West coast IPA clone recipe (newbie, so tear it apart)

[Spoon]

I'll not say which one as I got 90% of the recipie from the brewer but didn't ask for permission to publish it. And I'll just say the original recipie used a lot of hop extract at 90min rather than the bucketload of cascade. I'm new to AG brewing so I'll put down my thought process for anyone to pick apart, the recipe itself I'm hoping is sound, it's just the interpretation I'm less sure on.

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xxxxxxx IPA - Sam's clone

American IPA (14 B)



Type: All Grain
Batch Size: 20.00 l
Boil Size: 25.34 l
Boil Time: 60 min
End of Boil Vol: 21.84 l
Final Bottling Vol: 19.00 l
Fermentation: Ale, Single Stage


Date: 01 Dec 2015
Brewer: Chicken Shed Brewery
Asst Brewer:
Equipment: 3 plastic pots
Efficiency: 72.00 %
Est Mash Efficiency: 75.6 %
Taste Rating: 30.0


Taste Notes:



Ingredients


Amt

Name

Type

#

%/IBU

5.72 kg Pale Malt (2 Row) UK (5.9 EBC) Grain 1 94.7 %
0.16 kg Cara-Pils/Dextrine (3.9 EBC) Grain 2 2.6 %
0.16 kg Melanoiden Malt (39.4 EBC) Grain 3 2.6 %
20.00 g Cascade [9.70 %] - First Wort 90.0 min Hop 4 26.5 IBUs
20.00 g Cascade [9.70 %] - Boil 90.0 min Hop 5 24.1 IBUs
12.00 g Amarillo [10.50 %] - Boil 30.0 min Hop 6 11.3 IBUs
9.00 g Centennial [9.10 %] - Boil 30.0 min Hop 7 7.3 IBUs
20.00 g Amarillo [10.50 %] - Steep/Whirlpool 20.0 min Hop 8 7.4 IBUs
20.00 g Centennial [9.10 %] - Steep/Whirlpool 20.0 min Hop 9 6.4 IBUs
1.0 pkg US West Coast Yeast (Mangrove Jack's #M44) Yeast 10 -
20.00 g Cascade [9.7 %] - Dry Hop 0.0 Days Hop 11 0.0 IBUs



Gravity, Alcohol Content and Color

Est Original Gravity: 1.065 SG
Est Final Gravity: 1.013 SG
Estimated Alcohol by Vol: 6.8 %
Bitterness: 83.0 IBUs
Est Color: 12.5 EBC

Measured Original Gravity: 1.065 SG
Measured Final Gravity: 1.010 SG
Actual Alcohol by Vol: 7.2 %
Calories: 612.2 kcal/l


Mash Profile

Mash Name: Single Infusion, Light Body
Sparge Water: 5.55 l
Sparge Temperature: 75.6 C
Adjust Temp for Equipment: FALSE


Total Grain Weight: 6.04 kg
Grain Temperature: 22.2 C
Tun Temperature: 22.2 C
Mash PH: 5.20

Mash Steps


Name

Description

Step Temperature

Step Time

Mash In Add 16.76 l of water at 70.2 C 64.4 C 60 min
Mash Out Add 10.08 l of water at 96.5 C 75.6 C 10 min

Sparge:Fly sparge
Mash Notes: Simple single infusion mash for use with most modern well modified grains (about 95% of the time).



Carbonation and Storage

Carbonation Type: Bottle
Pressure/Weight: 111.76 g
Keg/Bottling Temperature: 21.1 C
Fermentation: Ale, Single Stage


Volumes of CO2: 2.3
Carbonation Used: Bottle with 111.76 g Corn Sugar
Age for: 14 days / 18C + 14 days 23C



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Grain bill: Scaled directly from the brewers and let beersmith do it's magic based on the equipment profile.

Hops:
FW Hops Scaled based on their FW Hopping scaled from the grain bill, I'm thinking that apart from the bittering the point of FW hopping is to maintain some other flavours, so mass of hops rather than AAU is important?
90min cascade tweeked to give the right overall IBU, my cascades are much higher AA% than their recipe, and their recipe uses only extract at this point so it's a ballancing act between these and the FW hops.

