During a recent Oregon Brew Crew meeting, some advice regarding brewing IPA’s was given from one of the best professional brewers in Portland, Ben Edmunds, of Breakside Brewing.
While these apply to both commercial and home brewing, it’s some great advice to keep in mind…
- Keep IBUs below 3 digits
- Keep O2 out of your beer
- Control PH before you can control hops, target 5.2-5.3pH; hit the same PH each time
- Pitch .75-1 M/ml per degree plato, ferment at 66°-71°; 300M cells per 5gal
- Skew water toward sulfate; Burtonize your water
- Add all salts to mash; solutionize first
- Watch bittering units to gravity units (BU:GU); 3:4 to 1:1
- Don’t go too dry; it accentuates salts and mutes malts
- Residual sugar masks BU; increase mash temp, increase non-fermentables or less attenuative yeast
- Late kettle & whirlpool hops add more BUs than you think. Close to double
- Don’t ignore mid-kettle hops
- Find a hop schedule and stick to it
- High crystal malts kill hop flavors with age
- Crystal malt should be no more than 10% and 40L or lower; use aromatic
- More hops in dry hop for 3-5 days
- Don’t dry hop on cold beer
- Dry hop at the end of fermentation; At 55°-60°
- Lower ABV beers pull more polyphenols
- Dextrose is your friend; use it wisely
reproduced with permission
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