Electric IPA
Testimonials
"Just wanted to share with you my recent happiness with using your recipes from the website. I have been AG brewing for 4years and in the past month made both the Electric Pale Ale and the Electric IPA with outstanding results. Very balanced beers and easily the best I’ve made. I followed the recipes through including the water profiles and can’t believe how good they turned out. Last night I tried the EIPA after it had been carbonating for a couple of days, WOW!" - Dan P.
"I've finally tasted this and it's really great! Lots of hop aroma, a little less flavor, and just exactly the right amount of bitterness. I took this to a party along with a keg of Dubbel and a keg of CAP, and it was a sellout. A couple of people even said it was the best IPA they've had." - Cromwell
"This is the most delicious IPA I have ever brewed... I've drank 'several' pints over the last few nights, and still grin every time I put my nose in the glass. Perfect IPA recipe. Nice balance, amazing nose and several pints can be drank in a sitting which isn't true for all ipa's." - luke_l
"Wow! I love this one, it's a great west coast IPA recipe for sure! I was afraid the dry hop addition might be a little too light, man was I wrong. The nose is just perfect, great bitterness and very good mouth feel. I happened to have some Warrior hops in the freezer so I was part of the way there with the ingredients to begin with; and I love Warrior for bitterness too! The Citra and Crystal dry hops really gives this a nice balanced flavor and a very nice nose. And the operative word here is "balanced", what a great everyday IPA. I brought a growler of the Electric IPA to a brewing event this past Saturday and a few of my new friends sampled it. Everyone said this was a fantastic brew, I got nothing but compliments on it and also the Russian Imperial Stout I shared as well. So great job Kal, this will be a regular brew for me I anticipate!" - Ken M.
Introduction
One of our favourite beers styles is the American IPA with lots of citrusy / piney / fruity / resiny hop flavour.
We've been playing around for some time with various hop combinations trying to hone in on one combination that we can call our house "Electric IPA" the same way we have my house "Electric Pale Ale" (a beer that we've brewed numerous times and always like to have on tap).
This recipe purposely keeps the standard 60 minute bittering hops somewhat restrained for a total of 37 IBUs at the 60 minute mark. The rest of the bitterness comes from late additions. Most of the flavour hops are done at 5 minutes before flame-out to give the beer a massive hop flavour. The beer is then also heavily dry-hopped for additional aroma. This is way we like our American IPAs: Bitter enough to be an IPA but not over the top mouth-puckering, with enormous hop flavour/aroma.
We've given growlers of this beer away to local brewing friends who had this to say about it:
"Didn't take very long to finish off the bottle of IPA last night, awesome beer Kal. I think that IPA was better than anything I had on my latest trip to the US, and I probably had 20+ different IPAs...." - Jon
"I downed your IPA this weekend, and it was one of the best I have had in a loooong while, so thank you very much! ... the hop profile was fantastically smooth. I would definitively like to take hints from this beer for my next IPA brew." - Charles
Brew up a batch and let us know how you like it!
Electric IPA
Size: 12 US gallons (post-boil @ 68F)
Mash Efficiency: 95%
Attenuation: 80%
Original Gravity: 1.065 (style range: 1.056 - 1.075)
Final Gravity: 1.013 (style range: 1.010 - 1.018)
Colour: 8.6 SRM (style range: 6 - 15)
Alcohol: 6.8% ABV (style range: 5.5% - 7.5%)
Bitterness: 58 IBU (style range: 40 - 70)
Mash:
21.5 lb Domestic 2-row malt (1.8-2L) (95%)
1.13 lb Crystal malt (50-60L) (5%)
Boil:
1.5 oz Warrior hops (15.8%) - added during boil, boiled 60 min [37 IBU]
1 Whirlfloc tablet (Irish moss) - added during boil, boiled 15 min
4 oz Centennial hops (9.2%) - added during boil, boiled 5 min [11.5 IBU]
4 oz Amarillo hops (7.5%) - added during boil, boiled 5 min [9.4 IBU]
Yeast:
Fermentis Safale US-05 dry yeast* (48g recommended or make an equivalent starter)
Dry hop:
3 oz Crystal hops (3.3%) - added to fermenter near end of fermentation, steeped 3 days
3 oz Citra hops (11.1%) - added to fermenter near end of fermentation, steeped 3 days
*If you prefer to use liquid yeast, Wyeast 1056 American Ale or White Labs WLP001 California Ale are excellent choices as they are the same clean fermenting Chico strain as US-05. You'll need ~722 billion cells (7-8 fresh packs) or an equivalent starter.
