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Honey IPA Recipe

Beer Recipe Design
#1

Hey y’all,

Heres my recipe for my Honey IPA. Its my first time coming up with a recipe other than brewing from a kit so any constructive criticism would be wonderful. Thanks and merry christmas!

Honey IPA Recipe

1056 Wyeast American Ale yeast
1 lb Honey Malt
6.6 lbs Sparkling Amber Liquid Extract
1 lb Pale Dry Extract
2 lbs Bees by the Bay Goldenrod Honey
Hops:
Bittering: 1 oz Simcoe, UK Kent Goldings, Chinook
Flavor: 1 oz German Tettnag, German Hallertau
Aroma: 1 oz UK Fuggle, Liberty, German Hallertau
:cheers:

#2

From what I’ve heard, that sounds like a lot of honey malt. A lot of different hops, too. Describe how you want the hops to present themselves.

#3

Well I picked all of the different hops because I wanted to have a lot to balance out the sweet honey. I want a clean bitterness to go well with the sweetness. A citrusy, crisp hoppy taste with a nice subtle aroma. I chose all those hope also because I thought they would all do a great job with either bittering or flavor or aroma. I don’t know what combo of hops works best. Which ones do?

#4

Hoping someone else jumps in, as I’m by no means a hop master, but generally, a couple of varieties is plenty for most beers. Here are the descriptions of the hops you’ve listed:

Goldings- Flowery
Simcoe- intensely piney
Chinook- Piney, with some grapefruit
Hallertau- Flower/spice
Tettnag- Slightly spicy
Fuggle- woody/fruity
Liberty- Flower/spice

So I see some traditional UK woody/spicy directions, some west coast pine/resin bombs, and a little bit of German spice mixed together. This can get a little muddy when you mix things together, but looking again, most of your flavor/aroma hops look pretty similar… I was just thrown with the Simcoe/Chinook you’re using for bittering.

#5

It’s definitely an international consortium of hops in there! Is that 1 oz of each or 1 oz of a blend of the bunch?

If it’s an IPA is it american or english? Do you want it to be bitter or highly flavorful/aromatic.

I don’t care for beers that use high amounts of simcoe/chinook like NB’s Ranger for example. First few sips are OK…interesting…but the cat’s litter box aroma overwhelms my palate as the beer warms up. Definitely an individual taste preference. Some people love it.

My advice would be focus on replicating the flavor/aroma profile of an IPA you like. Google it and find out what kind of hops the brewer uses.

Maybe try a single hop to start then branch out from there. You probably won’t get it spot on the first time anyway so keep it simple and work from there to improve it each time.

#6

So should I dial back the different types I use and stick with a lot of a few types? I did want to use a good amount of them. Like 6-8 oz of hops.

#7

I would say never use more than 0.25lbs of honey malt in any 5 gallon recipe. That stuff is POTENT. I used 0.5lbs in an IPA (my first recipe design) once and it was sickly sweet. Almost undrinkable.

Also the hops are all over the place. Are you looking for an american style IPA or more of a english style? I would stick to hops grown in those regions. In my opinion german noble hops have no place in an IPA. That’s of course just my opinion :slight_smile:

#8

I want to make and American style IPA. Ill just have to stick with American hops then and go back over my hops selection. I’m still new to the game and know little about what different hop strains will do to a beer

#9

I don’t usually design a lot of IPA recipes but when I do I like to usually pick a good bittering hop (high AA) and then no more 3 different varieties of mid to late boil hops and usually dryhop with the same 3 (or a subset). This is mostly because I want to identify each hop when I’m smelling or tasting it.

That said, I’ve tasted some damn good IPA’s that have a complex hop “cocktail” (Lagunitas Sucks comes to mind) but when you start getting really complex you don’t know what you are going to get and how it will work. And I don’t really have the time or patience to experiment. I prefer to know that my beer is going to taste good when im done. Nothing sucks more than waiting 5+ weeks to drink a beer that is not good.

#10

Don’t fear that much honey. I brew a lot with honey brewed a honey pale ale with 2 pounds in it nice dry finish and is a very good beer. Also Jim rossi’s honey pale ale uses three pounds honey in it and is really good beer. +1. One on the honey malt. Can be overly sweet

#11

Okay so I replanned my hops variety. Here is my selection:

Bittering:
1 oz Nugget

Flavor:
2 oz Cascade
1 oz Amarillo

Aroma:
2 oz Citra

Let me know what you think. Cheers :cheers:

#12

I would follow mattnaik’s advice, use the same combo of hops for dry hopping as you use for your flavor additions. I don’t like when the aroma and flavor of a beer are substantially different from each other.

#13

Just to be slightly contrary, I very often use different hops as my kettle additions vs my dry hop. I always use “compatible” varieties (eg similar types) but often I’ll use Centennial in the kettle, for example, and Amarillo or Citra in the keg.

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