Everyday IPA IBU?

[Rukula]

I'm planning to do a Everyday IPA (Brooklyn brew shop recipe) tomorrow. I wanted to store it in BeerSmith, so i did, and i noticed something..

After typing in somewhat the exact same grains, i pretty much hit a good color and ABV. However, when i put in the exact hop amounts, it was displayed as waaaay low (28 to be specific..)

The book don't tell how many IBUs you should expect, so I'm not sure about this one...

So! The recipe looks like this:

1,8 pounds American 2-Row
0,4 Pounds Caramel 20
0,2 Pounds Victory
0,1 Pound Munich

0,1 ounce Columbus (60 min)
0,1 ounce Cascade (45 min)
0,1 ounce Cascade (30 min)
0,1 ounce Cascade (15 min)
0,1 ounce Cascade (5 min)
0,1 ounce Cascade (0 min)

This gives me about 6,5 ABV and 28 IBUs... This looks more like a regular Pale Ale... No India to be seen here. Is this how its supposed to be? Or are BeerSmith doing something wrong?

 

[RobWalker]

is your boil volume right? 26L odd for a 23L batch.

 

[Rukula]

is your boil volume right? 26L odd for a 23L batch.

The batch size etc is adjusted to 1 gallon, not the regular 20+ liters.

 

[RobWalker]

there's your answer - hop utilization is much lower at that volume. i think you will struggle to fit the hops into a 1 gallon boil for an ipa too.

It's also a bit daft to use a recipe that complex for a 1 gallon batch because you're buying a lot of varied ingredients for a small amount of beer. I would seriously suggest just using pale malt and crystal and leaving the victory/munich out, if you havn't ordered them yet.

my suggestion to you is to bitter to your chosen IBU in a hop bag and boil for 60 mins. Take the hops out after those 60 mins. Then you've got a wort with bitterness but no aroma and no physical hops in there...

then start chucking in 0.3oz cascade for the next 10 minutes while still boiling. When you transfer to your FV, add 0.1oz of cascade in a hop bag whilst it cools, and take them out to ferment.

It's not a massively viable recipe for 1 gallon, but it is possible. Beers with fewer hop additions and high AA% hops are much easier than this at low volumes.

Good luck!

 

[JKaranka]

For a 6.5% ABV IPA I usually tend to go for the 55-70 IBU range! :drink:

 

[Rukula]

For a 6.5% ABV IPA I usually tend to go for the 55-70 IBU range! :drink:

Indeed, this is what gets me wondering... And i get what RobWalker is saying, but the thing is, this is a recipe built for a 1 gallon brew. All the recepies are built to be great at one gallon, not scaled down 5 gals... So one would think that this IPA would actually have some IBUs

 

[RobWalker]

odd. but high IBU is very difficult at that volume. if it's meant to be 1 gal, go for it! i doubt it's up there with your oakham citras and stone ruinations, but it'll be good!

 

[JKaranka]

I've done some high IBU beers in one gallon pots. You end up with as much hops in the pot as a regular five gallon brew but in a fifth of the space.

 

[RobWalker]

yeah I did a 2 gallon 30 minute IPA before and it was like hop porridge, hahah. the problem is the wort's so concentrated that whereas you just lose a small amount of beer with all grain brewing, you lose a same size but more concentrated amount of beer, more than i'd want to lose anyway - I used to dump mine in a big bowl of water afterwards to try to compensate.

i'd toyed with the idea of splitting the schedules using hop bags before too - put the 60 min hops in, boil for 60 mins, take the bag out, then add the aroma hops afterwards and boil for 10 minutes, etc...could be an idea, but fiddly...

by far the best way to add more aroma would be heavy dry hopping. 20g/gallon isn't unheard of for IPA's...