I have been doing my most recent IPAs with a Grain bill consisting of some Munich as follows: 89% 2 row pale, 8% Munich, 3% Crystal 45. So kindalike an English IPA malt bill.
My wife and I got a hold of some Pliney and liked it quite a bit. She wanted to see if I could brew our IPA with the dry Pliney bill (great wife)-- which I found to be 87% 2 row, 4% Crystal 45, 4% carapills, and 5% dextrose.
Question is, my IPA is only about 1.065 OG and usually ends up with a final gravity around 1.010-1.011 anyway. So I was thinking to ignore the dextrose and do 92% 2 row, 4% Crystal 45, and 4% carapills to go for a similar taste without having to use dextrose. Any opinions? Also add what OG to most people need/use dextrose to dry it out.
If you want to dry it out using dextrose without changing the OG of your original beer replace some of the 2 row with the dextrose. I would probably shoot for 5% as well.
No, just add a tablespoon of gypsum (~20 grams for 7 gallons pre-boil) in the mash. That will do the trick. You probably don’t have sufficient sulfates in your water for a dry IPA. It may also improve your extract efficiency.
I think that you don’t want to skip the dextrose if you are going for a dry brew. The entire reason for it is to drop the 2-row down to reduce the unfermentables while still getting a decent alcohol content.
Some other options are to make sure you have a healthy yeast starter for max attenuation, use gypsum as suggested, cooler mash temps for lighter body, use fining agents to clarify the beer, and adjusting the mash pH to make sure you have good enzymatic activity.
All of these factors contribute to body and dryness so if you adjust here and there, you can get well under 1.010 pretty easily with a 1.060+ OG.
