Dead Ringer IPA extract recipe: late extract addition recipe modifications

[tiredofbuyingbeer]

So I’m brewing Northern Brewer’s Dead Ringer IPA, which is supposed to be a clone of Bell’s Two-Hearted. This will be my 5th beer. I haven’t been thrilled that my beers (brewed with extract plus steeping grains) have come out too dark, so I want to do a late extract addition and have a larger boil volume than the recipe calls for. Below, I’ve describe what I’m planning to do with the recipe, in part to share in case anyone’s interested in how you might change it, and in part for a sanity check. Please let me know if I’m mistaken in any of my assumptions or calculations.

The Northern Brewer recipe has you steep 1 pound of Caramel 40 malt, then add 9.15 pounds of Golden malt LME (!) to a 60 minute partial boil. If I only count the LME as a gravity addition, that would give a boil gravity of 1.101. (The boil size is 3.25 gallons: 2.5 gallons of water plus the volume addition of 9.15 of LME.) Doing this and factoring in top-off water should get an OG in the fermenter of about 1.065, or about what the kit says the target OG should be. This is also consistent with a Zymurgy article I found giving a homebrew recipe of Two-Hearted by Bell’s production manager. Palmer, however, in this article, says that steeping 1 pound of caramel 40 for 30 minutes at 160 degrees should add 22 gravity points per gallon, bringing the boil gravity up to 1.108 and the OG in the fermenter to 1.070.

So I can safely say that my boil gravity will be between 1.101 and 1.108. That yields a low-ish hop utilization: 13.71-14.57% for a 60 minute boil. Here are the hop additions in the Northern Brewer recipe:

Centennial 1 oz. (10.5% AA) @ 60 min.
Centennial 1 oz. (10.5% AA) @ 20 min.
Centennial 2 oz. (10.5% AA) @ 5 min.
And then there’s 1 ounce of centennial for dry-hopping, not added here.

According to the spreadsheet I’m using and the boil gravity range I listed above, that gives an IBU contribution of 43.3-46.0. A little on the low-end for this beer, I think. The Zymurgy article has the beer at 55 IBUs, which seems about right to me when I taste it.

I’m thinking about adding ¼ of the LME, or about 2.29 pounds, before the first hop schedule, and bringing the boil volume up 4 gallons. That yields a boil gravity of 1.021-1.026, depending on whether or not you count the gravity addition from steeping crystal malt. That gives a much higher hop utilization—28.6-30.05% for 60 minutes—than the recipe assumes. So I’d need to dial down the hop additions. The following hop additions give me 52-54.6 IBUs:

Centennial 0.5 oz (10.5% AA) @ 60 min.
Centennial 0.75 oz (10.5% AA) @ 20 min.
Centennial 1.75 oz (10.5% AA) @ 5 min. (Here, I used a higher boil gravity to reflect a late extract addition: 1.082-1.088)
And then 2 ounces of Centennial left over for dry hopping.

Does that seem like a reasonable modification of the recipe? That brings the IBUs more in line with what I think they should be for this beer, brings out a bit more hop aroma and taste, and avoids boiling 9.15 pounds of LME for 60 minutes.

One thing I don’t consider at all is evaporation rate. I’m assuming that the boil volume is 4 gallons from start to finish. Sometimes, I add water to the boil to keep it at around the same volume.

 

[Yooper]

Don't worry so much about boil gravity- even though the IBU calculators have that as part of the formula, the thing to be more concerned about is excess maillard reactions (similar to caramelization, or toasting bread reactions).

To avoid that, I'd use no more than 1# of extract per gallon of water in the boil, and then add the rest of the extract at flame out.

Hops utilization really isn't dependent on wort gravity, but instead more on break material.

One thing that DOES really impact hops oils isomerization is the size of the boil. The reason is that hops oils can only isomerize so much before the wort is saturated. That is between 80-100 IBUs. What this means is that even if you add two pounds of hops to 2 gallons of wort, you can never get more than about 80-100 IBUs in the beer. You will get a hops oil sheen on top of the wort from the extra hops oils, but they will not isomerize.

To make the math super simple, say you get 100 IBUs total in 2.5 gallons of boiled wort. Then you top up with 2.5 gallons of water (0 IBUs). That means in a partial boil, boiling half of the wort, you can never get more than 50 IBUs in a batch. Even that is unlikely, as it's more like 80-85 IBUs as a max according to tests I've seen. So, in a 2.5 gallon boil for a 5 gallon batch, it's more like 40 IBUs. So the reason for decreased hops utilization in partial boils in higher IBU beers like pale ales and IPAs isn't the boil gravity- it's the dilution.

I would NOT dial down any hops additions at all. You will still be adding at least a gallon of 0 IBU water to the finished batch.

 

[tiredofbuyingbeer]

Sorry I didn't respond right away. I should say, thanks for the feedback. I brewed it without fooling around with the hop schedule. I'm leaving it in the fermenter for another week and a half, so I'll know soon if it's too bitter or not bitter enough.