Partial Mash Session IPA

October 28, 2015 by Leave a Comment

CamaronOf the new IPA variants — black IPA, brown IPA, red IPA, etc. — session IPA is the one I like the best. With the exception of a few rye IPAs, I feel that adding something to an American IPA detracts from, rather than adds to, the beer. I totally sympathize with people who don’t like the name, but whether you call it a session IPA or a dry, hoppy pale ale, I think the concept is brilliant — a “sessionable” pale ale with a big hop bouquet.

This is the partial mash version of my all-grain session IPA recipe. That recipe, in turn, is basically just a lower gravity version of my “regular” American IPA, Roswell IPA. (The amount of bittering hops is reduced slightly, but the amount of late hops is left unchanged. Here’s why I did that.) [Read more…]

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Jumbo Session Shrimp IPA

October 13, 2015 by 1 Comment

CamaronHere is my recipe for session IPA. (There’s no shrimp in the recipe, the name is just “jumbo shrimp” and “session IPA” — two combinations of words that seem nonsensical to some — jumbled together.) This recipe is based on my Roswell IPA, a “regular” American IPA. The way I converted my AmericanIPA recipe to a session IPA recipe should work with any American IPA. My ideas on what a session IPA should be like are spelled out in a previous article, and should explain the decisions I’ve made during recipe formulation. 

To start with, I took my original grain bill and subtracted pale malt until I hit a “sessionable” range, in this case 4.6% ABV. I kept the same amounts of crystal malt (and Vienna malt) as in the original, but double checked that the percentage of crystal was definitely under 7.5%. (It was.) My second, and final step, was to lower the amount of bittering hops to keep the BU:GU ratio (at least roughly) the same. My Roswell IPA had an OG of 1.068 and 67 IBUs, for a BU:GU ratio of 1.01. My new session beer had an OG of 1.044, so I adjusted the IBUs down to 44 for a BU:GU ratio of 1.00. I only changed the amount of the first hop addition. I left the amounts of late addition hops and dry hops the same, as I definitely wanted all the flavor and aroma of hops in my session IPA. That’s it. If you have an IPA you like, performing these two steps should deliver a session IPA that you like. You might have to do some tweaking after you first brew it. Then again, if you liked the original IPA, it might just deliver a dry “sessionized” beer with a big hop character that’s your cup of tea . . . or plate of shrimp.

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Brewing Bitter Extract-Based Beers

July 31, 2014 by Leave a Comment
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Malt extract is convenient and great for many beers. To brew very hoppy beers, however, you may need toalter your usual brewing techniques a bit

IPAs are all the rage these days. And stovetop extract brewers, of course, want to brew them and other hoppy beers. Although you can brew a fine extract IPA, there are some challenges that you must first overcome.

The standard practice for brewing stovetop extract beers — in the US, at least — is too steep some specialty grains, then boil a thick wort of dissolved malt extract in a stovetop brew pot. After the wort is boiled, it is cooled and diluted to working strength in the fermenter. Often, for a 5.0-gallon (19-L) batch of homebrew, around 2–3 gallons (8–11 L) of wort is boiled. This practice works well for many types of beers, but can cause problems if you are trying to brew a very hoppy ale.

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Session IPA

February 26, 2014 by 8 Comments

This is part of a continuing series on IPA variants. So far, I’ve tackled black IPAs/Cascadian dark ales, Belgian IPAs, and wheat IPAs. See also the article on rye IPA, by Denny Conn. In addition, I wrote a whole series of articles on “regular” American-style IPAs, along with American pale ales and double IPAs. 

 

Founders

Founders All Day IPA. Not quite an IPA, but is it just a pale ale? (Also, it’s a tasty beer, so does the name matter?)

Beers with “IPA” in their name tend to sell well and commercial brewers are keen to have those three letters on their labels. One style (or substyle) of beer that has emerged recently is session IPA. A session IPA supposedly combines the hoppiness of an IPA with the lower alcohol content of a session beer. Founders Brewing’s All Day IPA was one of the first entries in this category, and continues to be one of the best-known.

When session IPAs first arrived, they tended to get one of two reactions. Beer drinkers either said, “Awesome, now I can get more hoppy goodness, and not have to stop after a couple,” or, “Hey great idea, but I liked it better when it was called pale ale.”

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