Extra Curricular Brewing.

Brew 1; White IPA

First off, welcome to a new series of writing for us. You can probably guess by the fact that I'm part of a start-up brewery, I live for beer. It encompasses my life at the moment. From work, to free time, to the fact my house has turned into a beer warehouse. Luckily for me my family and girlfriend have embraced it, especially as it means free home brewed beer for everyone.

Enough with the personal ramblings, let's get into some brewing.

First entry in this series is my current favourite beer style, the White IPA. It's an odd hybrid between European wheat beer and an American IPA. Formulated somewhere in America during 2010, it doesn't get a huge amount of press here in the UK which I personally think is a travesty. I think American brewers are smashing it in the way of hoppy beers. While English breweries lean towards bitterness, American's are striving for fruitiness. Go out and find a GOOD New England IPA - I say good because there are some dreadful examples floating around from commercial breweries, and you'll see what I'm saying about fruit forward hop usage.

For this brew's recipe I have chosen to follow our cousins across the pond. Although my beer choices have branched out a bit recently, I can't help but keep falling back into the arms of my beloved citrus hops.

Recipe;

Volume: 19 Litres

SRM: 5-6

IBU: 60

Original Gravity: 1.062

Final Gravity: 1.015

ABV: 6%

Mash Temp: 65 C

Mash Time: 60 mins

Boil Time: 90 mins

Grain Bill

Pilsner - 40%

Wheat - 30%

Maris Otter - 10%

Flaked Oats - 15%

Flaked Rye - 5%

Rice Hulls

Orange peel (I forgot these - the most characteristic ingredient of this whole style and I lost them the day before brew day)

Hop Bill

Azacca - 20g 60 mins // 10g 10 mins // 10g whirlpool // 60g 5 days dry hop

NZ Cascade - 5g 10 mins // 15g whirlpool // 80g 5 days dry hop

Yeast:

Wyeast: 3944 Belgian Witbier

Starter: 1.5 Litres

Fermenting:

Temp: 21 C

Time: 7 Days Primary, 2 Days Cold Crashing

Notes:

At 6% you’re looking at pretty much bang in the middle ground for this style. It’s possible to bring that down if you wanted by stripping away the Maris Otter. To be honest I only used this because I had some lying around and I love Maris Otter

Verdict:

For a first ever attempt at this style I was thoroughly impressed with the outcome. However, I will say I'd hoped for greater clarity. I love a nice orange haze in all of my IPAs but for this one I wanted it to be slightly lighter. I put that down to me forgetting my finnings addition in the boil. The head on top was bang on, enough to release all that citrus aroma from the hops but not so much that you cant reach the beer. I'm so happy there is no leafy-grassy notes in there from the hops.

In terms of taste and aroma it was so nearly perfect. The aroma from the huge dry hop additions was spectacular! Pure orange bliss and it stays there throughout the whole pint. The taste could have only been improved by me not forgetting to add orange peel. The orange taste was still there though, just not as forward as I'd of hoped.

For me the bitterness was on the money. I absolutely LOVE bitter IPAs and this satisfied that craving without being over-bearing. I bottled some up and took it Jordan's to watch the footy over the weekend, and it was too bitter for him but still palatable due to the fruitiness.

I am 100% going to revisit this beer in the coming months for summer. I'm hoping to add an extra tap to the Le Bar (if you don't know what this is check out the video on our Home page) this year and I think this is going to be a frequent guest beer. I wouldn't think of bottling this in my personal situation because I leave them for the bigger beers which need a bit of conditioning, and this is preferable drunk fresh due to the large hop bill.

Quick shout out to the Manchester Central CAMRA beer festival for my new favourite glass.

My next brew in this series is going to take my love of IPAs to the max. I'm going for an 8-9% Imperial IPA so stay tuned for that.

Anyone that read through the whole post, thanks for following and supporting my favourite hobby.

Your fellow brewer,

Jon Lost Boys Brewer