Any good recipe ideas for English IPAs?

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I'm wondering has the english IPA evolved like the american ones have with extreme hoppiness? I posted the below recipe in another thread but haven't got any feedback yet. The drawback with high alpha american hops is that you just can't add too much in the way of 10-20 minute flavour additions without sending the bitterness through the roof. but with low alpha british hops it's possible to have a 100gram 20 minute addition and 100gram whirlpool addition no worries. Is this going to be too much hops for a small beer like this? I want to keep it mid strength but full of flavour. I know it's not to BJCP spec btw. I'm mostly worried about astringency. And how about suggestions for mineral additions?
Code:
Recipe: Modern English IPA
Style: English IPA

Batch Size (fermenter): 23.00 l   
Estimated OG: 1.039 SG
Estimated Color: 9.6 EBC
Estimated IBU: 33.9 IBUs
Brewhouse Efficiency: 70.00 %
Boil Time: 60 Minutes

Ingredients:
------------
Amt                   Name                                     Type          #        %/IBU         
3.60 kg               Pale Malt, Maris Otter (Thomas Fawcett)  Grain         1        88.9 %        
0.35 kg               Wheat Malt, Pale (Weyermann) (3.9 EBC)   Grain         2        8.6 %         
0.10 kg               Caramel/Crystal Malt - 60L (110.0 EBC)   Grain         3        2.5 %         
1.00 g                Fuggle [4.20 %] - Boil 60.0 min          Hop           4        0.5 IBUs      
100.00 g              Fuggle [4.20 %] - Boil 20.0 min          Hop           5        28.7 IBUs     
100.00 g              Fuggles [4.20 %] - Steep/Whirlpool  5.0  Hop           6        4.7 IBUs      
3.0 pkg               American Ale II (Wyeast Labs #1272) [124 Yeast         7        -             
140.00 g              Goldings, East Kent [5.00 %] - Dry Hop 0 Hop           8        0.0 IBUs      


Mash Schedule: Low Gravity Mash
Total Grain Weight: 4.05 kg
----------------------------
Name              Description                             Step Temperat Step Time     
Sacc Rest         Add 15 l of water and heat to 72.0 C 72.0 C        60 min        
Mash Out          Heat to 75.0 C over 5 min               75.0 C        10 min
 
If you go to the Old Dart you'll find that most of the commercial IPAs are piss weak ordinary bitters. Certainly mid strength by our standards. I'd go for sub 30 IBU. Even mainstream Best Bitters such as Boddingtons only come in at around 26 IBU and ESBs like Old Speckled Hen are around the low 30s mark.

As posted in the earlier comments, Challenger is a beautiful hop. Also I'd avoid the American Ale or any of the "Chico" yeasts, if you haven't got access to liquid yeasts then S04 as a minimum.
 
Coodgee said:
Recipe: Modern English IPA

Style: English IPA

Batch Size (fermenter): 23.00 l
Estimated OG: 1.039 SG
Estimated Color: 9.6 EBC
Estimated IBU: 33.9 IBUs
Brewhouse Efficiency: 70.00 %
Boil Time: 60 Minutes

Ingredients:
------------
Amt Name Type # %/IBU
3.60 kg Pale Malt, Maris Otter (Thomas Fawcett) Grain 1 88.9 %
0.35 kg Wheat Malt, Pale (Weyermann) (3.9 EBC) Grain 2 8.6 %
0.10 kg Caramel/Crystal Malt - 60L (110.0 EBC) Grain 3 2.5 %
1.00 g Fuggle [4.20 %] - Boil 60.0 min Hop 4 0.5 IBUs
100.00 g Fuggle [4.20 %] - Boil 20.0 min Hop 5 28.7 IBUs
100.00 g Fuggles [4.20 %] - Steep/Whirlpool 5.0 Hop 6 4.7 IBUs
3.0 pkg American Ale II (Wyeast Labs #1272) [124 Yeast 7 -
140.00 g Goldings, East Kent [5.00 %] - Dry Hop 0 Hop 8 0.0 IBUs


Mash Schedule: Low Gravity Mash
Total Grain Weight: 4.05 kg
----------------------------
Name Description Step Temperat Step Time
Sacc Rest Add 15 l of water and heat to 72.0 C 72.0 C 60 min
Mash Out Heat to 75.0 C over 5 min 75.0 C 10 min
Mate, your recipe looks more like a low IBU AIPA as opposed to an English. Not saying it won't be good, but just wondering why you are after advice about English style when you are deliberately trying something different. You are right that the English IPA's have evolved alright. The current IPA's are as Bribie said around the 30-35 IBU's. Historic (1800's) ones could go as high as 119 IBU's (for a ABV of ~6%) if Peter Symons Bronzed Brews is accurate (which I believe it is). I'd drop the wheat for flaked oats and up the crystal by double at least, but that's just me. It depends on the flavour you're after I guess.

