White IPA Experiment

[Jocky]

I have a reasonable stock of beer right now so I'm becoming a bit more daring and experimental. One beer that blew my mind a few years ago was Flying Dog's Raging Bitch. It's an American IPA (base malt, touch of crystal, shedload of chinook and amarillo) fermented with a belgian wit yeast.

I wanted to do a similar crossover, but make more of a pumped up wit that has a higher ABV and bitterness like an IPA, but brings the characteristic flavour and body from a wit, melded with restrained IPA hops.

So here's my plan - I'd love any feedback.

For grain I understand that that malted wheat won't provide the right wit character, so I'm using unmalted flaked wheat. If this goes well v2 will use proper unmalted wheat that needs a cereal mash. A touch of oats, munich and a dab of aromatic malt should help the malt come to the party with the stronger hops and yeast.

For hops I've had a sealed pack of centennial sat in the back of my freezer for a couple of years so that seemed to be the ideal candidate as centennial will give me those American C-hop character without being too overt and masking the wit yeast character.

Recipe is scaled to 23 litres into fermenter

OG 1.060
FG: 1.012
ABV 6.3%
IBU: 62

47% Pilsner malt
43% Flaked wheat
5% Flaked oats
4% Munich malt
1% Aromatic malt

Centennial/Magnum mix @ 90min - 57 IBU
50g Centennial @ flameout - 5 IBU
50g Centennial dry hop

WLP400 Wit Yeast

Process:
Single infusion mash at 66C, followed by a 90 minute boil
Wit yeast will have a 24 hour 2 litre starter

[Jocky]

Arggh. Should have posted this in the All Grain forum...

[Barley Water]

Well first of all, good for you doing some experimentation. Nothing new comes along with somebody getting a little creative. A couple of years ago I decided I would brew a wheat IPA. As I recall it was about 60IBU's with considerable flavor, aroma and of course dry hopping. I'm big on low cohumolone hops so I bittered with Warrior and used Citra and Amarillo for the rest of the additions as well as dry hopping. Oh, and I used the Chico strain to ferment. The beer came out just fine; no brewing flaws and the the bitterness was smooth. Although there were really no problems my take was that the heavy hopping completely covered up the wheat flavor in the beer. Essentially, I came to the conclusion that I would be better off just using regular malted barley rather wheat for IPA's since I really wasn't getting what I was looking for from the wheat. I guess there really is a reason that the Germans and Belgians only lightly hop their wheat based ales but you know I just had to try it for myself. I have tasted some IPA's using Belgian yeast strains however I have not made any IPA using those strains myself so I don't really have any information on doing that (although I have a great big bottle full of WLP535 that just fermented an Abby Single....humm). Oh and by the way, if you do it rig up a blow-off tube otherwise you will almost for sure have a mess to clean up after primary fermentation is complete.

One other thing I have tried with IPA's is adding about 20% corn to the grist (cereal mashed). My intent was the make a regular octane IPA with a lighter body for summer drinking (you don't last long quaffing a 6%+ beer so you need to be a little careful with this stuff). This also produced a nice tasting IPA however I think I really prefer a bit more malt body backing up all those hops. Of course I may at any time get some wild idea to mess with IPA's a bit more so who knows what abomination I may come up with next.

[Jocky]

I made this yesterday to the recipe I originally proposed, with the only addition being some pre-soaked oat husks (about 2.5% by weight) to help with lautering (and oh boy did they help - no sticking and a quick run off).

Mash actually hit 65C, but everything else was as expected.

Now fermenting at 20C, the lower end of the range suggested by White Labs, and will start to raise it up to 23C later in the week. I've read that WLP400 can take 3 weeks to be done, so I'll be monitoring this closely.