Home-brew recipe: Hoppy Boston IPA

Home-brewing is a great hobby for any beer enthusiast, I think I have learned more about beer from brewing myself than I could ever learn just by tasting. You really learn the importance of different ingredients, how they are used, how much is used, and how it effects the final beer. Here is a recipe for my IPA, followed by a review of the final product.

Specialty Grains:

1 lb. CaraMunich I malt, 1lb. CaraPils malt, 2 lbs. Crystal 20L malt

Malt extract:

3.3 lbs. Breiss Pilsen light malt extract, 4 lb. Briess Pilsen light malt extract

Hops:

1 oz. Warrior hops (60 min)

1.0 oz. Chinook (45 min)

1 tsp. Irish moss (15 min)

1.0 oz. Simcoe (10 min)

1.0 oz. Simcoe (1 min)

2.0 oz. Cascade (dry hop in the secondary)

Wyeast 1272 American Ale II yeast

Add the specialty grains to a muslin bag, soak in 3.5 gallons of water at 140 C for 30 minutes. Add the malt extract and heat to a boil. Boil for 60 minutes adding the hops at the specified times. Cool to 70 C and add to the clean and sterilized primary fermenter. Pitch the yeast and ferment for  7 days. Rack into a secondary fermenter with the dry hops, and ferment for an additional 14 days. Add bottling sugar and bottle, of add to a keg and pressurize. Enjoy!

HoppyBoston IPAThe IPA pours a light amber with a sustained white head. The Cascade hops are very evident on the nose, a strong smell of citrus and tropical fruit. The first taste is all hops, solid bitterness with lemon, grapefruit and mango. The beer is very hop-forward, but there is a bit of malt in the backbone to keep it from overwhelming. The beer comes in at a little over 7% ABV, not quite a double IPA, but by no means a light beer. Enjoy!

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