Beer Forum

Hey - so i developed this recipe over a couple brews. Going for hops, but going for caramel and body. Thinking sort of Arrogant Bastard. Would love any thoughts - i know you can't taste it - but heck, don't we all love imagining beers!

10 Gallon Batch, split into two fermenters/yeast

The 001 version is great. Not too hoppy, but they are there, with a malty body and tad of chocolate.

The 002 version is great too - with that awesome english brown fruity/nutty, so smooth when you drink it.

I guess i am wondering if you have thoughts on the grains (like should i lose the 20L cuz of the 60L and 80L? what is the point of the vienne? my hops, the 0 minute hops, are they useless - getting lost in the malt and the previous hops? should i rearrange the hop schedule? Any input appreciated.

It's Like That IPA (ILT IPA)

OG: 1071
FG: 1012
IBU: 76
ABV: 8%

Mash at 154F for 60 min

2 row: 22lb
Crystal 20: 2lb
Crystal 60: 2lb
Crystal 80: 2lb
Carapils: .66lb
Vienne: 20: .66lb
US Chocolate: .5lb

Boil 90 min
Hops are all whole hops
Columbus 8.1% @ 60
Chinook 13% @ 30
Chinook 13% @ 15
Crystal 4.4% @ 0
Willamette 4.5% @ 0

Yeast: WL 001 & WL 002

Thanks for reading - it really is pretty damn tasty. If you brew it, let me know what you think.

assuming that you mean caravienne and not vienna malt, your recipe has about 25% unfermentables. you're going to have a real hard time getting to 1.012 (83% attenuation) with all the crystal malt, especially with the 154 mash. I'm guessing you'll end up with something around 1.030+ and syrupy sweet.

now if your shooting for something rich and malty 1.018-1.020 FG would be plenty full bodied while still allowing the hops to come through. if it were me I'd cut the crystal malts in half to around 10-12% of the recipe and make up for the loss in gravity in base malt. i'd also ditch the carapils as it doesn't really add anything that the 154 mash doesn't already supply. the layered crystal approach is good, maybe a pound each of 20/40/60/80 and ditch the caravienne?

the hops look fine, although willamette tend to be pretty mild. something like amarillo might go nicely with the crystal?

it sounds like you've brewed this before and are happy with it, so keep doing what your doing if you like the results.

As is there's too much Crystal and too much color for an IPA. I would drop the C20, use 1 pound of C60 and 1 pound of C80, up the chocolate a bit and call it an Imperial American Brown.

thanks sheen and unlce.

not to mislead - but i was originally working for an IPA, and yes, it is out of style now - thinking more a brown now.

uncle, the Vienna is Vienna malt, not caravienna. so is the only unfermentable the Carapils?

sheen, cool - i was thinking of killing the 20, and actually adding in some 120 or a 40 if i can find it.

thanks for the input guys - it really is tasty!

As I understand it, all the crystals and the chocolate as well as the carapils are all mostly unfermentables.

my comments weren't about style, but about your expected attenuation and the resulting beer. you have a lot of unfermentables in your recipe which is going to leave a lot of residual sweetness behind. that may be what you want, but to me it seems like an excessive amount.

what I like to do to approximate my final gravity is to put my recipe into promash/beer tools/etc and then remove everything from the recipe that is not fermentable. then I take the OG of the base beer and calculate what the FG would be for that wort using the yeasts parameters. finally I add back in all the points from unfermentables and that gives me an approximate FG for the entire recipe.

for example your recipe starts out at 1.071. if I remove all the crystal malts, carapils and chocolate that leaves an OG of 1.055. assuming you get good fermentation from the 001 you'll see about an 80% attenuation, or 1.011 FG. now if you add back in the 16 gravity points (1.071 - 1.055) from the unfermentables you get an approximate FG of 1.027.

now if you did the same recipe but replaced 3lbs of the crystal with base malt you'll get somewhere in the range of 1.021 FG (1.071 - 1.063 = 8 points, .2 * 1.063 = 1.013, 1.013 + 8 = 1.021).

anyway, I just wanted to throw that out there. as always, your mileage may vary.

What do you want to change? If you think it is tasty, and like it a lot, then you might not want to change anything! Although, if you can first think of some things you would like to taste, or not taste, that can help you determine how to modify your recipe.