Well, New Belgium finally made it to Ohio today, so I helped myself to several $2.99 bombers of Ranger IPA. This beer is very good so I went to their website. The malt bill consists of pale malt and C-120. This beer is very light in color, so the C120 has to be minimal. Have any of you used dark crystals in an IPA like this?
I’ve had Ranger, Frank, and I agree they clearly don’t use a lot. I stay in the C20/40/60 range for AIPA though.
I do too. This just got me thinking because this is a thin, dry body that I’m digging. So just thinking maybe a few ounces of 120 can get me here and minimize the crystals in the beer.
In addition, my next brew is going to finally be my Zythos IPA and I plan on trying to dry is out as much as possible by mashing low and using WLP 007.
I limit crystal to 5% and use a fair amount of gypsum to get a nice dry IPA normally. But you could try a little bit of the 120 - just don’t use much. It would get darker and burnt sugar/raisiny pretty quick. I’d have never guessed they used it. Well, it’s good stuff !
Yeah unless it’s a typo on their website and supposed to be 20, because this is one of the lightest IPAs in color that I’ve seen.
20L makes more sense. It could be a typo.
Eh… Looked at it again… In the description it says “…pale and dark crystal malts…” So I don’t think it’s a typo. I might give this a shot and use maybe 3 or 4 ounces of 120 in my next batch and see what happens. The worst that can happen is… It’s beer… It’ll be good
+1. not a bad worst case scenario.
I like that IPA a lot. It’s right on the edge of too bitter but the hop presence is phenomenal. Try it in the 16 oz cans if you can find it. even better.
Ok. I’ll have to keep an eye out. Right now it’s just 22 oz bottles in Ohio. And they’re very fresh. Though it’s just gotten here, I’ve had several NB beers before. I remember really liking Red Hoptober.
Red Hoptober was good. Unfortunately, they change their seasonals every year now so I believe it is gone. It drives me crazy especially when the replace a good one with a not so good one. NB was one of my favorite breweries but this annoyance has knocked them down a peg in my book…
Avery IPA also uses C-120L, but I think its only 2-3%.
Good to know… I think I’m going to go about this and give it a shot.
I find it interesting that they use Black Malt in their Imperial IPA
I’d imagine its a relative ‘handful’ or less only to get the color a bit darker than an all 2 row beer would turn out. wouldn’t be surprised if it was added add sparge time either.
I would assume that as well but it surprises me that they wouldn’t want a bit more malt balance for such a hoppy beer…and yes I realize that an IIPA is about hops and not malt…
Hey Guys. I got banned shortly after posting this comment. I hope that it was just a mistake, glitch, etc and that I did not offend anyone. I apologize if I have for that is never my intention and maybe my posts are being misread. Anyway, sorry if I have done anything wrong…
Haha, no, it was a website forum glitch, I tried to log on earlier today and was told I was banned as well!
not really - Stone’s Enjoy By is just basemalt (a split of MO and 2-row). When the gravity gets that high its actually hard to ‘cut’ the maltiness in order to keep the bitterness and hop flavor front-and-center. some breweries do this by adding character malts and sugar, others it seems nowadays are doing straight basemalt. There’s another popular IIPA that i can’t think of right now that is pretty much all 2-row and like 1-2% medium Crystal.
Good point. Makes complete sense. If I ever get around to doing an IIPA I will have to keep that in mind. Sorry to get off the original topic…