30min additions:
Scaled based on AAU's and the grain bill, so X kg of grain gave y AAU to them, and I've scaled that. But I'm not sure if I should scale the hops directly by weight and adjust the 90min addition to compensate for IBU's?

Flame out:
Scaled by weight from the grain bill.

Dry hops:
Guesswork, their recipe doesn't mention the dry hops, but the bottle does and lists simcoe and summit. So the amounts are guesses based on dry hopping with similar amounts to the 90/30/flame out additions which seems a common theme in other IPA's. (ignore the recipe, they'll go in on day 10 and I'll bottle on day 14 as usual).

Worries:
Mostly the hops, simcoe and summit aren't common dry hops, they're very high AA%. Likewise Cascade wouldn't have been my first choice bittering hop from that selection. I've sent the brewer an e-mail asking if I've got the dry hopping right, or if it's something else and the simcoe/summit should be going in as the bittering hops instead of the cascade.

 

[dan125]

Looking good - couple of things spring to mind though:-

I know that commercial breweries get a lot better hop utilisation than us home brewers, so don't think you can just scale the hops down, but as long as you adjust the bittering hops for the target IBUs you should be OK.

I'd definitely use 2 packs of MJ yeast with an OG of 1.065.

Sure it'll turn out great!

 

[Spoon]

I was umming and ahhing about that, I've kept the utilisations at the default in beersmith.

Is there a relationship between utilisation and flavour? So the 30min additions for flavour, would they give less flavour in homebrew than in commercial brewing? They're the only ones that look low by weight (40g at 90min, 40g at flame out, but only 21g at 20min).

 

[dan125]

I don't think there is a relationship between utilisation and flavour, as flavour/aroma comes from volatile oils and bitterness is the isomerisation of the alpha acids, but someone wiser may be a long to put me right.

30mins additions are sort of neither here nor there IMO - the vast majority of the flavour/aroma would have been boiled off, and more bittering could be achieved with a longer boil.
When Brewdog state 'middle' for a hop addition in their recipes, I don't think they mean middle of the boil, more like middle of the process (and open to your interpretation), for me this would be a 10 or 5 min boil, with 'end' being steeping post boil.

 

[Spoon]

Yea, it's an unusual recipe with a 90min boil too, I thought 90min boils were to drive off large amounts of sulphur from certain malts. I suppose it also gets you some more sugar from the grain by allowing a bigger pre boil volume, have to check the maths though as I bet the power to boil it off costs more than the extra grain. I did wonder if it was a change they'd made to offset the large amount of flameout and dry hops.

I think I might split the wort into 2 smaller batches and do one FW/60/15/0, and one FW/90/30/0 and see what the difference is.

 

[dan125]

I don't think a 90 min boil is unusual - I used to do it, but cut down to 60mins, partly for tight-wadded-ness and partly because all my light beers turned out darker than planned due to caramelisation with my BIAB set-up

 

[MyQul]

I've definately not an expert but I was reading about hops for another reason (it was a Mr.Wizard BYO.com article on hop astringency) and it mention that the volitile oils come from the same place/glands tha alpha acids/bittering comes from. In fact beta acids ARE the volitile oils if I'm understanding things correctly. So there may well be a direct corrolation between hop utilization (how much bittering/alpha acids are extracted) and how much flavour/aroma volatile oils/beta acids are extracted in proportion to alpha acids. I could'nt say for certain though as I'm extrapolating a bit from what I read this morning based on the sentence I read that both alpha and beta acids are produced by the lupin glands in hops

 

[dan125]

I've definately not an expert but I was reading about hops for another reason (it was a Mr.Wizard BYO.com article on hop astringency) and it mention that the volitile oils come from the same place/glands tha alpha acids/bittering comes from. In fact beta acids ARE the volitile oils if I'm understanding things correctly. So there may well be a direct corrolation between hop utilization (how much bittering/alpha acids are extracted) and how much flavour/aroma volatile oils/beta acids are extracted in proportion to alpha acids. I could'nt say for certain though as I'm extrapolating a bit from what I read this morning based on the sentence I read that both alpha and beta acids are produced by the lupin glands in hops

:hat:

Will have to check out the Mr Wizard site. Would make sense, although that does leave me pondering a couple of points:-

I thought that beta acids add to overall bitterness in a similar way to alpha acids (although may be way off here), but when we steep hops at <80 deg C, or dry hop, we are hoping to add oils, without adding bitterness, so wouldn't overall bitterness increase more noticeably if the beta acids are in the oils?

