Shred’s Hop Demon 1 IPA (partial mash)

Description:

My first shot at an IPA. Looking back on this recipe I don’t know what inspired it. I guess I wanted to experiment with a partial mash and mixing an English IPA with an American.

This is one of those that is riddled with mistakes that I made so you don’t have to. Feel free to laugh at my failure.

Batch Size: 5 Gallons

Measured Original Gravity: 1.056 SG
Measured Final Gravity: 1.010 SG
ABV: 6.0%

Recipe:

1 lbs Cara-Pils/Dextrine (Steep 45 minutes @155F)
1 lbs Caramel/Crystal Malt – 40L (Steep 45 minutes @ 155F)
8.0 oz Munich (Dingemans) (Steep 45 minutes @155F)
4 lbs Pale Malt (2 Row) US (Steep 45 minutes @155)

All grains mashed/steeped in about 2.5 gallons of water.
Grain bag removed after steep with no sparge and kettle topped up to full boil volume.

4 lbs 8.0 oz Extra Light Dry Extract – Boil 60 min
2.00 oz Centennial [10.00 %] – Boil 60.0 min
0.99 oz Cascade [5.50 %] – Boil 15.0 min
1 lbs 8.0 oz Corn Sugar (Dextrose) – Boil 10 min
0.99 oz Ahtanum [6.00 %] – Boil 10.0 min
2.00 oz Cascade [5.50 %] – Boil 5.0 min
1.0 pkg SafAle English Ale (DCL/Fermentis #S-04)

Carbonated to 2.3 vols of CO2

Tasting Notes:

Again – I don’t recall what inspired this brew other than newbie curiosity and experimentation. In hindsight I’d definitely do thing differently if I were to rebrew this.

First of all, I’d either go all grain or I wouldn’t bother with the 2-row and make this an extract brew. A simple steep of the specialty grains would suffice then just add enough DME to offset the minuscule gravity the 2-row contributed. Doing a brew-in-a-bag with no sparge really resulted in almost no converted starches in the wort anyway.

The high mash temp, large amounts of crystal/cara-pils malt and English Ale yeast made this brew much more malt-dominant than I like my IPAs.

If you are going to brew this, I’d suggest reducing the crystal/cara-pils malts to maybe 1 lb total, mash closer to 150F and swap out the yeast for a US strain (I’d recommend BRY-97 American West Coast).

It was drinkable but not what I was hoping for. Live and learn, right?