I just had my first bottle of the Kama Citra Session IPA 5 gallon extract kit I brewed about 6 weeks ago. While I think it turned out well, it’s not my favorite IPA. It’s a little maltier and darker than I’d like. I’ve only recently really started to like IPAs and this was the first one I’ve brewed so all I have to go off. Kind of shooting from the hip here but wondering how this might turn out.
33% of the grain bill being sugar might be too much…maybe replace some that with some wheat dme…and add the lme later in the boil to keep the color lighter.
Are there specific commercial session IPAs that you like? If you can find a couple of “clone” recipes for those beers, that can often be a starting point for a first attempt at a recipe.
Using the Karma Citra ingredients list:
You could lighten the color and/or malty-ness by using
Caramel 10 or 20, rather than Caramel 40.
using 1 lb sugar rather than using 1 lb DME.
I haven’t used Amarillo as a bittering hop and I have no experience with hops in the ‘@ 30’ time frame - so I don’t have anything to offer here.
If you’re set up to do 1 gallon test batches, OG of 1.050 is 20 oz of DME (or a pound of DME and some sugar).
Extract tends to finish a little sweeter… by malty, do you mean sweet? Adding sugar to dry things out is a good move, but you might have overdone it. 4.5 Oz hops seems light to me for an IPA. Maybe adding extra hops could Balance it out a bit.
Here are the beer descriptions from their web sites.
karben4 fantasy factory
Hopheads crusade on a heroic quest for the holy grail of India Pale Ales. The subconscious composes paradisiacal scenes of malty waves crashing on a ripe lupulin landscape cascading hop flavors and aromas in profuse abundance. With humble confidence we offer this brew as fantasy made reality. Balanced in every detail and gushing resinous, exceptional citrus flavors and aromas that collaborate with soft bready notes surrendered from premium English golden malted barley, this beer is a tropical dreamscape.
Sometimes checking the beer ratings sites offer useful insights as well. Central Waters appeared to be getting bad reviews due to bad inventory management beyond their control (aka outdated beer ).
To get closer to either of these, you may need a create a “more flavorful” malt base using partial mashing.
Consider calculating the estimated IBU for the new recipe and comparing it to the old. Moving 1/2 the LME from @ 60 to @ 30 may have a noticeable impact on the bitterness. For bitterness calculations,