I am finally making the jump to all grain next week. Using the following recipe for a session IPA and wanted to seek feedback. Am I on track?
8lb 2 Row
1lb Flaked Oats
1lb Vienna Malt
.5oz Columbus FWH (60 min boil)
.5oz Citra 5min
.5oz Galaxy 5min
.5oz Citra 20min Hopstand @ 180
.5oz Galaxy Hopstand @ 180
1oz Citra Dry Hop
1oz Galaxy Dry Hop
London III Yeast
I am planning on building distilled water to the following water profile and doing a no sparge mash.
Ca 111
Mg 20
Na 80
SO4 349
Cl 106
HCO3 34
The EZ Water Calculator shows the estimated PH to be 5.56 and I plan to measure to verify. If that holds true I wasn’t planning to adjust. If needed I can with lactic acid.
Be stingy with bittering a session strength beer. Way easy to throw it off balance. Consider upping the amount of late and whirlpool hops by at least double what you have. Overall I’m sure you would be happy with the outcome.
You might want to take it easy on the minerals as well. You can keep the ratio of sulfate and chloride, but maybe decrease the total amounts by 25-30%.
I am basing the grain and hop schedule on an extract session I made. Came out really good, but slightly more sweet than I would prefer. I have read that extract tends be land on the sweeter side than the all grain equivalent, so was going to start with doing the same thing, but AG hoping the hops would pop more. Beersmith calulates it at 4.5% and 45 IBU.
I am using beersmith to auto adjust the water profile. I started with a base of distilled and a target using what I read is Tasty Mcdole’s IPA water profile. I checked my entries and noticed I entered one incorrectly. How’s this look?
I target a pH around 5.3 to 5.4 for this kind of beer. Also, for my taste, 285 ppm SO4 would be too high. As noted earlier, it’s easy to get a session IPA out of balance and this would do it for me. But it’s your beer, so try it. You can always adjust if necessary the next time. That’s the beauty of homebrewing.
First off… Citra and Galaxy is my favorite combo. I love it. My only suggestion would be to up the whirlpool and dry hop amounts to at least 1.5 oz of each hop. Like mentioned earlier, that sulfate amount is a little rich for me, even in a DIPA. I have found 160-185 ppm to be my sweet spot. Also 5.3-5.4 pH would be more ideal. 5.6 is more suitable for stouts and porters. Good luck!
Dont be affraid to slam your pH if you really want the hops to pop. For my IPAs, ive gone as low as 5.1pH. Yes it does effect my effeciency, so i do make a slight adjustment to my grain bill but it really makes the hops sing!
