BIAB IPA Citra / Rakau Recipe Idea / Feedback Please?

[merrydown]

Hi,

TL;DR Does the recipe below seem viable for an IPA style beverage please? My figures and expectations may be off as I have cobbled together thoughts from a few different places and I am a novice.

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I am a touch adventurous (foolhardy probably) and have been looking at BIAB IPA / AIPA recipes with a view to making my own first batch somewhere betwixt those flavours. A vaguely tropical hoppy IPA style result would be just great.

I found one that fitted the bill, but wanted to simplify it - partly to make it cheaper - and twist it a little to modify the flavour profile and make it mine. I have no BIAB / All grain experience yet, just extracts. I have a suitable Electric 55L boiler and the rest of the kit ready.

I'd appreciate feedback on the basic viability of the recipe. I am trying to make an IPA BIAB with West Coast to Tropical flavours and a 5 gallon target batch size.

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RECIPE

RacketEar 1

Based On Simplified Zombie Dust Clone - ALL GRAIN skeezerteezer
http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f12/3-floyds-zombie-dust-attempt-help-info-requested-245456/

Method: BIAB All Grain
Style: IPA
Boil Time: 60 min
Batch Size: 5 gallons / 22.7
Boil Size: 28.38 L
Initial Water: 31L
Efficiency: 7x% (brew house)

OG: 1.068
FG: 1.019
ABV 6.5%
IBU: 84.85


FERMENTABLES (fine ground)

4.5Kg Maris Otter 69%
1.5Kg American - Pale 2-Row 23%
0.5Kg German - Melanoidin 8%

6.5Kg Total


HOPS

35g Citra Pellet AA:11 First Wort <60 mins
1 * Whirlfloc Tablet 15 min
40g Rakau Pellet AA:11 Boil 15 mins
25g Citra Pellet Boil 10 mins
40g Rakau Pellet Boil 5 mins
30g Citra Pellet

50g Rakau Pellet Dry Hop 7 days
50g Citra Pellet Dry Hop 7 days


PRE MASH / STRIKE
Temp 70C-71C

MASH
6G/27.3L - 69C - 60 min

YEAST
1 * Fermentis / Safale - English Ale Yeast S-04

FERMENTATION TEMP
18C

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Thanks for any comments!

Jim

 

[The Baron]

save your Citra and use the citra for later additions don't use them for bittering use magnum or some other neutral hop for bittering it will save on costly hops apart from that it should be juicy but very grapefruity as I think the citra will over power the rakau
Ps it will probably be a cloudy one with loads of hops in it especially dry hopping

 

[The Baron]

Ps with that many hops you don't really need to have bittering hop additions at 60 mins as it will be high on the IBU's with the rest of the hop additions its your choice as too bitter can be not to everyones taste

 

[Covrich]

I would change your yeast to US05 rather than S04. US05 will give you a much more hop forward flavour

 

[merrydown]

Great advice, thanks guys!

I am trying to move from overpoweringly grapefruity to more general tropical, so I will definitely back off the Citra a touch. Also I like quite bitter flavours, but I don't want to put off riends with slightly less bitter preferences. Thanks for cluing me in there.

I didn't know about US05 either Covrich, thanks for that tip. I'm a hop-head at the moment, so the more hop flavour the better.

I think I will make one more revision and then go for it.

Cheers :)

 

[IainM]

I've done the original ZD clone recipe, with citra bittering additions, S-04 and all. It was one of the best recipes I've done, and what I like about it is that the beer behind the hops is not clean but complex, while the hops and bitterness is crisp, assertive and straightforward, which makes a nice contrast. The complex grain bill and the use of S-04 is what gives it this backbone, and the fact that only citra is used as hops, and plenty of it, is what makes the hops sing. In my opinion Rakau is a poor substitute for citra and your simplified grain bill won't be as chewy. S-04 can mute hops compared to US-05, but with the quantity of citra they still come through very clearly, and the S-04 does add something. I haven't put your recipe through a calculator, but as long at you hit your gravity and IBUs then I'm sure it will make a nice beer, but the original recipe is a near-perfect old school American IPA recipe that doesn't need much tweaking. That said, the original is expensive and it's probably wise to not make something so expensive as your first BIAB.

 

[merrydown]

IainM, thanks for your input.

As you suggest, the simplification is to reduce cost, I can understand that the original would be nuanced and delicious. I chose it as a basis for attempting my own recipe as the balance sounded good. Then I figured I couldn't afford that level of complexity as a starting point as I have to buy a minimum quantity of each ingredient and didn't know how many of them I would use on the next batch.

I like the fruity shine of AIPAs, but also wanted to rain in some of the yeast fruitiness and find a middle-ground which retains the hop flavours but with a simpler and perhaps more pale malt base.

My reasoning for swapping out some Citra for Rakau is simply that my friends and family are less keen on pronounced grapefruit flavours than a more generalised tropical fruit flavour. I figured that if I could get the balance right, I might turn down the grapefruit a notch and bring up some apricot and tropical flavours to make up the final hop profile.

I haven't used Rakau, I am just going by what I have read about it. I have only used Cascade, Centennial, Citra and Huell Melon - which was stale and underwhelming despite promising strawberry notes.

If you were trying to segue from Grapefruit to a tropical melange of fruit, what would you use for an alternate hop? Perhaps Galaxy? Motueka? I can accept less chewy :) though I wondered if I was wrong to swap out the small amount of crystal malt from the bill.

 

[IainM]

Galaxy would do the job nicely.

 

[The Baron]

Motueka is good too I have used that and is more tropical and quite powerful so that would help to counter the citra . I have never used galaxy but it does get rave revues so either would complement. I have just used mandarina bavaria with nelson sauvin and that gave me a lovely tropical taste and I only dry hopped with about 20 grams of each which surprised me how strong the taste was but it was on a wheat style beer. Just go with your gut if you are a hop head I am sure it will suit whatever you do

 

[Clint]

As for buying ingredients why not use the recipe builder from malt miller and others? Just pay for what you need..no waste.

 

[merrydown]

Thanks for the info @the baron I will bear it in mind for next time. It's good to hear.

Clint, I wish I had realised that before as I actually ordered from the Malt Miller, but I did it individually according to the 500g minimum per order. They don't have galaxy hops at the moment though, so I could have only done it partially this time.

Only about £1 of ingredients over though at Malt Miller, though I had to buy the Galaxy elsewhere and pay the postage there too.

I shall be honing this recipe and one other alternately until I have them perfected :) The excess ingredients won't be wasted or have a chance to grow stale :)

MY FINAL FIRST RECIPE
The recipe I came up with below is slightly modified from my findings here from your comments and availability of some of the ingredients.

Thanks for your help in helping me get to this first recipe stage. I will report back on the results and no doubt asking more newbie questions to get some more great answers!


RacketEar IPA 1
Based On Simplified Zombie Dust Clone - ALL GRAIN skeezerteezer on Homebrewtalk.com
http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f12/3-floyds-zombie-dust-attempt-help-info-requested-245456/

Method: BIAB All Grain
Style: IPA
Boil Time: 60 min
Batch Size: 5 gallons / 22.7
Boil Size: 28.38 L
Initial Water: 31L
Efficiency: 7x% (brew house)

OG: 1.068
FG: 1.019
ABV: 6.47%
IBU: 62.65


FERMENTABLES (preferably fine ground)
1.25Kg Extra Pale Maris Otter 19%
3.5Kg Maris Otter 54%
1.5Kg Bestmaltz Pale Ale Malt 23%
0.25Kg German – Melanoidin Light 4%

6.5Kg Total

PRE MASH / STRIKE
Temp 70C-71C

MASH
6G/27.3L - 69C - 60 min

BOIL HOPS
10g Citra Pellet AA:11 45 mins
12g Citra Pellet 30 mins
1 * Whirlfloc Tablet 15 min
20g Galaxy Pellet AA:15 15 mins
15g Citra Pellet 10 mins
25g Galaxy Pellet 5 mins
10g Citra Pellet Flameout

DRY HOPS
50g Galaxy Pellet Dry Hop 6 days
25g Citra Pellet Dry Hop 6 days

YEAST
1 * Safale US-05 Beer Yeast

FERMENTATION TEMP
18C

COLD CRASH
4 DAYS AT 4C

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[merrydown]

Well I made this today. There were 3 big surprises...

