Recipe building

A little about IPAs in general and then west coast specifically...

Its truly all personal preference and experience. I personally think that you can't go by what everybody else says and have to experience hops and grains for yourself. So with that being said, I think you should start a series of single hop beers to find out what each hop really bitters/tastes/smells like in the final beer, before you start using multiple hops in a brew. If you like Citra, start with that one...I haven't found any west coast IPA fan that doesn't like an all Citra brew! You can use as many hop varieties as you want,but if you personally don't know how each effects the final beer, you'll have a much harder time trying to figure out how to adjust your hops for future batches to get exactly what you want. Some will recommend using the same bittering hop in all batches, like Columbus or Magnum, for your 60 minute addition, but I like using the single hop route to truly understand each hop.

If you are an extract brewer, you should use the lightest extract out there, either Pilsen or Extra Light because it has less crystal grains in it, allowing you to have more control over your final beer by choosing your own specialty grains, and personally I like using DME more than LME if I'm using extract because its less messy and you can buy 55 lb boxes of it to cut down on your price per batch. This way you can experiment with the specialty grains in different batches to see what grains you like better than others to achieve the beer you're looking for. West Coast IPAs are drier than most, so using corn sugar in place of some extract will drop your FG, remove some of the sweetness (I know, that's counterintuitive, but it does) and dry the beer out more...I think 8 oz of sugar in place of 8 oz of your total extract is a good starting point and on average what I add for a WC IPA.

Don't forget the yeast too...this can change the flavor profile drastically and depending on it's attenuation, can help make the drier beer you are looking for. Again,I suggest using the same type of yeast consistently so you have less variables to adjust in future batches. I'd recommend starting out with the Chico strain (Safale 05/WLP 001/Wyeast 1056) because its a clean fermenting yeast that allows the hops and grains to shine through, creates a nice clear beer and attenuates well. Maybe switch it up and go with an English strain once you want to experiment, like Safale 04 or the popular London III.

Now to truly building the recipe...use a recipe calculator, Brewer's Friend is my favorite for a free online calculator, to figure out how much extract, grains and hops you need to hit your target numbers. http://www.brewersfriend.com/homebrew/recipe/calculator/
Enter your style and it will give you parameters from the BJCP style guidelines, including OG, FG, ABV, SRM & IBU. I personally like my IPAs around an OG of 1.055-1.06 giving an FG of around 1.010-1.013 and somewhere close to 6%, I personally like an SRM lower than recommended (an extract batch usually makes a darker beer than expected too, so that's something you should consider) around 4-5 and the IBUs around 60-70. Again, this is my preferences after brewing well over 150 IPAs in my time and you'll figure out what you like best over time and experimentation. A good starting point might be...7 lbs DME, 1/2 lb corn sugar, 5 oz of a crystal grain (don't go over 40 or it gets too sweet for a WC IPA IMO), 1 oz Citra at 60 minutes, 2 oz Citra at 15 minutes and 2 oz Citra for a 5 day dry hop and use Safale 05 dry yeast for the convenience of being a newbie. This will give you a great IPA and a good starting point for experimentation.

So to answer your questions directly...
1. Yes and no...you build it around what you want, but you have to have experience with different hops to understand how to achieve that for your palate.

2.Use a calculator to predict your final IBUs and keep it within the style guidelines for best results

3. You can use as many hop varieties as you like, but you start to lose control on the final product and how to adjust in the future

4. Use the lightest extract and add corn sugar or another completely fermentable source to dry it out

Happy Brewing!!!

 

https://www.amazon.com/Designing-Great-Beers-Ultimate-Brewing/dp/0937381500

 

Also, look for a clone recipe of your favorite WC IPA, brew it and then make adjustments from there...that's what I always do when I'm brewing a style that's new to me and its worked out pretty well over my years of brewing.

 

"Designing Great Beers" was already mentioned, also check out "Brewing Classic Styles" and definitely use a calculator

 

Brewing classic styles is a great resource, as is the BJCP style guidelines.. But I usually use them as a starting point rather than strict definitions. Plus part of the fun in homebrewing is experimenting. Try something out, tweak it, try again..

Using a calculator will help, there are plenty out there.. I use brewtoad, but I'm not in love with it.. I also have my own calculator, but that's more for brewday than recipe formulation.

 

I agree with @DrMindbender

I started with a zombie dust clone recipe, but ended up changing a lot of ingredients over the next few batches. But the some of the hop quantities and boil times are the same as the original recipe.

Now I use Glacier hops for bittering, Citra/Amarillo for the last 10 mins of boil and dry hopping.

After each batch, I took a bottle in to my home brew shop and I told them what about the beer that I wanted to tweak. They plugged it into a program (probably similar to something linked above).

 

All good advice +

For an American IPA:

IBU:OG = ~ 1 to start then adjust to taste

eg: 65 IBU : 1.065 OG ...bitterness balances sweetness/maltiness

 

1- do you build an IPA based on the flavor/hop profile you want, then find the hops that give you that, or can you glom on to wanting to use a certain hop and work around that?
Yes, and yes, and probably yes to that question you didn't ask about building an ipa or apa based recipe. Reading about whichever ingredient can be the motivation to design it, or drinking one with whatever hop. Starting with one of a host of books about brewing. I suspect Mitch Steele's book about the IPA would be your bible in this quest for enlightenment.

2- how much hops should I use? Way more complicated answer than question, right? I'm sure there are tools out there to get me on my way for this...Not sure what my target ibus are, but should I start looking at BJCP guidelines or just throw a dart at a number?
There is no such thing! It just depends on how, and where you use them. I've put in over a pound in a 4.x gallon batch and had great results with it, and also had terrible results as well because I put them at the wrong time.

3- How many hop varieties is too many? I'd like to use citra (aroma and dry hopping), cascade (aroma/bittering), and nugget (bittering). Is that too many? What do I sacrifice by going with more hop varieties vs just 2?
I don't suspect that would be too many at all, and with good attention to process could get you a good beer.



4- how do you fill out the malt bill? With the wc style, my perception is that there's not a strong malty backbone. How does that translate to OG/FG?
It is everything to the og/fg.
Start with a Single Malt, Single hop APA with a good yeast. Keep it simple, and learn how much you can squeeze out of using just water, grain, hops, and yeast.
Agree with @GreenKrusty101 for base numbers.65 ibu's and 1065 og
your addition options are 60, 45, 30, 15, and steep.
But also read and spend some time at Mr. Malty.

 

Designing great beers is a good start in general, but it is pretty antiquated in the american IPA department.

 

@MostlyNorwegian mentioned Mitch Steele's IPA book. +1
Others mentioned Brewing Classic Styles. I'm also a fan of that one.

It also could be interesting for you to review the Averagely Perfect American IPA recipe and, possibly even the discussions that led to its formulation. Not to mention other IPA recipes in the recipe forum's American Ale section.

As you formulate recipes, ask questions in this forum. There is no shortage of people who like to provide advice on IPA recipes.

 

IPAs defy the style guidelines....they are only as relevant as the next genetically engineered hop bomb variety