Brew the Perfect New England IPA With Science | Grain to Glass

For this Juicy New England IPA, we show you every step in our homebrewing process to making the best beer we can. That is, if our alter-egos will let us. Full recipe and resources below.

0:00 Introduction
1:01 Building the Recipe
2:03 Water Chemistry
3:30 Grainbill and Mash
5:25 The Boil and The Cool Guys
10:50 Dry Hopping
13:35 Our Sources
14:00 Bottling Tips
17:48 The Review
20:15 Closing Comments
21:53 Discussion Questions

Resources that helped us:
https://scottjanish.com/
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/threads/...
Special shoutout to the the username couchsending whose somewhat contrarian methods on NEIPA greatly influenced ours.

Homebrew recipe (6 gallons)

Grainbill
1.7% Honey Malt (4oz)
15.5% White Wheat (2.25lb)
41.4% Pilsner Malt (6lb)
41.4% Golden Promise Malt (6lb)

Water Profile (ppm)
Ca 98 Mg 13 Na 53 SO4 60 Cl 178 pH 5.3

Hochkurz Mash
Beta Amylase Rest 144F/62C for 30 min
Alpha Amylase Rest 160F/71C for 30 min
Mashout @ 170F/77C

The Boil
30 min: .5oz Citra
10 min: .5oz Citra, 1oz Cashmere
5 min: Whirlfloc and Yeast Nutrient
Chill to 170F/77C
Hopstand: 3oz Cashmere, 2oz Sabro, 1oz Citra
Hopstand for 30 min to an hour

Yeast: Imperial A24 Dry Hop

After terminal gravity is reached, dry hop with
4oz Cashmere, 2oz Citra, 2oz Sabro
Dry hop for 4 days warm contact time, then cold crash

Notes on the recipe: I personally would change the yeast for Imperial Juice (or whatever London Ale III strain) or maybe just Imperial Barbarian (the Conan Strain). Without the risk of a var. diastaticus yeast, the hochkurz mash is no longer necessary.

GLOSSARY AND REFERENCES

New England IPA: A soft, less bitter IPA that emphasizes the juicy, fruity, aromatic side of hops rather than bitterness.

Hochkurz Mash: A 2-step temperature mash that uses the optimum temperatures for both beta and alpha amylase to operate at. The beta amylase rest will create a very fermentable wort, while the alpha amylase rest will provide dextrins which create body and help foam/head retention. We went with the hochkurz mash because the yeast strain we chose has a tendency to ferment very dry and could potentially still chew through a high finishing gravity, which would lead to bottle bombs. The hochkurz mash ferments very low, but has a perception of a fuller beer.

Diastaticus Yeast: A type of ale yeast, typically found in Belgian strains, such as saisons. Imperial Dry Hop is a blend of two yeasts: Barbarian, the apricot-forward hazy Conan strain known from Heady Topper; and Citrus, the fruity "saccromyces trois" that was formerly thought to be a brettanomyces strain. It is this "wild sacc" strain that is diastaticus positive, and could potentially wreak havoc on packaged beer.

Water Chemistry: There are whole books written on this and Bru'n Water is a spreadsheet program that helps us fine-tune ours. For this beer we went with a high chloride level to add to the "fullness" of the beer, since we knew it would finish dry. Often when we brew a beer that we know will have a higher finishing gravity, or with a yeast that leaves a lot of body, we will go with a high sulphate level to give a dryer perception and keep the beer drinkable. High sulphate leads to dryness, high chloride leads to more full, sweet, or malty flavors.

Hops: We layer our hops throughout the boil, which is why we have small 30 minute and 10 minute additions to supplement the large hopstand addition. Boil hops can add not just bitterness but a depth of flavor. With regards to dry hops, 8g/L seems to be the saturation point of dry hops, which corresponds to about 1oz per gallon or around 2lb/bbl. Many famous breweries use even more than that and it may make a difference in hazy IPAs where the hop oils are in suspension. I do think 2oz per gallon is the upper limit. We have found our sweet spot is 12-14oz of hops in a 6 gallon batch but often go to 16oz so we don't have leftover hops.

Biotransformation: Yeast interaction with hop oils can turn certain compounds like geraniol (floral) into beta-citranol (citrus). Dry hopping early (1-3 days into fermentation) can aid this, or a large low-temperature whirlpool addition can introduce these oils. We go for the whirlpool addition to reduce hop matter in the flex fermenter, though at work on a 10bbl system we do day 1 dry hop but have the ability to dump the hops. We like to do a terminal dry hop because too much biotranformation makes all beer taste the same (orange juice).

Brewing Equipment
Spike Kettles and Flex Fermenter
Blichmann Hellfire Burner and Beer Gun

Video Equipment
Panasonic GH5 shooting 4k10 bit HLG and 1080p 10bit HLG (slo mo)
Voightlander 17.5mm f0.95, Lumix 25mm f1.7 and Lumix 42.5mm f1.7

Edited and Color Graded on DaVinci Resolve Studio
Film Emulation Plugin FilmConvert Nitrate

Music from Epidemic Sound Subscription

Blueprints from Adobe Stock