IPA virgin....Cascade and Amarillo

[Spud395]

So I'm going to give an IPA or maybe even an APA i suppose a go.
Its not a style I'm overly familiar with but have liked the few samples I've had.
In stock for grains I've some pale malt, lager malt, munich, light crystal, caramalt, wheat and loads of other darker stuff, but these are the malts I was thinking of using.
Very partial to Munich so I was thinking up to 50%, way to much ?
5% light crystal, 5% caramalt and around the same wheat.
Or would I be better cutting back on the munich and upping the base malt?

I do love munich and am hoping for a bit of a malty thing going on with this.
I've 100g each of Cascade and Amarillo, never used either before.
I'd like to try out something without crazy bitterness first maybe 50IBU's or that, I'm not sure really this is new territory as I said, but I would hope to be able to drink 5 gallons of it
Could you throw some ideas at me for a recipe with what I have, this should be the 3rd of my upcomming Christmas/new year brews over the next little while to go with a porter and a red ale.

Ideas please

[WishboneBrewery]

50IBU won't be too bitter & Munich works well in my opinion and gives a good colour

[Spud395]

Cheers pd, I can allways depend on you for an answer

[Barley Water]

50 IBU's is probably IPA bitterness (lower end for the American stuff) but of course this all depends on what the OG of the beer is going to be. For an APA (assuming around 1.050 OG) it is probably a little high (top end there would be something like 40IBU I would guess). Generally speaking, we use American two row over here which does not have the nutty, malty taste of the nice top end British pale ale malts. There are many brewers that use Munich over here in both styles and you can certainly do what you like in that regard. There are two ways to go at it for an APA, one is to try for a faily dry, non malty beer with the ususal pacific northwest hops and the other uses crystal malt, I like the dryer stuff personally but that is just a personal preference. One thing that works out well for me anyway is to use a high alpha bittering hop then go to the Amarillo and Cascade varieties for the flavor and aroma, it just cuts down on the vegetal matter in the copper. Of course I always use the hop pellets so maybe that is not a big deal if using leaf hops like you folks over there use. The big deal over here though is "hop bursting" and I highly recommend it. I have had good luck with the Dogfish Head combination of Warrior, Simcoe and Amarillo. Basicily you late hop heavily then dry hop the hell out of the beer. With luck, the brew will reek like a grapefruit pine tree, anyway have fun and good luck.

[Spud395]

Cheers BW, just took delivery of my latest ingredients order
Just need to see when I can fit in a few brew days soon.
I was planning to dry hop and will certainly do so now!