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Notes / Process
- Add 500mg potassium metabisulfite to 20 gallons water to remove chlorine / chloramine (if required).
- Water treated with brewing salts to our Hoppy flavour profile: Ca=110, Mg=18, Na=16, Cl=50, SO4=275 (Basically Randy Mosher's ideal Pale Ale numbers with slightly less sulfate). For more information on how to adjust your water, refer to our step by step Water Adjustment guide.
- 1.25 qt/lb mash thickness.
- Single infusion mash at 154F for 90 mins.
- Raise to 168F mashout temperature and hold for 10 mins.
- ~90 min fly sparge with ~5.6-5.8 pH water (measured at mash temperature).
- Boil for 60 minutes, adding Whirlfloc and hops per schedule. Lid on at flameout, start chilling immediately.
- Cool the wort quickly to 66F (we use a one-pass convoluted counterflow chiller to quickly lock in hop flavour and aroma) and transfer to fermenter.
- Oxygenate the chilled wort to a level of 14 ppm dissolved oxygen. For more information refer to our Aerating / Oxygenating Wort guide.
- Pitch yeast and ferment at 66-68F (wort temperature). We use modified stainless fermenting buckets in wine fridges.
- Add dry hops once fermentation is nearing completion (i.e. 5 points from final gravity) and raise the temperature to 70-72F. In our case we simply turn off the fermenting fridges and allow the beer to naturally rise to room temperature. Steep hops for 3 days while fermentation finishes. Assume fermentation is done if the gravity does not change over ~3 days.
- Before packaging you may optionally rack to a brite tank (we use 5 gallon glass carboys) that has been purged with CO2 to avoid oxygen pickup, add 1 tsp of unflavoured gelatin dissolved in a cup of hot distilled water per 5 gallons of beer, and allow to clear for 2-3 days. Gelatin may "round off" some hop flavour / aroma so we tend to skip this step with hop forward beers like this. As well, the less you handle the beer through racking and potentially expose it to oxygen, the better.
- Package as you would normally. We rack to kegs that have first been purged with CO2, and then carbonate on the low side (around 2 volumes of CO2) to minimize carbonic bite and let the hop and malt flavours shine through. We chill the kegs to near freezing while carbonating at the same time in a 6-keg conditioning fridge. After ~1-2 weeks at serving pressure the kegs will be carbonated and ready to serve. Like all hop forward beers this IPA is best consumed fresh so feel free to raise the CO2 pressure temporarily to 30-40 PSI to carbonate fast over a 24 period, and then turn back down to serving pressure. Some hop bits will have invariably made their way into the keg during transfer so we use a Hop Stopper Keg Edition filter to ensure that hops do not clog the dip tube and/or end up in the glass. Force carbonating at high pressure and using a Hop Stopper filter allows us to serve this beer 24 hours after kegging. There's no need to wait a few days for any hop bits that made their way into the keg to first settle out.
For detailed brewing instructions, see our Brew Day Step by Step guide.
Enjoy!
Questions? Visit our Electric IPA forum thread.
Pictures / Videos
Interested in seeing what we're brewing right now? Follow us on Instagram for pictures and videos of our brewing activities as they happen.
For more pictures and videos of our Electric IPA search Instagram for #ElectricBreweryIPA.
