I’m afraid I’m going a little nuts on hops, but here’s what I’m going with for an IPA.
11# 2 Row
1# Crystal 10L
0.5# Carapils
0.15# Black Patent
0.5 oz. Simcoe (FWH)
1 oz. Citra (5)
1 oz. each Citra / Lemondrop / El Dorado (0)
1 oz. each Citra / Lemondrop / El Dorado (Dry 5 Days)
US-05
Too complicated on malts? Hops?
what’s the purpose of the carapils and black patent?
Figured that little bit of black patent for color, Carapils for body.
Seems to me, you’ll get the body from the crystal. How much body do you want? And what color do you want that you need black patent for?
I was looking to get on the darker end of IPA’s.
As for body, I don’t really want something too dry. I wanted something full bodied.
there’s nothing wrong with your recipe. Brew it and learn from it. It’ll prob be pretty damn good.
You could use a darker malt for the color and body all in one. Just a thought…
I’m far from a style nazi but the guidelines can be helpful when deciding on ingredients. In this case (Am IPA), it says “Restrained use of crystal malts, if any, as high amounts can lead to a sweet finish and clash with the hop character.”
…so, with restrained use in mind, if you could add the color and body in .5 to .75 of one character malt (C120? — depending on how dark you wanna go) vs 1.65 lb of three different character malts you might be happier with the results. You could even boil a bit harder to get more color but that’s fairly unpredictable IMO.
Ultimately it’s your beer — brew it the way you want. Whatever you decide to do I hope it turns out great. Cheers!
I’m more or less with BrewBama. Using darker malts strictly for color adjustment just feels counterintuitive to me; let the beer be the color it wants to be.
That said, some unsolicited input: Red IPA (which is now a Specialty IPA under the new BJCP guidelines, FWIW) happens to be one of my favorite styles to brew/drink, and my personal specialty grain bill is 4% Simpson’s Medium, 2% Simpson’s Extra Dark (~150L). It brings a tremendous depth of flavor, even with NA malts. I also use 12% Munich I for a just a little extra malty richness.
Well, I’ve pretty much accepted that I’ve screwed this one up… 
In retrospect, I wish I had just gone with a real simple grain bill and let the hops do the work. Don’t know why I was concerned about color all that much…
I’m sure it will turn out fine, but we’ll see.
I’m a little more concerned about how I managed to boil off three gallons on a hot, humid day. Is that common for people? I think two of my last three boils I’ve collected 7 gal. and ended up with less than 5 gal. going into the fermenter. Granted, I hit my gravity… which makes even LESS sense to me, now that I think about it.
Worse case scenario, it turns out absolutely fantastic, but you can’t duplicate it.
It took me a minute to think about this but you are spot on. That would kill me! LOL