1) How dark this recipe turned out. I expected it to be a dark pale, but it is more like a ruby colour. No problem, just a surprise. I might go for all extra pale maris otter and a touch less melanoidin next time unless the malty biscuity flavour balances really well with the hops.

2) That the boil bag didn't let the wort out without being squeezed

3) The inch or 3cm of trub at the bottom despite using the boil bag, probably because of reason 2 above.

Overall though I hit the numbers and times I predicted fairly reasonably. Apart from the OG which ended up being 1.064 instead of 1.068 so an ABV of about 6% probable instead of the 6.47% predicted. That is just fine though as 6% is actually my sweet spot.

Thanks for the guidance. I will let you know how this one turns out. For now, I am just waiting for fermentation to begin :)

 

[merrydown]

Happy to report back that the wort has fermented down successfully to a warm pale-ish ale colour with an almost imperceptible hint of red. It is actually spot on for the colour I was trying to achieve.

I don't know how much of the previous darkness was due to suspended particles or if fermentation often changes the wort colour substantially. I guess that sounds right, with high density sugars turning into lower density alcohol. I haven't noticed it before using just extracts.

The trub is actually not bad at all. What I'd feared were huge clusters of gunge were actually little fluffy clouds of whatever that have settled nicely into a 0.5cm - 1cm pancake on the bottom of the fermenter.

Dry hops in now, so I am looking forward to another week before bottling.

The biggest surprise now is that it appears the US-05 Safale or my modified recipe enjoyed a higher attenuation than expected.

As reported in the post above, the OG was lower than expected, but since the attenuation brought the brew down to 1.012 rather than the predicted 1.019 (from another recipe with similar grain and bill size) I actually have a higher ABV than expected by a full 1%.

That means this ale has a rather whopping 7% ABV which is a shade stronger than I'd choose, but smells and looks pretty nice!

Can anyone tell me, would simply scaling the grain bill down proportionally - to hit 6% next time - mean the beer was very different, weaker flavoured and lower bodied, or is it the standard way to go?

 

[IainM]

The idea is to hit the OG and FG you were aiming for. If you reduce the grain bill, then you will lower both, and you are already slightly under OG. To raise the FG but not the OG, and thus lower the abv without compromising body, you can lower the mash temperature.

 

[merrydown]

Awesome Iain, that's brilliant to hear! Thanks for the advice. Yeah, reducing the bill seemed problematic.

Your advice may well describe the reason for the problem too. I think I was a degree or maybe 2 over my planned temp at some points during mash, so that might explain it!

My thermometer kept reading a couple of degrees UNDER where the mash should have been, so I did try to subtly raise the temperature for 60 seconds twice.

When I stirred the second time though, I realised that moving the mash around brought the temperature up on the thermometer. The probe may be in an area that loses heat more rapidly for some reason, the actual average termperature was probably fine. My insulation is good.

So I think the key for me is to get the strike water to the right temperature and trust the insulation to keep the temperature right, not panicking if the mash temp seems to have dropped out of range by a degree or 2, but watching the change during stirring.

 

[merrydown]

@IainM I realise after further reading, I am a little confused.

Is the logic here that I probably did have the mash at too low a temperature, causing over attenuation?

I read the temperature seeming to drop too low, but then read that my compensation heating was excessive and temperatures went too high. I guessed the average of the two 'out of range' readings was overly high.

Would the over-attenuation suggest that the mash temperature actually was too low, for long enough to provide too much fermentable sugar and therefore over attenuate?

Thanks for any advice you can give!

 

[IainM]

Hi merrydown. It's hard to say. A lower temperature does give higher attenuations, and most the conversion is done in the first 15 minutes or so, so that is the obvious explanation, but then it can be affected by mash thickness, pH and calcium too.

 

[merrydown]

Right, thanks for answering! The plot thickens :)

So, with this in mind, perhaps I should consider raising the strike temperature by a degree next time, in case it helps to lower the attenuation - whatever is causing it.

I'm so glad that I didn't leave it 10 years to start learning!

 

[IainM]

Yup, this rabbit hole has no end.