Advice sought on an American IPA recipe

[daf]

Hi

This will be my 5th AG BIAB brew, I've just done a Hopback Summer Lightning last week and would like to make something in the northwest US coast style.

I've used Brewersfriend website and come up with this, based on the ingredients I have at home. Any yes/no advice will be great, please.

World Cup IPA
Added By: Daf
Method: BIAB
Style: American IPA
Boil Time: 90 min
Batch Size: 25 liters (fermentor volume)
Boil Size: 28.5 liters
Boil Gravity: 1.058 (recipe based estimate)
Efficiency: 80% (brew house)
Source: Daf
Original Gravity:
1.067
Final Gravity:
1.015
ABV (standard):
6.82%
IBU (tinseth):
60.66
SRM (morey):
6.31
Fermentables
Amount Fermentable PPG °L Bill %
6 kg United Kingdom - Maris Otter Pale 38 3.75 93%
200 g American - Caramel / Crystal 10L 35 10 3.1%
250 g Cane Sugar 46 0 3.9%
6.45 kg Total
Hops
Amount Variety Type AA Use Time IBU
33 g Columbus Pellet 15 Boil 90 min 49.83
25 g Simcoe Pellet 12.7 Boil 10 min 10.83
25 g Cascade Leaf/Whole 7 Aroma 0 min
25 g Apollo Leaf/Whole 20 Aroma 0 min
10 g Simcoe Pellet 12.7 Dry Hop 14 days
Mash Guidelines
Amount Description Type Temp Time
34 L Infusion 66 C 90 min
Yeast
Mangrove Jack - US West Coast Yeast
Attenuation (avg):
78%
Flocculation:
High
Optimum Temp:
15 - 23.3 °C
Starter:
No
Fermentation Temp:
20 °C
Pitch Rate:
-

[Rookie]

Looks good, but I've read some posts complaining about how long that yeast takes to start fermenting and a touch of amarillo to go with the simcoe would be nice.

[daf]

Cheers - I've used the yeast twice on my AG brews - on a Nelson Sauvin Single Hop (delicious) and a wheat beer. I've no amarillo - wouldn't the Cascade add enough floral notes?

[Jocky]

Make sure you give those flame out hops a good 30 minute steep, ideally stirring occasionally to emulate a whirlpool. They will add a reasonable amount of bitterness to the final brew doing this.

I'd also suggest upping the dry hops (maybe add some more Cascade?), or maybe moving them from elsewhere in the recipe. 1gram per litre is the starting point for American IPAs in my opinion.

[daf]

Cheers for that. Can you foresee anything wrong with leaving the flame out hops in the no chill cube for 24 hours, before they are removed for fermentation?

[Barley Water]

There is nothing inherently wrong with leaving the flame out hops in almost boiling wort for 30 minutes however understand the consequences of doing that. First of all, you will isomerize more the of late hops increasing the bitterness as Jocky suggests. Be advised however that you will also lose some of the flavor and much of the aroma you might otherwise get by cooling the wort imediately. Many of the guys over here (and I'm one of 'um) try to cool the entire volume of wort as quickly as possible in an attempt to trap as much of the volitile oils as I can. What I do is use my pump to force the boiling work through my counter flow chiller and I pump it right back into the copper so I can drop the temperature of the entire batch fast. I can probably get 5 1/2 gallons of boiling wort down to about 70F in about 20 minutes with my set up. Another method of doing that would be to use a hop back and I would probably try that also however I'm currently not set up to do it.

As far as your last post goes, if you let your wort sit around without chilling it relatively quickly, in my opinion you are asking for problems. One of the techniques the guys use to make sour beers is to pitch lacto hot (maybe 90F or so). The reason for doing that is because you set up a situation which the bugs really like. Of course, that's great if you want a sour beer but if not, well, things may not turn out so well (and you sure as hell don't want to pitch normal ale yeast that hot unless you like fusels and headaches). Naturally, nobody died and made me King so try things both ways and see what works well for you and good luck.

[daf]

Hi

Bugs are not an issue, no more so than with using a metal wort chiller. At the temperature the wort goes into the cube, any nasties are well and truly zapped. Pretty much the whole of Australia has to use no-chill because of the costs of water over there, so it's a well tried and tested technique.

I'll taste the Summer Lightning tonight before bottling so I can see what the 'no-chill-hop-back' system did to its bitterness.

[Jocky]

Hop utilisation and bitterness are likely to be quite different in no chill. I have no experience in that so it might be worth taking some recipe advice from someone who has. My thinking is that you're going to get a lot more bitterness from late additions.

[daf]

I'll search Australian forums and find people who can talk with knowledge and experience about 'cube hopping', then cheers.

[daf]

Well an update - the Summer Lightning which was cube hopped is fantastic, especially served chilled. Alas I am down to my last ten bottles. Definitely a one to do again and there was no excess bitterness from cube hopping, it seemed to intensify the hop flavours more than anything.

As for the IPA - all went to plan, I cube hopped the 25g Apollo/25g Cascade at 75 deg c for 24 hours then strained into the FV and pitched with some Mangrove Jack's West Coast yeast. Took over a day to go off like the last time I used it (on a Nelson Sauvin single hop) so I was worried whether the antiseptic qualities of the hops were killing the yeast. Anyway, it went off great and after ten days in the FV I dry-hopped with 20g Simcoe pellets in a mesh bag on the 3rd August and another 20g of Columbus today.

I will bottle all of this on Monday 11 August I think - I want to re-use the yeast cake at the bottom of the FV with my next IPA.

[daf]

Moment of reckoning this evening, I chilled a couple of bottles and tried it tonight, about a week after bottling. Carbed well and a nice orange colour, like Bengal Tiger. Smell is great, pineapple being the most dominant. It tastes lush, definitely the Bengal/Punk style I was after. Will definitely be doing it this way again, especially as it's ready and fresh to drink so quickly.

Apollo/Columbus/Simcoe/Cascade