Making Your Own Beer: India Pale Ale

Those of us who do so probably enjoy home brewing for the same reasons. It's a good feeling holding a beer in your hand that's every bit as good as one made professionally, knowing you made it yourself. If you're like me though, you get to the point where you don't want to make beer from a kit or from someone else's recipe. You want to brew something that's your own creation. After much research, I finally figured out how to formulate recipes for given beer styles with very little need for tweaking the recipe after each batch.

When making an India pale ale, you want to meet the following BJCP style guidelines:

OG: 1.050-75

FG: 1.010-18

IBU: 40-60

SRM: 8-14

ABV: 5-7.5%

Unfortunately, what these numbers don't tell you is what an India pale ale should look, smell and taste like. India pale ale should be copper, burnished gold or amber in color. It should have a noticeable earthy, fruity hop aroma and a dominant bitterness. Although many IPAs clock in at 5% abv, a more traditional IPA should be at least 6%abv. India pale ale should have enough malt and fruity esters to balance stand up to the hops without overpowering the beer's bitterness.

Professional brewers use two-row pale malt as the base malt. Small amounts of crystal or Carastan malts are used for color and to enhance malt flavor. Sometimes, 1-2% of the grain bill is composed of carapils or dextrin malts to help achieve a frothy head. Traditionally, Kent Goldings and Fuggles were used, helping give a smooth, rounded flavor. Very often these beers were also dry hopped before shipping.

Below, is a chart to help you formulate your IPA recipe. It includes how much grain or malt extract to use as your primary ingredient. That's followed by commonly used specialty grains, hops and adjuncts, if any. Following that is a recipe I've put together for you to try and experiment with. Finally, some websites to help you decide for yourselves which grains, hops and yeasts to use to formulate a recipe of your own.

All Grain

• Primary Grist: 10.5-14 lbs 2 row pale ale malt
• Malt Extract: Pale malt extract: 6.5-10 lbs syrup or 6.5-9 lbs DME
• Specialty malts: .25-.5 lb crystal malt
• Hops: Fuggles, Kent Goldings, Northern Brewer, Brewers Gold, Northdown, Target, Brambling Cross
• Adjuncts: 0-1 lb corn sugar, 0-0.25 flaked maize, Irish Moss, Isinglass, Burton salts (under 1 oz)

Mashing method (if using all grain) single temp infusion 60-90 minutes

Wort boil: 60 minutes (extract) 90-120 minutes (all grain)

Here's a base recipe I've put together for you to try.

Brian's Basic IPA

• 6.5 lb pale DME
• 8 oz crystal malt 40L
• 8 oz biscuit malt
• 2 oz northern brewer hops
• 1 oz kent goldings
• 1 oz fuggles
• 1/2 tsp Irish moss
• 1 package wyeast 1028 London ale yeast

OG: 1.065

FG: 1.015

SRM: 12 SRM

ABV: 6.5%

1. Heat a gallon of water to 150-155F. Crush your grains and soak them in the water for a half hour to extract their color and flavor. When done, strain the water through a sieve or colander to remove the grains. Pour the water in a large stockpot.
2. Add enough water to the stockpot to make 3 gallons and heat over med-high heat. Add the dry malt extract, 1 lb at a time and let it dissolve into the water. Bring to a boil, being careful not to let the wort boil over. With all this sugar, the wort is very prone to do so.
3. While waiting for the water to come to a boil, put the northern brewer hops in a cheesecloth bag or hop bag and weight it with some sanitized marbles so it sinks into the beer. do the same with the fuggles and kent goldings, being sure keep them separate from the northern brewer and remembering which is which.
4. When the water starts boiling, add the northern brewer and maintain a rolling boil for an hour. 5-7 minutes before the end of the boil, add the kent goldings, 3 minutes before the end of the boil add the fuggles.
5. When the wort is done boiling, pour it carefully into your primary fermenter. Add ice cold water to bring the wort up to 5 gallons. Chill the wort down to 75F as quickly as possible. When the wort is cool, pitch your yeast.
6. In 3-5 days the yeast will have completely fermented your beer. Repeated hydrometer readings will confirm when the beer has been fermented. Transfer the beer to a primary carboy for at least a week to let it drop clear. An extra week in the carboy to let it mature wouldn't hurt.
7. When you're ready to bottle your beer, sanitize your bottles. Boil 1.25 cups DME in 2 cups water for 15 minutes. Let it cool to room temperature. Add the sugar water to the beer and stir thoroughly. Bottle the beer, attach the caps and give your beer 2 weeks to carbonate. After 2 weeks it should be thoroughly carbonated and ready to drink.

When it comes time for you to develop your own recipe, remember the ingredient guidelines I've given are just that: guidelines. The best thing I can recommend is that you pick up some examples of the style you're emulating. Remember the flavors and aromas you like and those you don't. Refer to The Complete Joy of Homebrewing which provides a very complete list of grains and hops. Study the flavors and aromas they offer and pick those grains and hops that will give your beer the flavors you're looking for. Most of all, though, remember this is supposed to be fun. Don't be disappointed if your beer doesn't turn out just as you pictured. That's what the next batch is for: tweaking.