1 gm Fuggles @60 min? why bother and just do a 30 min boil and add all your hops at the 20 min mark or is this a mistake? Clearly you are going for a lot of hop flavour and aroma here, which to the tested recipes (historic and modern) I have don't suit the style too much (which I know you aren't necessarily trying to emulate).
For mineral additions you'll have to give us a bit of your current water profile. From memory you use RO/distilled right? If this is so, maybe a 70/30 cal.sulphate/cal.chloride to the mash and an addition of 2 gm Mag.sulphate and 1gm NaCl to the boil, but that's just a guess based on your recipe.

Bribie's right re Challenger. Northdown is also good as a bittering addition, but that's not going to help with your current recipe.

For comparison purposes only (not a suggestion) a good (modern) Worthington White Shield recipe as below
OG 1051 for 25 L

Halcyon pale malt 5.3 Kg (Golden promise or Maris would be as good)
Medium crystal malt 350 gm
Mash @ 66C - 90 min

30gm Challenger @ 60 min (or 90 if you prefer)
30gm Northdown @ 60 min (as above)

Or to 35 IBU's
anticipated FG ~1011

Yeast - Good quality English Ale yeast of your preference (or S-04 at a bare minimum)

EDIT - don't forget the historic brews were designed to travel for long periods of time on ships going through hot/tropical climates without refrigeration so had a lot of time to mellow and a lot of bacteria ripe conditions to safeguard against. This would equate to us doing the same brew, but storing it for 6 + months before even thinking about drinking it.

2nd EDIT - sorry, completely did not answer two of your main questions. Will it be too astringent? Probably not. Is it too much hops to add for this beer? Probably, but everyones tastes are different. I reckon the hops will completely take over the flavour leaving the malt as a minor background noise only. But only my opinion.
 
The best story I've heard was that IPA was the original high gravity brewing: the idea was that the beer was made and shipped about 40% over strength which conferred the dual benefits of reduced shipping costs and increased likelihood of surviving the voyage.

Apparently it was intended that this be cut back to normal strength with boiled water before drinking, which the British Army promptly ignored.

If this story is true, one approach to an "original" IPA would be to take your favourite best bitter recipe and increase everything by 40% for the same volume (or keep the recipe and reduce the volume by 30%).
 
Lyrebird_Cycles said:
If this story is true, one approach to an "original" IPA would be to take your favourite best bitter recipe and increase everything by 40% for the same volume (or keep the recipe and reduce the volume by 30%).
This could well work. I do know from Bronzed Brews (if you haven't gotten a copy, I highly recommend it - this thread for more info http://aussiehomebrewer.com/topic/89696-bronzed-brews-home-brewing-old-australian-beers/ ) that the English had a hard time of it during and after WW1 and the brew ingredients suffered as a result (not just IPA's that weakened in strength) and this has had a big influence on the split between Aussie in comparison to UK ABV values.
 
[SIZE=10.5pt]hi guys, thanks for your feedback. When I say "evolving the style" I am talking about an evolution occurring over the last ten years rather than the hundreds of years of history with this style that is much debated. What I was trying to get at is that if you look back 10 years or so at American IPA recipes you would probably see comments about a “big dry hop” of 2g/L or a “huge” late addition of 75grams. Here is an example I found on the first page of a google search. These days we look at IPA recipes where a big dry hop is upwards of 6 grams/L. So what I was getting at is has anyone evolved the English IPA in a similar way? And if not, why don’t we have a go? So that recipe is essentially my idea for doing this. I was just wondering if anyone has done this and found it to be a bad idea for some reason. [/SIZE]
 
Coodgee said:
I'm wondering has the english IPA evolved like the american ones have with extreme hoppiness? I posted the below recipe in another thread but haven't got any feedback yet. The drawback with high alpha american hops is that you just can't add too much in the way of 10-20 minute flavour additions without sending the bitterness through the roof. but with low alpha british hops it's possible to have a 100gram 20 minute addition and 100gram whirlpool addition no worries. Is this going to be too much hops for a small beer like this? I want to keep it mid strength but full of flavour. I know it's not to BJCP spec btw. I'm mostly worried about astringency. And how about suggestions for mineral additions?

Recipe: Modern English IPA
Style: English IPA

Batch Size (fermenter): 23.00 l
Estimated OG: 1.039 SG
Estimated Color: 9.6 EBC
Estimated IBU: 33.9 IBUs
Brewhouse Efficiency: 70.00 %
Boil Time: 60 Minutes

Ingredients:
------------
Amt Name Type # %/IBU
3.60 kg Pale Malt, Maris Otter (Thomas Fawcett) Grain 1 88.9 %
0.35 kg Wheat Malt, Pale (Weyermann) (3.9 EBC) Grain 2 8.6 %
0.10 kg Caramel/Crystal Malt - 60L (110.0 EBC) Grain 3 2.5 %
1.00 g Fuggle [4.20 %] - Boil 60.0 min Hop 4 0.5 IBUs
100.00 g Fuggle [4.20 %] - Boil 20.0 min Hop 5 28.7 IBUs
100.00 g Fuggles [4.20 %] - Steep/Whirlpool 5.0 Hop 6 4.7 IBUs
3.0 pkg American Ale II (Wyeast Labs #1272) [124 Yeast 7 -
140.00 g Goldings, East Kent [5.00 %] - Dry Hop 0 Hop 8 0.0 IBUs


