Over the last few years I’ve been experimenting brewing New England style IPA’s with different ingredients and processes. Through my numerous iterations I’ve found a lot of the information out there on discussion boards and forums to be a bit hit-and-miss, and in practice you really need to experiment on your own system.

The following recipe was designed based on ingredients I had on hand at the time, leveraging previous experience brewing beers of this style.

Batch Details

Batch Size Boil SRM Est. OG Est. FG Est. ABV 26L 60min 4.6 1.062 1.013 6.5%

When brewing very heavily dry hopped beers you’ll want to increase the overall batch size to account for losses if you still want to get a full keg at the end.

Water

My personal preference for NEIPA water profiles is to go reasonably high on the Calcium Chloride. For this batch, I targeted 150ppm CaCl and 80ppm Sulfate.

Fermentables

Name Amount % Pilsner Malt (Gladfield) 4.8kg 65.2% Pale Wheat Malt (Weyermann) 1.7kg 23.1% Flaked Barley 0.6kg 8.2% Carahell (Weyermann) 0.26kg 3.5%

Mash

Single infusion mash @ 68C for 60min.

Hops

Hop Time Amount AA% IBU Dr Rudi 30min 8g 11% 6.5IBU El Dorado Whirlpool – 20min @ 80C 42g 15% ?? Simcoe Whirlpool – 20min @ 80C 42g 13% ?? El Dorado Whirlpool – 10min @ 70C 26g 15% ?? Simcoe Whirlpool – 10min @ 70C 42g 13% ?? Galaxy Dryhop – Day 6 (4 days of contact) 260g 14% ?? El Dorado Dryhop – Day 6 (4 days of contact) 100g 13% ??

When I’m using huge quantities of hops I’ll typically avoid using varieties with a high cohumulone content hotside / in the whirlpool, as they’re more likely to introduce an astringent bitterness. For this batch I also staggered my whirlpool additions in attempt to retain more hop oils into the fermenter, as I wasn’t planning on dry hopping during active fermentation.

I’ve seen people complain about blocked pumps and filters with the Grainfather, an issue I’ve never personally experienced, so have never seen a need to make any modifications. Below is what was left behind from about 180g in the kettle:

Fermentation

I had a pack of Gigayeast GY054 Vermont yeast on hand for this brew. It was about 4 months old so I spun up a 1.5L starter to ensure I had an adequate cell count for fermentation. I pitched the yeast into 20C wort and placed in my fermentation fridge. After 72 hours of vigorous fermentation I ramped the temp to 22C.

On the left is the wort after oxygenating and pitching the yeast, on the right is 4 days into fermentation.

6 days in fermentation had completed, so I dry hopped the beer with a mix of Galaxy and El Dorado (being careful not to introduce oxygen). It’s at this point that I attached the pressurised lid to my Fermentasaurus, and gave the headspace a quick purge. There’s something very satisfying about pouring hundreds of grams of hops into a homebrew sized batch of beer…

During dry hopping I’ll often swirl the fermenter quite vigorously to rouse the hops back into suspension (as they often sink to the bottom whilst under pressure). This somewhat mimics what professional breweries are able to do, and ensures proper utilisation of the dry hop.

On day 10 I set my fermentation fridge to 2C and let the beer cold crash for a few days before transferring out to a sanitised and purged keg. Using a spunding valve attached to the gas post of my keg allows me to transfer under relatively high pressure whilst ensuring an oxygen free environment.

The beer was mostly carbonated at this point, but was left on gas for an additional few days. To demonstrate the effects of oxidisation on this style of beer I pulled a sample from the keg into a test tube and left it on my kitchen bench for 24 hours:

As I’m sure you can imagine, the oxidised sample was extremely bitter and unpleasant.

Tasting Notes

Smell: Presents with a huge nose, like opening a fresh bag of Galaxy hops. Citrus, mango, melon and passionfruit dominate.

Appearance: Glowing, opaque pine-orange juice. Really happy with the appearance of this batch. Head is white and fluffy with reasonable retention. Absolutely nails the NEIPA look without being too dark or muddy.

Taste: Saturated hop flavour that largely follows the nose; citrus, mango and melon. Bitterness is restrained.

Mouthfeel: Medium-full body with quite a soft, silky mouthfeel. I’ve seen people recommend very high percentages of flaked grains, but I’m more than happy with the contribution of 8% flaked barley (in combination with wheat) in this recipe.