Also, if there is a correlation between the utilisation & flavour/aroma extraction wouldn't we need to know how much extractable oil was in the hops to start with, in a similar way to the AA, to be able to work out the amount of flavour/aroma we're likely to get out of the hops?

I think there's 4 main oils responsible for the flavour/aroma and I Know they all have different boiling points, so I wonder if they also have different extraction rates? could get tricky trying to work out flavour contributions.

 

[MyQul]

:hat:

Will have to check out the Mr Wizard site. Would make sense, although that does leave me pondering a couple of points:-

I thought that beta acids add to overall bitterness in a similar way to alpha acids (although may be way off here), but when we steep hops at <80 deg C, or dry hop, we are hoping to add oils, without adding bitterness, so wouldn't overall bitterness increase more noticeably if the beta acids are in the oils?

Also, if there is a correlation between the utilisation & flavour/aroma extraction wouldn't we need to know how much extractable oil was in the hops to start with, in a similar way to the AA, to be able to work out the amount of flavour/aroma we're likely to get out of the hops?

I think there's 4 main oils responsible for the flavour/aroma and I Know they all have different boiling points, so I wonder if they also have different extraction rates? could get tricky trying to work out flavour contributions.

This is where things get tricky. According to my GW book, in their freshest state beta acid's dont add any bittering. However as the hops get older and oxidise they do in fact start to add bittering. BUT...the alpha acid start to decrease there bittering potential. Whether this is in a direct linear contrast (the beta increase bittering in the same proportion as the alpha decrease bittering) I don't know but I'm guessing it's unlikely.

I've often left hops the flavouring hops in the wort for the two weeks of fermentation despite them only being steeped in <80C water to make a hop tea and I'm sure they still add some bitterness (possibly/probablay because of the above explanation of oxidised beta acids?)

How to do quanitfy flavour/aroma to measure it,as it's so personal? I know that with some off flavours they can't be detected until they're above a certain threshold. Whether this can be somehow applied to flavours/aromas, I have no idea

 

[dan125]

This is where things get tricky. According to my GW book, in their freshest state beta acid's dont add any bittering. However as the hops get older and oxidise they do in fact start to add bittering. BUT...the alpha acid start to decrease there bittering potential. Whether this is in a direct linear contrast (the beta increase bittering in the same proportion as the alpha decrease bittering) I don't know but I'm guessing it's unlikely.

This may be where I read it - as I thought beers in the 'olden days' were still bitter despite the hops being stored poorly and being oxidised?

I've often left hops the flavouring hops in the wort for the two weeks of fermentation despite them only being steeped in <80C water to make a hop tea and I'm sure they still add some bitterness (possibly/probablay because of the above explanation of oxidised beta acids?)

Agreed - brews with big late additions do seem more bitter compared to others that the software says have a similar amount if IBUs. I assumed this was because the perceived bitterness is greater in a beer with lots of flavour/aroma, but it'd make sense if more beta acids are extracted that they are actually more bitter.

How to do quanitfy flavour/aroma to measure it,as it's so personal?

That's why brewing is such a great hobby - we can all make beer that suits us. :thumb:

 

[Spoon]

For the benefit of everyone reading, I got back in touch with the brewer and the recipe is dry hopped with cascade not summit/simcoe. 1g/l so 20g. She blames the marketing department for not updating the labels for a few years.

Recipe in the original post has been edited.

Next step: anyone got a recipe to use up half a pound of simcoe and summit?

 

[dan125]

1g/l dry hops doesn't sound like very much for an AIPA, but you do have the steeping hops as well.

I'm sure it will end up very tasty though - please report back and let us know how it goes.

I haven't got a simcoe/summit recipe to share, but have used summit a bit recently. A few comments I'd read online suggested it wasn't great used early in the boil, so I've only used it late/post boil in combo with other hops, but you could try a SMaSH or single hop brew with each to really get know what they're like???