I’ve been on a mission to perfect my home recipes for IPA, APA, and Blonde. Today I’m taking a break and brewing just for fun. Its inspired by the fact that I didn’t have enough MO to do a house APA, and I had some bags of hops about empty and needing to be used.
5.5# MO
5.5# 2 Row
3# Vienna
Mash 6 gal at 156°
Steeping 8oz chocolate whole in the sparge just for color. That 4 gallons is about the color of coffee and smells like very weak mocha.
2oz centennial FWH
2oz cascade 15 min
1.5 oz Mr Hood at flameout and 15 min stand before chilling
Looks tasty! Saturday or Sunday I start on a quest to see if I can make my Rye IPA into a decent Rye APA. Trying to get it from 7.3% ABV down to more like 5.2%.
Keep us posted on your results. As much as I enjoy the bigger styles, I tend to gravitate to beers in the 4-5.5% range most of the time. When I crack open a Quad or barleywine I intend to get 2 nights out of it. It’s certainly possible to pack a lot of flavor into a session beer, but it’s rarely as simple as scaling the ingredients down in proportion.
I have found that the information in Jenn Talley’s talk about session beers (2012 NHC) really helps me pack “high-alcohol” flavor into lower alcohol beers. I find that with session IPAs or APAs a bit more late hops helps balance the natural sweetness from a higher mash temp for body.
