I spend a bit of time brewing beer for friends and family. There's nothing worse than finding beer recipes on the Net with little or no commentary on them. I always see these "cake mixes" and wonder: Why is the recipe formulated that way? Why this hop? Why that malt? How did the batch come out? How can it be improved? So, I'm posting some of my favorite recipes with the stories and rationale behind them. I hope you find it not boring enough that you actually find it useful.
Dipswitch AIPA is attempt at cloning my favorite IPA, Ipswich IPA. Ipswich is a local brewery to Massachusetts, so you might not be familiar with this fine ale. Ipswich is the most bitter IPA I have ever tasted, cloudy, and has a massive, thick mouth-feel. It is quite an experience to drink.
Ingredients for 5 gallons:
Expected Efficiency: 65%
Single-infusion at 154°F until conversion. Boil for 60', adding hops at specified intervals. Avoid clarifying agents for a nice cloudy brew, just like the original! Chill to room temp, and pitch starter of yeast.
Ferment at 64°F for one week. Rack to secondary, and dry hop when activity settles down. Ferment to completion, 7-10 days at 62°F. Carbonate. Kegs should cold condition for one week, bottles for two.
Drinking this beer out of a bottle is like wearing gloves when typing! Pour it in a glass and smell it!
If you are a new all-grain brewer, and don't know how to calculate water amount, here are the exact numbers for my system. This should get you close.
Numbers in parenthesis denote AHA style range for IPAs. Note well we're in the stratosphere for IBUs. Yes, it's supposed to be that way.
One of the better IPA recipes I have made was Dave Brockington's Sister Star recipe. After making his fine brew, I noticed that SSS and Ipswich had similar levels in bitterness. So, using his recipe as a basis, plus a few hints from Ipswich's website, I tweaked the recipe so that it is more like Ipswich IPA.
This recipe probably won't win any contests because it departs from the expected style parameters fairly radically. It is what could be called an "AIPA"-- an "American" IPA. We silly Americans tend to take perfectly good styles developed in other countries and make them too strong, overhopping it while we're at it. (Compare an American Brown versus an English Brown!) Call it overcompensation for that mistake called Prohibition. But... it sure tastes good!
Here are the exact hints from Ipswich's website:
I am just beginnig to learn the difference between various brands of base malt, so I just use any decent domestic two-row malt. Briess seems to work fine.
I'm not sure what "Roasted" is, but since it doesn't express very much in the beer, so I'm not worried. I guessed "DWC Special Roast" and left it at that.
Since Ipswich has such a massive mouth-feel, I bet there is a lot of wheat in the recipe. I've noticed similar results from flaked barley, so I've used that here. Feel free to replace it with wheat.
Andy (my brother-in-law, a professional brewer at Empire Brewing Company) recommends a higher mash temp (154) to get a fuller-bodied beer.
SSS's base hop is Chinook, but I've gone with Galena according to Ipswich's hints. Galena and Chinook are quite similar, especially when present in large quantites as above. Both are very resiny, with a great grapefruit/pine taste. These hops literally stick to your tongue like a good hot sauce, and you'll enjoy it, dammit. This is probably the most memorable feature of the Ipswich IPA, and I'm glad to have found the trick: an absurd amount of hops!
The next time I make this, I might tone down the hops a bit. Not by much, though, maybe down to 2.5 oz. I think this will make the beer a bit easier to drink earlier on.
Maybe I'm dreaming, but Galena seems a bit more resiny, emphasizing the pine, whereas Chinook gives me more grapefruit. Both have a very rough bitterness which is necessary for this incarnation of the IPA.
Don't be freaked out by the 123 IBU. I've never lab-tested the beer, and don't expect the calculations are very accurate. I hear that the alpha acids have a theoretical maximum solubility of around 100 IBU; the program I use to calculate the targets doesn't know about that. This beer has the malt and body to back it up!
The Ipswich really doesn't have an in-your-face Cascade aroma, so I guessed they use it as a flavor hop, leaving the subtler stuff for aroma. I'm very pleased with the result. It's nice to have Cascade in there but not smell it for once. One can only take so much all-Cascade pale ales after a while...
I never had much success with Kent Goldings (or any British hops, for that matter), so I tend to stick to American and German hops. In this recipe, I've substituted it with Willamette. I am also very pleased with this hop, and think it makes a fine dry hop. It is very well-balanced and clean; not as earthy as the British hops, mildly citrusy like the Cascades, but not overbearing; and no perfumey smell like Mt. Hood. Plus, since it's domestic, it's usually in much better condition than the imported ones.
Strangely enough, the SSS recipe does not have a dry hop component. I've made that way, and something was definitely lacking. So, I've added one here.
Mike Uchima, one of the fine contributors to rec.crafts.brewing, uses Wyeast 1272 for his IPA, as a 1056 alternative. It's not quite as neutral as 1056, supposedly a bit fruitier. You probably won't notice the difference through all the bitterness, but it does a good job.
Here are my brewing log entries for the last time I made this beer.
Humans are welcome to mail me at any time at scott at tringali dot org.