{"id":428,"date":"2015-07-13T21:46:45","date_gmt":"2015-07-14T02:46:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brewitright.com\/wordpress\/?p=428"},"modified":"2015-07-13T21:46:45","modified_gmt":"2015-07-14T02:46:45","slug":"small-batch-session-ipa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/brewitright.com\/wordpress\/2015\/07\/13\/small-batch-session-ipa\/","title":{"rendered":"Small-batch Session IPA"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"small-batch-session-ipa\"<\/a>Now that it’s summer and the days get hot, we want a drinkable beer without a ton of alcohol but no lack of hoppiness.\u00a0 That means a session IPA.\u00a0 We’ve had some bad ones, and we’ve had some good ones, so what makes a good one?\u00a0 Can we make a good one?<\/p>\n

The generally accepted definition of a session IPA seems to be a hoppy pale ale that is 5% ABV or less<\/a>.\u00a0 Even 5% seems pretty high ABV to us, since we want to drink a lot of it and not fall off the bench.\u00a0 The term “session” originally came from the UK<\/a> where most of the “milds” that pub patrons drank were between 3% and 4% ABV.\u00a0 To us 3% or 4% seems just about right; but a 5% “session IPA” is really just a hoppy American Pale Ale and no challenge whatsoever…<\/p>\n

The Challenge<\/strong><\/p>\n

Since we enjoy difficult things, our goal was to create a 3.5% ABV beer with the hop character of an IPA and enough maltiness and body that nobody would confuse it with Bud Light.\u00a0 It’s supposedly difficult to get the right balance of maltiness, body, and hoppiness with very low alcohol beers, since the low original gravity often means lower body and thinner taste.\u00a0 That implies fewer hops since the lack of malt flavor won’t be able to balance the bitterness as well.\u00a0 But since IPAs are known for the buckets of hops brewers throw in, how could we bridge the gap?<\/p>\n

First, we can mash higher to favor the alpha amylase enzyme, producing a sweeter, less fermentable wort which will raise the finishing gravity and provide more body.\u00a0 Second, we can add more specialty malts than usual to increase the malty flavor of the beer.\u00a0 Third, we can add quick oats to increase the amount of beta glucans, which are not fermentable and add body to the wort.<\/p>\n

For the hop side of things, while we’re shooting for an IPA, we still need to keep the hop rate lower than an IPA to ensure we don’t end up with hop tea.\u00a0 We can use more hops than normal for a 1.040 beer since we’re increasing the body, but we’ve still got to be careful.\u00a0 We’re aiming for about 70 IBU total, but only 25 of those IBU from the early bittering hops.\u00a0 The rest will come from late aroma\/flavor hops and a hopstand, which will contribute a much mellower bitterness.\u00a0 Fourth, we’ll use an English yeast that accentuates the malt more than a clean US strain like S-05 would.<\/p>\n

Finally, the weather is so nice right now, we’re going to brew this outside on our 3-gallon 120V electric Brew-In-A-Bag system, but we’re still going to make a 5-gallon batch.\u00a0 This means we need to top up from 3 gallons to 5 after our boil, making some gravity calculations more complicated.<\/p>\n

The Recipe<\/strong><\/p>\n

Name: Session IPA\r\nBatch size: 5 gallons\r\nBoil size: 3.8 gallons\r\nExpected OG: 1.040 (75% efficiency)\r\nExpected FG: 1.012\r\nExpected IBU: 70 (25 early, 45 aroma\/flavor\/hopstand)\r\nMash: 90m @ 156\u00b0F\r\n\r\n  3.3 lbs Muntons Maris Otter\r\n  2.5 lbs Briess Vienna\r\n 13.3 oz  Bob's Red Mill quick oats\r\n  7.0 oz  Briess Crystal 10L\r\n  7.0 oz  Muntons Crystal 60L\r\n\r\n  0.6 oz Centennial 9.5%AA @ 60m\r\n  1.0 oz Centennial 9.5%AA @ 10m\r\n         Whirlfloc & yeast nutrient @ 10m\r\n  2.0 oz Cascade    6.4%AA @ 5m\r\n  2.0 oz Centennial 9.0%AA @ 5m\r\n  1.4 oz Centennial 9.4%AA @ 0m (20m hopstand)\r\n  2.0 oz Cascade    6.4%AA @ 0m (20m hopstand)\r\n  1.0 oz Centennial 9.5%AA dry-hop 5 days\r\n\r\n  1 pack Wyeast 1275 Thames Valley Ale<\/pre>\n
The Brew<\/strong><\/p>\n
We have an element protector screen on our small system, which ensures the bag containing up to 7lbs of grain does not rest on the element, which could cause scorching or put strain on the element’s gasket.\u00a0 Unfortunately, this screen isn’t quite the right size for our kettle, and doesn’t have enough holes for good circulation.\u00a0 This meant we spent a while playing with the pump’s output valve before finding the right flow rate that wouldn’t suck the bag down into the kettle through the gap between the protector screen and the kettle wall.\u00a0 Once found we could finally leave the mash alone and not worry about getting grain into the recirculating wort.<\/p>\n
This was also the first brew with a new 5500W Camco ULWD ripple element.\u00a0 We had scorching on the previous LWD element in this system, especially with a recent Hefeweizen (though it didn’t affect the flavor).\u00a0 While the old element was a 5500W\/240V LWD, we ran it at 120V which quarters the wattage to 1375 and thus also quarters the watt density into ULWD territory.\u00a0 But for whatever reason we still had scorching, so the element had to go.\u00a0 It was quite difficult to bend the Camco ripple element to the right shape, while still ensuring it could be maneuvered into the kettle through the hole in the side.\u00a0 But ultimately successful, and we had no scorching with the new, lower watt density element.<\/p>\n
Everything went well and we ended up with between 2.5 and 3 gallons of 16\u00b0P wort, which we topped up with boiled, filtered water to 4.5 gallons for a final gravity of 1.040.\u00a0 After pitching the yeast we tossed the keg into our fermentation chamber (a modified Vissani 52 bottle wine fridge) set to 67\u00b0F for a one-week primary fermentation.\u00a0 We then had to move it out to make room for our partigyle IPA and Pale, which we’ll talk about next time!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Now that it’s summer and the days get hot, we want a drinkable beer without a ton of alcohol but no lack of hoppiness.\u00a0 That means a session IPA.\u00a0 We’ve had some bad ones, and we’ve had some good ones, so what makes a good one?\u00a0 Can we make a good one? The generally accepted … Continue reading Small-batch Session IPA<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/brewitright.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/brewitright.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/brewitright.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/brewitright.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/brewitright.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=428"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/brewitright.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":441,"href":"http:\/\/brewitright.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428\/revisions\/441"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/brewitright.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/brewitright.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/brewitright.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}