Building a summer citrusy IPA

W

Extract or all grain ? 5 gallon ? OG? I would expect extract with a hop bill like that ... if you boil that amount of nugget , magnum and columbus the beer will be undrinkable unless this is for a 20 gallon batch. When you say steep 3 oz of chinook ... are you talking about steeping prior to boil or after the whirlpool ?? I dont know this isnt making much sense to me. You are looking at a BTU factor of 500 if you use that hop bill @ 60, 30 and 10 mins.

 

If you want some tartness in there, add some lactic acid, do a partial sour mash.. Or... and hear me out..

Use the Wyeast wheat yeast.. think it's 1010. It'll need some gelatin or a hearty cold crash to clear up really well, but it should work nicely and get you a nice dry beer.

Keep in mind that adding fruit will cause extra fermentation so you need to figure out where to mash and hit your gravity with you assumed attenuation so you don't end up at far ends of the spectrum of what you are imagining.

I'd like a little grapefruit rind at flame out with some heavy chinook and simcoe would really roll well, and avoid any fruit additions.

 

What do you mean by "steep" for hops? What do mean for "boil"? When during the boil are you adding these hops?

 

See if you can drop a hint to Father's Day Claus that a 10 gallon kettle is worth the investment and the 7 gallon will be quickly replaced with a larger kettle if you are going all grain and doing 5 gallon batches.

 

Why would you steep hops with your steeping grains? What is that supposed to accomplish? Are you sure that you want 6 oz of high alpha hops all boiled for 30-90 min? What is your goal for this hop bill?

 

I used 3 lbs of halved and juiced clementines in a wit this year and it turned out amazing, I also utilized 5% sauer malt in my mash as well. I threw the fruit in at flameout and it added a nice tartness to the beer.

 

Add my name to the list of confused. What are you looking to get from the 'steeped' hops? Any hop flavor that survives the boil will be lost in the overwhelming bitterness (378 IBUs, according to Beer Recipator). You're not likely to taste much fruit through that, either.

I would take a couple of steps back and learn how to build a recipe. This one, I fear, will break your streak of 'fantastic' beers

 

Yeah, half of those hops don't really say "Citrusy" or "Summery" to me. Which, if that's what you're going for, you'd probably want pretty darn close to 100% of the hops to bring some element of that.

I'd get rid of the C20 and the Nugget. Move 1 oz of Magnum to 60, the Columbus to 10, 1 oz Chinook at 5, 2 oz Cascade, 1 oz Amarillo at KO. For the dry hop, switch the Columbus for Chinook.

I didn't look at anything to calculate IBUs, so my guess is that with that arrangement they'd still be pretty high, but that's roughly how I'd disperse them in the boil.

 

There are very few hard and fast rules in brewing, but take this as a pretty consistent guideline - if you're after hop flavor, keep most of your additions between 15-0 minutes. From there, use bittering hops to fill in the gap to your desired IBUs. For example, I'm drinking a pale ale I made. It's about 60 IBUs and I didn't use a bittering charge at all - I hop bursted without planning to. I put in ~4 oz of fairly high AA hops at the end of the boil and there's a lot of flavor plus bitterness.

As for tartness, I've never used fruit. I've been at this for about a year (15 or so batches) and I haven't had the desire or ambition. I don't want to tell you you can't or even shouldn't use fruit yet, but I learned through experience that I wasn't learning nearly as fast as I thought. What I can offer is that Wyeast 3711 definitely does have some tartness. It's a saison yeast, so it'll be more estery than a typical IPA, but it would definitely give you a summery beer.

 

If you have not read it, howtobrew.com or better by the latest edition in hardcopy http://www.amazon.com/How-Brew-Everything-Right-First/dp/0937381888/ every homebrewer should read this a couple of times. Before you spend $10 on hops, spend $11 and buy/read this book. Then, come here and ask lots of questions

 

I'd work on your hop bill.. It's pretty jacked up.

If you want "summer" then go light, and use citrusy hops.

While the hops you chose, do have some citrusy, they aren't the first choices most would make.

Shoot for some Amarillo, Citra, Centennial, Cascade, Simcoe, and if you want fruity and citrusy, Mosaic.