IPA Recipe Help

What volume are you able to boil in gallons? The more details you can give about what you're after, the better. Do you want cleaner malt flavors where the hops shine, or a substantial amount of malt whereupon the hop character is still very noticeable?

 

Visit hopville.com and navigate to Beer Calculus, which is a type of recipe building software. Plug in the "IPA" style up top and set your boil volume to about 6 gallons and your batch size to 5 gallons. A 1:1 BU:GU ratio is good... you could even go a little more with the bitterness for West Coast.

So for a 7%-ish West Coast citrusy dry style, you'll want to attain approximately 1.070 Original Gravity, give or take. You'll also want to finish quite dry; let's say below 1.015 for argument's sake. Late addition hop focus is key so use a lot at 15 or 10 min, Flameout, and Dryhop. I would stock up on 8-9 oz. total hops, but purchase two or three varieties to have options. You can buy these in bulk from hopsdirect.com or freshhops.com if you wish. I recommend using a high alpha hop like Warrior, Magnum, or Columbus early in the boil and then Citra and Amarillo late in the boil and for the dry hop. These hops play extremely well together, but Citra will still be the star.

You'll need about 6 or 7 pounds of DME; some for the recipe and some for the yeast starter. There are several different brands including Briess, Coopers, Muntons. Everyone has a favorite, but the important thing is to get Extra Light DME, which is basically all base malt. A lot of homebrewers nowadays will add half of the DME early and the other half late. This helps to elevate hop character while keeping the beer lighter from less melanoidin formation.

Additionally, you can mash with anything from Golden Promise, to Maris Otter, to Pilsener malt, or even more American 2-row. Research your base malts. I recommend mashing below 151 F and also replacing part of the malt grist with some corn sugar to further dry things out. You can add some character grains like rye, wheat, vienna, carapils to complete the mash. But you might want to stay away from any grains too roasty, dark, sweet, deep, rich for a dry, hop-centered West Coast style. And if you do go with something like this, don't use too much of it.

Here are some approximate time frames for a recipe like this:

Yeast Starter w/Intermittent Shaking: 3 days
Mash: 60 min
Boil: 60 min, or 90 min if using pils malt.
Whirlpool/Cool Down: 20-30 min
Primary Fermentation: 3 weeks
Secondary Fermentation: 1 week (with dry hops)
Dry Hop: 7-10 days
Cold Crash: 1 week or less (if doing)

I don't like handing out recipes because I feel you can learn more by doing it yourself, and then subsequently having it looked over by your peers. Plus, it's good to be original... you'll have a better sense of self pride for the final beer. So come back with a recipe that you built and I'm sure a few of us will be glad to provide additional input!

 

Hopville is excellent. Never used Beersmith, so I cant compare and contrast the two, but Hopville works very well for recipe formulation.