never know when they might come in handy

 

[Mark Farrall]

Our local authorities water report didn't list the chlorine/chloramines anywhere near the other information I used for the water profile so I needed to search to find that they're both used at different stages in the process.

 

[Steve SPF]

I think our water is relatively soft, this is the report from our supplier:

Should say that this is the summary, there's another one that runs to a few pages.