Recommendations for low ABV hoppy/IPA kit? - Hophead style

[SouthDownsBrewer]

I’m a kit-only brewer, I’ve enjoyed plenty of 5/6%+ brews such as MJ’s Red IPA and Youngs American IPA (delicious!); but really I’d prefer to have something with a fabulous bitter and hoppy flavour but below 4% ABV, like Dark Star’s Hophead which at 3.8% is a perfect pint for my taste.

Are there any kits that you know of that will produce this result?, or should I be adding more water to a kit’s recipe?, e.g. 25L instead of 23L total volume?

Many thanks

 

[thesteve]

This one is pretty good. Comes in at 4.5% which is not too harsh.

https://www.muntons.com/home_brewing/american-pale-ale/

 

[labrewski]

Try a cheaper basic ipa kit and buy some hops and dry hop the $hit out of it ??

 

[Ade McDade]

I've not tried this one myself but at £16 from Wilko it might be worth a go. 4% ABV.
They say 'This hoppy IPA is an exceptionally distinctive beer, one to savour. Love hops? You'll love this beer.'

 

[SouthDownsBrewer]

I've not tried this one myself but at £16 from Wilko it might be worth a go. 4% ABV.
They say 'This hoppy IPA is an exceptionally distinctive beer, one to savour. Love hops? You'll love this beer.'

Thanks Ade, I’ll look out for that one, got to be worth trying.

 

[Didge]

You could always try the MJ range but without adding the extra pouch of LME.

 

[GhostShip]

I think one of the best beers 'on the High Street' is Brewdog's Dead Pony Club, which given it comes in at just 3.8%, is so full of flavour.

The Homebrew Company do their own take on it - Dead Phony IPA. Not the cheapest of kits, but comes in at 4.5%.

https://bit.ly/3xhdj2Q

 

[RossTheBoss]

I've not tried this one myself but at £16 from Wilko it might be worth a go. 4% ABV.
They say 'This hoppy IPA is an exceptionally distinctive beer, one to savour. Love hops? You'll love this beer.'

Hello! This is my first post, nice to see Sussex represented on my first perusal of the forum!

I've made the Wilko's kit twice, it's great in my opinion.

First time I did it as per the instructions, which was perfectly nice but I love the hops, so second time I added 100g Chinook after a few days of primary fermentation and I think it's even better. Somewhere between Hophead and Harveys Sussex Best. Couldn't tell you the ABV as I completely forgot to do it both times....

Hope that helps...

Ross

 

[Random Badger]

I think Hophead is supposed to use a lot of Cascade hops, so maybe try something like the Wilko kit (or another IPA kit that comes out around the strength you want) and dry hop it with 100g of Cascade.

 

[Random Badger]

Are there any kits that you know of that will produce this result?, or should I be adding more water to a kit’s recipe?, e.g. 25L instead of 23L total volume?

Don't do this as the resulting beer will be thin and watery. If you want to reduce the strength then just add less sugar or even no sugar at all. It's been debated before and to get a tasty but weaker beer from a regular kit you would do better to make it with no added sugar (rather than the usual 1KG) and actually reduce the water/overall volume a bit. You can play about with calculators to estimate the ABV you might get such as the one at: Calculate Potential Alcohol Percentage From Fermentation

 

[Northern_Brewer]

I’d prefer to have something with a fabulous bitter and hoppy flavour but below 4% ABV, like Dark Star’s Hophead which at 3.8% is a perfect pint for my taste.

Are there any kits that you know of that will produce this result?

There's nothing special about kits. We know what Hophead is as Dark Star have published a brewsheet, for the Azacca version at least.

They start with a wort of 1.040 which you can get with eg 2.3kg of light DME in 20 litres or pro-rata.

50IBU of bittering - they use Warrior but the bittering hop doesn't matter much, Admiral will do nicely. If it's 16% alpha acid then you need 24g boiled for 60 minutes to give 50 IBU. Or eg use isomerised alpha-acid, 14ml of the Ritchie extract in 20l should be about right.

Then some hops at flameout - the amount isn't super-critical, they use 3.3g/l Cascade for the "classic" version but more recently they use eg 6g/l for the Azacca version. I'd just tip in a 100g pack of Cascade, for 5g/l.

They use a blend of dry yeasts to ferment, just use BRY-97 or US-05.

Effectively this starts looking not dissimilar to my not-quite-a-SMASH, you may find this post useful :
https://www.thehomebrewforum.co.uk/threads/smash.95659/page-2#post-1065674