IPA Recipe Critique

This will get you right where you want to be. I pretty much made this one earlier this year and got 1st place at a comp:

http://kettleandcellar.blogspot.com/2012/05/pipa.html

Skip the 5 and move it to post flame out. Go big on the 15 min addition for the sticky.

I used 10% Crystal, but it was sweeter than I would go for again, especially given all the Centennial (which totally bring thier own sweetness, somehow). Actually, I planned on re-doing it with the exact grain bill you've got there but equal parts Simcoe, Centennial, and Columbus at 15, 0, and DH.

You will love it.

 

Might want to ditch the carapils if you want it more dry. What ratio is the Simcoe at? That can get pretty dank in my opinion.

 

just wondering...
as per the OP's post, he didn't seem to want any bitterness.
just wondering if its ever considered wrong to NOT have a 60 min hop addition? he could easily just do 0.25 oz of columbus at 60 min versus doing X oz of hops at 30 min. the 30 min addition will give some bitterness.

interested on people's takes on that

 

i thought that the flavour (not just the bitterness) is different at 60 vs 30 min.
if i were brewing, i'd stick to a small 60 min bittering, a small 30 min bittering, and then 15 min, flameout and dry hopping. I'd debate that the 30 and 15 min additions are redundant and one can probably be eliminated (or a 20 min addition can be done instead of using hops twice).

 

You see to be confused regarding what dry means. Dryness, in beverage terms, means a lack of sweetness, so something cannot, by definition, be both dry and sweet, nor can an ingredient add both dryness and sweetness.

When malt gravity is replaced by a simple sugar like corn sugar, which is 100% fermentable, it lowers the final gravity of the beer, resulting in a dryer beer, it does not add sweetness.

 

I'm not sure that I see how making a beer less sweet could make you perceive it as more sweet. This would be like saying "using half as much sugar to make your lemonade would make you perceive it as being more sweet", it just doesn't make sense to me.

 

Big late hop additions do contribute to perceived sweetness in some ways. The recipe you've posted is a typical west coast IPA grain bill with lots of late kettle hops, there's no reason it wont work out fine. A 1.066 beer finishing at 87 BUs is going to have a savage perceived bitterness.

 

added sugar doesn't increase sweetness.
your grain bill and your mash temp are what control sweetness.
sugar gets converted to alcohol and, but adding sugar, you're adding alcohol.
by having a mash temp at 150 F, you are having a "dryer" beer. more is fermented. by having a mash temp at 154-156 F, you have less fermentables. by using Crystal, you are having more sweetness.

 

I just mean it will be very bitter. In general an IPA of this size would fall in the 60-70 IBU range.

 

I think this is a situation that servers run into a lot when suggesting wine. (Probably not as much now as a few years ago). People think that "Fruity" means "sweet", so if a "fruity" wine is suggest, they'll say, "no, I don't like sweet wine", even though it is a dry wine. Just a confusion over vocabulary. I'm not sure if I'm articulating this very well.

I think the OP wants a lot of citrus and fruit flavors from the hops, but a dry beer, as the dryness will let the hops stand out a bit more.