Had a boring day at work and decided to try and put together my very first recipe. I recently had a local pale ale made with Galaxy hops and loved it. Being a big SciFi nerd I decided to try and make an IPA with only hops with space related names. Now, please tear this recipe a new one, as I really don’t know what I’m doing, but I’m going for a nice, lighter coloured IPA that is dry and crisp. This is what I have thus far.
Outer Space IPA
O.G. 1.077
F.G. 1.017
ABV 7.75%
IBU 75.15
SRM 9.18
0.75 oz Apollo pellets @ 60min
1 oz Pioneer, 1 oz Galaxy @ 10min
1oz Pioneer, 1 oz Galaxy Flameout/Whirlpool
Dry Hop with Galaxy? Maybe 2 oz
I have heard Galaxy can be hardcore, dont know how much they used in the local pale ale. I also considered Millennium or Challenger if anyone thinks they might be better.
As for wanting a lighter colored beer, C40 would give you that more readily than the more amber colored C60. Either would be great, though. I haven’t used Pioneer before but it looks as though it would blend with Galaxy just fine. And Galaxy is pretty assertive but awesome IMO. But I would up the late hops ( everything after 60 minutes) to get you into IPA territory. As is, the late hops are more APA level. At very least I would double the 10, whirlpool and dry hop additions, but cool to 175F before adding the whirlpool hops… And starting at 1.077 OG I would up the sugar to 1 lb and reduce your 2 row by 1/2 lb - this will help dry the beer out and give you a less sweet, more drinkable beer. I think it sounds good !
Are you trying to dry the beer out or bump up the ABV with the cane sugar? My choice would be to leave it out of the recipe. And that seems like an awful lot of crystal malt- I’d drop it to 0.25#.
With it being pretty much IIPA OG, alot of people will sub out some base malt for cane sugar to help it attenuate better/dry out. Otherwise an IPA that big is sort of American barleywine-ish. Personally, I’d rather have a 1.062-65 ish IPA.
Im trying to dry the beer out with the sugar, and I’m definately not looking for something that would be considered barleywine-ish. Just enough malt backbone to support the hops. So my ammended recipe is
13 lbs 2 row
.75 lbs munic
1 lb sugar
.75 oz apollo 60min
2oz Galaxy and Pioneer at 10min and 2oz of both in the whirlpool, with 1oz each to dry hop.
Brewers Friend says this puts the IBU’s around 103. That seems to be a lot higher than I want. Its saying the 4oz at 10min is giving me a total of 53 IBU’s. Do you really get that much perceived bitterness from such a late hop addition?
I think what might have been suggested by more late addition hops is not more hops at 10 min, but maybe trying hops at 10 min and 5 min. Maybe .5 oz of both Pioneer and Galaxy at 10 min, and the same at 5 min? That should increase your perceived flavor hop a bit while adding to the depth of it as well. Just something to consider.
I’ve been looking around for the hops because my LHBS doesn’t have apollo of pioneer. I can’t find a single place online that has pioneer hops. I only know the places you guys suggest, but nobody had them.
Go with about 5% munich or crystal (or go without munich or crystal if you want it with very light color)
about 5-7% Sugar (what kind you want)
and mash to low temperature (146-150F) to convert more simple sugar (will result to low FG and dry beer)
Pioneer might be tough to find, but Apollo and Galaxy will make a great IIPA. I’d go with somewhere around 8-12 oz of hops total, roughly 1/3 of that in the dry hop. Nothing wrong with either grain bill; I personally like ~5% medium crystal.
Southern cross is a nice hop. It was very hard to get on the Homebrew level, but I have recently seen it available on a few sites. Production and commercial demand must have found the happy medium.
+1. And I’ve come around to Apollo big time. I shied away from it for awhile after having a couple single hop Apollo beers that were pretty onion-y. But on my last big YVH order I picked up some Apollo among others and I’m really liking the resiny, orange/citrus thing. And I got none of the onion character out of these hops.
I agree, Steve. I like crystal with a light touch - I just think it gets way overdone. Too much of a good thing. I like 5% in IPA, even 7% in APA, then dried out with gypsum. I’m more of a ‘crystal limiter’ than a hater. ;D
