Owner’s Obsession – IPA


I’ve had bad luck with all the IPA variations I’ve tried so far, so I wanted to take a shot at building my own recipe. I looked at some pale ale recipes that looked good, and then bumped up the grain and hops to push this into the IPA style. I started peppering in whatever leftover grains I had on hand (Victory, CaraMunich II, and Caramel 40L) and made due with the hops leftover from previous batches (Centennial, Citra, Falconer’s Flight, Cascade, and Columbus). I used a British Ale yeast strain (WLP005) which I already had a starter going for.

Since my main hop additions were Falconer’s Flight, I was hoping this would really highlight that hop, but it really didn’t. The British yeast took forever to flocculate, so during the peak freshness of the beer, it had a pretty severe yeast haze. I wouldn’t use this yeast again for that reason alone.

The name comes from my obsession with IPAs. I also hope it will be a mainstay of the brewery, so inserting the brewery’s name seemed like a good idea.

Overall, I really like this beer, and will be brewing it again switching the WLP005 for the WLP001, and also lessening the first hop addition to lower the overall bitterness. I also want to change the base malt from German Pilsener to 50% 2-row, and 50% Munich to give it some more body.

Brew Date: November 22, 2012
Kegged On: December 9, 2012
O.G.: 1.053
F.G.: 1.017
ABV: 4.7%

Recipe Details

Batch Size Boil Time IBU SRM Est. OG Est. FG ABV
5 gal 90 min 46.983330 8.960578 1.060 1.014 6.193746

Fermentables

Name Amount %
German Pilsner Malt 7 lbs 57.14
German Munich Malt 4 lbs 32.65
US Victory Malt 12 oz 6.12
US Caramel 40L Malt 8 oz 4.08

Hops

Name Amount Time Use Form Alpha %
US Zythos 0.5 oz 90 min Boil Pellet 10.9
US Simcoe 0.5 oz 20 min Boil Pellet 13
US Mosaic 0.5 oz 10 min Boil Pellet 11.6
Japan Sorachi Ace 0.5 oz 10 min Boil Pellet 12.6
US Simcoe 0.5 oz 1 min Boil Pellet 13
US Mosaic 0.5 oz 1 min Boil Pellet 11.6
Japan Sorachi Ace 0.5 oz 0 min Boil Pellet 12.6
US Amarillo 1 oz 0 min Dry Hop Pellet 9.2
US Columbus(Tomahawk) 1 oz 0 min Dry Hop Pellet 15.5
US Simcoe 1 oz 0 min Dry Hop Pellet 13

Miscs

Name Amount Time Use Type
Irish Moss 0.07 oz 15 min Boil Other

Yeast

Name Lab Attenuation Temperature
White Labs WLP001-California Ale 77% 32°F – 32°F

Mash

Step Temperature Time
Rest at 154.4°F 60 min

Fermentation

Step Time Temperature
Aging 0 days 32°F

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *