Need help designing my first beer.

Well, you're looking at an O.G. of at least 1.070 for a 5 gal. batch, so that would be roughly 8 pounds of extra light DME. Add to that a tiny bit (as in .25 lb) of medium caramel malt for steeping, and that will get you in the ballpark as far as the grain bill is concerned.

A typical DIPA recipe might utilize as much as a full pound of hops...maybe even more.

American Ale yeast will be fine. Use an appropriate pitching rate.

That being said, I would suggest you consider something a bit simpler for Brew No. 3; DIPA's are difficult to do well. Oxidation of hops oils is a real concern, and you really need good control over your fermentation temps to produce a high O.G. beer that is free of fusels.

Good luck with your brew.

 

To the OP

1. Can you do a full boil?
2. Can you chill a full batch?
3. Do you have a way to maintain good fermentation temperatures?
4. Do you have a way to make starters?

If you answer no to questions 1-3, you shouldn't do this beer. #4 can be overcome by spending money on more yeast packs

To get the IBU's in a beer you need to be able to boil the full volume, as there is a solubility limit of alpha acids, so if you dilute your beer it will never be bitter enough, couple that with a concentrated extract boil and you will have a syrupy beer on your hands

If you cant chill a full batch down to fermentation temps your going to have problems pitching the yeast in a timely manner, and will likely have your wort in the danger zone temps far too long

A high OG beer like a DIPA wants to go gangbusters when fermenting, this will generate A LOT of heat, so if you dont have a way to maintain good temps (mid 60s) your beer will likely have lots of fusel alcohols and taste very hot

 

No worries. That's just a bit of my OCD taking over

 

Well, as ryane pointed out: unless you're doing full-wort boils you're not going to get much additional bitterness by loading up your kettle with hops during the boil. You'll be boiling off most of the oils that contribute to aroma and flavor, and soaking up a bunch of your wort in the process.

Will you get more out of additional dry hops? Perhaps.

I suggest that post your recipe in full, including details like boil volume, anticipated fermentation temp, yeast pitch rate, and anything else you think might be relevant. There are lots of folks on this board with more experience than I that can offer advice on your recipe and process.

 

good advice from alanforbeer.

just a quick edumication on hops in case you didn't know (if you do, I apologize, please disregard this paragraph! lol): There are bittering additions, flavor additions, and aroma additions. Generally, bittering additions are done early in the boil (i.e. 60-30 mins depending). The early addition gives a lot of time for the boiling liquid to isomerize the hop alpha acids, which gives us bitterness. However, much of the hop flavor and aroma are boiled off in the process.
Flavor and aroma additions are generally done late in the boil. One might see recipes call for flavor additions at 30/20/15/10 minutes. Because aroma attributes tend to be "boiled off", hops used primarily for aroma are added in the last 15 mins, at flame out (after the heat is turned off), or as a dry hop in after primary or during secondary fermentation.

This information was very useful to me, once I learned about it, when it came to designing my own recipes.

One cool thing to do is to simply tweak an existing recipe, especially one you've already brewed once "by the book". Want more hop flavor from that pale ale? bump up the late boil hop additions by 20-30%. Want more aroma and a bit more flavor? Add or bump up your flame-out addition by the same percentage. Want some additoinal knock-out hop aroma? dry hop that sucker with 1-2 oz of a hop of your choice. I just brewed the IPA from brewing classic styles, and had some leftover hops...so I threw those bad boys in the fermenter after active fermentation was done (about 5 days).

To dovetail on what alanforbeer said, this early in the game I'd recommend focusing on your process, primarily sanitation and fermentation, including yeast pitching rates, getting your wort down to or below pitching temp quickly, and maintaining target fermentation temperature throughout the fermentation.

Just my two cents from what I've learned so far. I love the ambition...keep it up!

Happy brewing!

 

I recognize that you are looking to formulate your own recipe for Batch #3.

Permit me to just make an alternative suggestion; do you like Bells Two Hearted IPA? If so, then this kit will reproduce that beer: http://www.northernbrewer.com/shop/dead-ringer-ipa-extract-kit.html

I recommend a packet of US-05 yeast.

Cheers!

P.S. Alan has made a number of great suggestions.

 

I just cracked open my first taste of NB Dead Ringer. 7.46% ABV. I love it and it sounds like this is what alexk307 is looking for. Please try it.
Enjoy

 

In general, when designing a beer recipe, I find it best to visualize the beer first and work backwards to the ingredients. By knowing what appearance, aroma, flavor, mouthfeel you are looking for, a recipe is a lot easier to make.

What I'd suggest is writing out a review, technically a preview, of the vision for your beer first. Write out your perfect 5/5 or 50/50 for the style or your take on the style & then craft the recipe from that.

 

Check out the book "designing great beers". It has a bit about brewing, but its more for recipe development and takes into account things like bu:gu ratios that some books don't touch on as well as giving some statistical input on ingrediants used in nhc second round beers. I refer to this book more than any other book when designing a beer to one of the listed styles. That being said, it doesn't cover a few styles I love.

 

I am a newbie too and I would recommend doing the free trial for beersmith.

 

I don't see this mentioned here much. It's Brew Your Own 250 Clone Recipes. I don't do many recipes from it, but it sure makes good browsing material when thinking about beers and what goes in them. What hop combo did I taste in xxx beer? Ahh, that was it.

 

I agree that reading other recipes can help you think through how to make them, but I caution against literal translation of some of those BYO recipes. I had the predecessor, 150 Clone Recipes, and I thought there were some questionable ingredients in many of those recipes, ingredients that likely were not used in the commercial beers they were cloning. While they seemed like good recipes, they didn't always seem like good clone recipes.