Accidental TIPA, help?!

[BottlesCansCraft]

Hi,

I recently brewed and bottled a heavily hopped citra SMaSH IPA and loved it, it was fruity, light in colour, hazy and soft like a NEIPA. My recipe for this was a small batch BIAB with:

> 3kg of golden promise
> 10g biofermentation hop with citra pellets
> 90g 4 day dry hop
> OG of 1064 and an FG of 1012 using lallemand east coast dry yeast resulting in a 7l batch in the fermentor.

I loved this so much I wanted to do the same again, but with a different hop and with lactose and a touch of brewing sugar for strength, keeping the 7l final batch amount. Specifics were the same as above but with:

> El Dorado hops (same 10g biofermentation and 90g dry hop)
> 250g lactose
> 200g brewing sugar.

What was created seemed to be a much darker brew with OG 1100, after a couple of weeks this had dropped to FG 1028. There was hardly any fruit aroma this time, carbonation however was almost non existant, and the flavour was on the sweet side but with a strong ethanol/boozey flavour.

I felt like I had changed hardly anything, yet the results were vastly different.

> Did I go wrong anywhere? (e.g. not enough hops for stronger brew?)
> Why would this be so much stronger with just a touch of brewing sugar?
> Any tips for a successful TIPA

*note, I bottle and can't keg. I know this is a restiction, but i'm limited to this for now.

Thanks

 

[honeymonster]

Are you sure the original recipe was for 3kg of malt for a 7 litre batch? That seems a lot. Especially if you added sugar too!

I do 11L brews and 3kgs give me 10L of finished beer at about 5.5%. If i did the same amount of malt and added sugar in a 7L brew id probably be getting into Captain Insano Rocket Fuel territory

 

[Leon103]

I think you got lucky the first time and had poor efficiency. You say you didn't change a lot but you did. You added sugar which would increase the og and also lactose which would add sweetness. I guess you should have only added little of these additions. Plus you changed the hop.

 

[BottlesCansCraft]

If I wanted to move in these directions, what sort amounts would only be considered "a little"?

I thought El Dorado was supposed to be quite fruity used as a dry hop, is it another world to citra then?

 

[Brew_DD2]

The fact that you've mentioned that it's darker and lacks hop flavour and aroma, suggests to me that you've had some issues with oxidation.

 

[Linalmeemow]

The gravity issue is in part down to the sugar additions but also down to the malt bill. If you scale it up to 21l that's the equivalent of 9kg of malt, 750g of brewing sugar and 750g of lactose - that's always going to make a gigantic and super-sweet beer. Did you use a brewing calculator when you were putting the recipe together?

Could the colour be related to some of the sugar caramelising in the boil?

If it helps, take a look at this:

https://brewgr.com/recipe/16942/kernel-double-citra-ipa-brewuk-extract-double-ipa-recipe
14 litre brew
2.5kg of DME
.5kg of brewing sugar
No lactose

OG of 1079.

You're doing a batch half the size with approximately the same amount of malt (taking into account DME is more efficient)...

 

[BottlesCansCraft]

The fact that you've mentioned that it's darker and lacks hop flavour and aroma, suggests to me that you've had some issues with oxidation.

I thought this could be an issue, but it was noticably darker straight out the kettle

 

[BottlesCansCraft]

The gravity issue is in part down to the sugar additions but also down to the malt bill. If you scale it up to 21l that's the equivalent of 9kg of malt, 750g of brewing sugar and 750g of lactose - that's always going to make a gigantic and super-sweet beer. Did you use a brewing calculator when you were putting the recipe together?

Could the colour be related to some of the sugar caramelising in the boil?

If it helps, take a look at this:

https://brewgr.com/recipe/16942/kernel-double-citra-ipa-brewuk-extract-double-ipa-recipe
14 litre brew
2.5kg of DME
.5kg of brewing sugar
No lactose

OG of 1079.

You're doing a batch half the size with approximately the same amount of malt (taking into account DME is more efficient)...

I didn't think of it in terms of a full scale brew, it does look more problematic at this higher scale...

I think the brewing sugar addition may of made the biggest impact, both to colour and flavour.

Thanks for the pointers.

 

[BottlesCansCraft]

Are you sure the original recipe was for 3kg of malt for a 7 litre batch? That seems a lot. Especially if you added sugar too!

I do 11L brews and 3kgs give me 10L of finished beer at about 5.5%. If i did the same amount of malt and added sugar in a 7L brew id probably be getting into Captain Insano Rocket Fuel territory

I'm just playing around with recipes and ingredients now having moved over in AG. My original hope was to reach something like Other Half brewery or Omnipollo brewery, and get up to 9-10% in strength, but still soft and fruity. It clearly didn't work, but I'm still not sure on what I need to do to get to that end result.

 

[Linalmeemow]

I'm just playing around with recipes and ingredients now having moved over in AG. My original hope was to reach something like Other Half brewery or Omnipollo brewery, and get up to 9-10% in strength, but still soft and fruity. It clearly didn't work, but I'm still not sure on what I need to do to get to that end result.

Are you using a brewing calculator or just winging it?

 

[BottlesCansCraft]

Are you using a brewing calculator or just winging it?

I am using brewers friend, but without a better developed recipe knowledge, it didn't look "wrong" to me when plotting it. I'm currently estimating my efficiency at about 55%, but this is mostly guess work

 

[Linalmeemow]

I am using brewers friend, but without a better developed recipe knowledge, it didn't look "wrong" to me when plotting it. I'm currently estimating my efficiency at about 55%, but this is mostly guess work

Definitely takes a while to work out what your normal efficiency looks like, even after a few years of using the same kit my efficiency can vary by several percent from brew to brew. What did Brewer's Friend suggest the OG was going to be on this one?

 

[BottlesCansCraft]

Definitely takes a while to work out what your normal efficiency looks like, even after a few years of using the same kit my efficiency can vary by several percent from brew to brew. What did Brewer's Friend suggest the OG was going to be on this one?

I am finding it has jumped a fair bit between brews, and between styles. BF reckoned an OG of 1.083 for that one

 

[Brew_DD2]

Others may disagree but I think you're going to struggle to produce anything like what those breweries produce whilst bottling. Highly-hopped beers really really dislike oxygen. I brewed several batches and kept being disappointed until I realised this was the problem.

Bottling is great for most styles, but any of the modern hazy styles go bad not long after they properly carb in the bottle.

 

[BottlesCansCraft]

Others may disagree but I think you're going to struggle to produce anything like what those breweries produce whilst bottling. Highly-hopped beers really really dislike oxygen. I brewed several batches and kept being disappointed until I realised this was the problem.

Bottling is great for most styles, but any of the modern hazy styles go bad not long after they properly carb in the bottle.

I've read up a lot on oxidation and their effect on heavily hopped beers (brulosophy podcast do some great experiements), but as long as this is known/considered when fermenting/bottling, and as long as its consumed quickly it should be ok in some respects at least. The first hoppy neipa style beer I did (my profile pic, was amazing, and that was fine in the bottle), I did notice a decline after 3 weeks though, but only had 1 bottle left by then.

I swear there must be some other actions/variables that those breweries are doing to make those beers so good apart from oxygen-contactless production

 

[Brew_DD2]

It was the move to kegging that made my NEIPAs go from being decent for a couple of weeks, to excellent. Huge cold-side hopping and minimal oxygen exposure is all it takes imo.

The one in your profile pic looks good, but the colour is definitely on the turn.