Reducing ABV% in American IPA

[mrboxpiff]

Hi all
I recently brewed a very successful American IPA which I can't wait to try again. Only problem was that it came out at 7.2%. This may sound great to some, but as quaffing ale its too strong for me. The obvious way to reduce this would be to use less than the 6kg of pale ale grain, but is it really as simple as that or will there be other changes to flavour etc as a result????
Thanks in advance
Cheers

[Rookie]

Hi all
I recently brewed a very successful American IPA which I can't wait to try again. Only problem was that it came out at 7.2%. This may sound great to some, but as quaffing ale its too strong for me. The obvious way to reduce this would be to use less than the 6kg of pale ale grain, but is it really as simple as that or will there be other changes to flavour etc as a result????
Thanks in advance
Cheers

The beer's balance will shift a bit depending on how much you reduce the amount of grain.
Reduce everything by 20% and see how you like it.

[Hanglow]

I'd reduce the bittering hops in proportion to the amount of base malt you ditch but keep the flavour/aroma/dry hops the same

If there is some specialty malt in there then reduce it a bit but not as much as the base malt

[Fil]

yes, good points above, go for it, imho 7.2% is a silly abv for a beer you may wish to quaff on a warm summer evening.

you will probably get a much better rounded malt flavour before the hop aromas start to expire too..

[orlando]

Get a copy of BeerSmith, it has a button that allows you to reduce the abv and adjust all the ingredients at once to properly balance it.

[Kev888]

If you don't have/use software that can juggle things for you, I'd suggest reducing the grain bill to achieve the Original Gravity you would like and then adjusting hops to get the same BU:OG ratio that you had before.

However, as reductions in ingredients can also reduce flavour, I'd personally reduce pale malt a tad more than other flavour (and colour) grains, and full-boil hops more than later flavour/aroma hops. This is personal preference and changes the balance so some may disagree, but I find completely proportional reductions (whilst keeping the brew length the same) tend to result in a rather more bland beer otherwise. I also believe that part of the flavour lost is related to the alcohol itself, but there isn't much you can do about that if you want a lower ABV.

Also, were you to use a strain of yeast that attenuated less or mash at a temperature that encouraged less fermentable sugars to be produced then of course a higher Final Gravity would result. The differences wrt ABV are generally not as great as those achievable by altering OG, but its still worth doing this IMO (and perhaps replacing some pale malt with something like munich), in order to help maintain body and mouthfeel in the face of reducing grain quantities.

[orlando]

However, as reductions in ingredients can also reduce flavour, I'd personally reduce pale malt a tad more than other flavour (and colour) grains, and full-boil hops more than later flavour/aroma hops. This is personal preference and changes the balance so some may disagree, but I find completely proportional reductions (whilst keeping the brew length the same) tend to result in a rather more bland beer otherwise.

I think this in part explains the difference between commercial beers and our attempts at clones. Scale seems to have an effect that is clear in the glass even if not really understood why.

[Barley Water]

I think it is a laudable goal to try and reduce the O.G. in an IPA because like you, I would rather have a couple of weaker beers than get stupid after just one. To that end, there are now many so called "Session IPA's" over here and frankly, many strike me as thin and watery although still hoppy. If you scale down a normal IPA, you might be able to keep it in balance but it's really hard to get the same type of beer. I normally keep the use of crystal malts down in an IPA but if doing a session version I think I would increase the percentages to try and build up the body of the beer. Likewise, I am usually interested in drying the beer out as much as possible however in this situation I think a less attenuated product would work better (ie; mash hotter and use a less attenuative yeast strain). At the end of the day though I think you are just going to have to do several iterations until you come up with a beer that does it for you; a happy chore, don't you think?

[mrboxpiff]

Thank you all for your valued input. Once again I am indebted to those here who have vastly more experience and useful knowledge that I.
I will experiment as suggested and see what results

Cheers

[orlando]

Thank you all for your valued input. Once again I am indebted to those here who have vastly more experience and useful knowledge that I.
I will experiment as suggested and see what results

Cheers

You're welcome, one day it will be your turn to pass the baton.