Mash Schedule: Low Gravity Mash
Total Grain Weight: 4.05 kg
----------------------------
Name Description Step Temperat Step Time
Sacc Rest Add 15 l of water and heat to 72.0 C 72.0 C 60 min
Mash Out Heat to 75.0 C over 5 min 75.0 C 10 min
OG 1039 I'm with Bribie on this its more in the Bitter, Ordinary Bitter category
 
Coodgee said:
[SIZE=10.5pt]hi guys, thanks for your feedback. When I say "evolving the style" I am talking about an evolution occurring over the last ten years rather than the hundreds of years of history with this style that is much debated. What I was trying to get at is that if you look back 10 years or so at American IPA recipes you would probably see comments about a “big dry hop” of 2g/L or a “huge” late addition of 75grams. Here is an example I found on the first page of a google search. These days we look at IPA recipes where a big dry hop is upwards of 6 grams/L. So what I was getting at is has anyone evolved the English IPA in a similar way? And if not, why don’t we have a go? So that recipe is essentially my idea for doing this. I was just wondering if anyone has done this and found it to be a bad idea for some reason. [/SIZE]
FWIW, I recently made an english pale ale (95% MO, 5% med crystal, OG 1.050, 37IBU). I used 2.5g/L EKG in the whirlpool and 2g/L dry hopped. In that beer, I found the hop character quite overpowering - the EKG in larger amounts just seemed way too spicy and totally out of balance. I ended up blending it with an english mild and that made it far more drinkable.
The other thing I did differently on that brew was to add my dry hops in a purged corny keg secondary which I then inverted twice a day for 3 days to try to increase hop contact time. This may have given me more 'bang for my buck' in terms of hop character.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that with the typical american dry hops, its pretty hard to over do it. I'm not sure the same applies to EKG. At least not for my tastes.
 
Coodgee said:
[SIZE=10.5pt]hi guys, thanks for your feedback. When I say "evolving the style" I am talking about an evolution occurring over the last ten years rather than the hundreds of years of history with this style that is much debated. What I was trying to get at is that if you look back 10 years or so at American IPA recipes you would probably see comments about a “big dry hop” of 2g/L or a “huge” late addition of 75grams. Here is an example I found on the first page of a google search. These days we look at IPA recipes where a big dry hop is upwards of 6 grams/L. So what I was getting at is has anyone evolved the English IPA in a similar way? And if not, why don’t we have a go? So that recipe is essentially my idea for doing this. I was just wondering if anyone has done this and found it to be a bad idea for some reason. [/SIZE]

I've done it.

Why not? I haven't gone as souped up as IIPA US style because I'm not crazy about that anyway but AIPA levels for sure.
 
have changed my recipe a fair bit now. I won't have time to get a bulk order of fuggles ( the original reason I chose that fuggles was because it was one of the only English hop that yob was selling in bulk). Have decided to go with a slightly more traditional ordinary bitter style, but make it quite hoppy. going for the challenger hops based on recommendation here, West Yorkshire Ale (Wyeast Labs #1469) because I browsed the descriptions of what is available and it seems nice.
Code:
Batch Size (fermenter): 23.00 l   
Estimated OG: 1.038 SG
Estimated Color: 21.5 EBC
Estimated IBU: 34.3 IBUs

Ingredients:
------------
Amt                   Name                                     Type          #        %/IBU         
23.00 l               Brisbane                                 Water         1        -             
3.20 kg               Pale Malt, Maris Otter (Thomas Fawcett)  Grain         2        80.6 %        
0.40 kg               Wheat Malt, Pale (Weyermann) (3.9 EBC)   Grain         3        10.1 %        
0.25 kg               Caramel/Crystal Malt - 65L (Bairds) (160 Grain         4        6.3 %         
0.10 kg               Special B (Dingemans) (300.0 EBC)        Grain         5        2.5 %         
0.02 kg               Roasted Barley (Thomas Fawcett) (1199.7  Grain         6        0.5 %         
5.00 g                Hallertau Magnum [13.80 %] - Boil 60.0 m Hop           7        7.6 IBUs      
20.00 g               Challenger [6.50 %] - Boil 20.0 min      Hop           8        8.7 IBUs      
20.00 g               East Kent Goldings (EKG) [5.70 %] - Boil Hop           9        7.6 IBUs      
0.50 Items            Whirlfloc Tablet (Boil 10.0 mins)        Fining        10       -             
40.00 g               Challenger [6.50 %] - Boil 10.0 min      Hop           11       10.4 IBUs     
1.0 pkg               West Yorkshire Ale (Wyeast Labs #1469)   Yeast         12       -             
25.00 g               Challenger [7.50 %] - Dry Hop 4.0 Days   Hop           13       0.0 IBUs      
25.00 g               East Kent Goldings (EKG) [5.00 %] - Dry  Hop           14       0.0 IBUs
 
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