First IPA

Beer Recipes
1

Going to be trying my hand at brewing my first IPA in the next week or so, just wanted a little input on quick recipe I drummed up.

I’m not very experienced with recipe design/formulation, so please be gentle with any criticism lol

For 5 gallons:
10lbs Pale Malt
1lb Munich Malt
.5lb  Crystal 60
1 lb Corn Sugar

1 oz Centenniel @ 60
1 oz Cascade @ 15
2 oz Cascade @ 5
1 oz Cascade Dry hop - 4 days

For yeast, I would most likely use US-05, my LHBS generally only stocks Fermentis dry yeast.

As far as the mash, I don’t do anything fancy: single infusion with a batch sparge.

Any feedback would be appreciated.

2

Looks good to me except I would use a couple more ounces of hops for dry hopping.

3

Not sure I’d use sugar in that.  If it was an IIPA, yes.

4

Okay, thanks!  Also going to be my first attempt at dry hopping, so I didn’t have much experience to go off of.

I was basically just using the sugar as an easy(lazy?) way to increase the gravity since I tend to have a low mash efficiency (something I should probably address).  Also since it’s my first attempt at a recipe, I was using the BeerSmith style guidelines and essentially just shooting for the middle

5

My IPA grain bill is similar to yours other than it has 1/2# of sugar and I use honey malt and a bit more munich. I get great results. I don’t see a problem with the sugar but #1 might be a bit much.

6

2hy not just use more pale malt?  Probably the best way to address low efficiency.

7

I suppose that’s a pretty good point.  The only thing I’d have to look at is my mash tun capacity. I think 11.5# is already pushing it.

8

Had to pivot my initial plan on this recipe, since my LHBS didn’t have 10 lb bags of pale malt in stock, so I switched to Maris Otter as my base malt.  I guess this is a little fortunate, because I’ve been wanting to play with Maris Otter a bit and this gave me a good reason.  I was also tossing up whether to use pale malt or Maris Otter when I started writing this recipe down.

The other change I was thinking about making is scrapping the crystal malt altogether, and adding a pound of cara-pils to increase head retention in the final beer.  Wondering if anyone has any personal experience with whether that actually helps, or if a pound of it is even necessary at this size batch.

9

I’m not a big Crystal fan, but in this beer and at that proportion I would keep it as a rock to help balance the sweetness side of the scale.  Others may feel differently, but I would also forget the CaraPils.  If you feel you need a boost for head retention, I would use 5-10% Pale Wheat, which always works for me.