Recipe: New England IPA

Hey brewers,

Its been another hectic few months at work and that of course translates to fewer recipes and blog posts from me here at HBA. I’ve managed to find some time to write this post while holidaying in New Zealand. I’ve been traveling around the South Island and there are loads of cool tiny breweries around the place. Most cafes and restaurants have a few independent breweries on tap.

Because it’s all the rage these days, I was seeing lots of New England IPAs or NEIPAs while travelling around. These beers are known for their huge tropical fruit aromas, soft bitterness and mouthfeel and hazy appearance. Until recently this style didn’t have a entry in the BJCP, but huzzah, for those of you who like to categorise things, there is now an entry.

The overall impression that the BJCP gives is:

An American IPA with intense fruit flavors and aromas, a soft body, and smooth mouthfeel, and often opaque with substantial haze. Less perceived bitterness than traditional IPAs but always massively hop forward. This emphasis on late hopping, especially dry hopping, with hops with tropical fruit qualities lends the specific ‘juicy’ character for which this style is known.

So yeah, you get the idea. It should come as no surprise that there’s lots of NE IPAs out there with ‘hazy” or ‘juicy’ in the title. Some great examples are Old Man Yells at Cloud by Old Wives Ales, Jedi Juice by Hop Nation, Juicy IPA by 3 Ravens, or even Rock Juice by WA’s own Rocky Ridge Brewing.

Brew by numbers

So here are the numbers that the BJCP gives. Of course this style is still evolving and as with everything in the BJCP are simply a guide. Want to do a NE IIIPA? Go right ahead.

Key Ingredients and Methods

The main features of NEIPAs are the hazy appearance, soft mouthfeel and huge tropical fruit aroma and flavours. There’s lots of debate about the hazy appearance of this style. Some claim that the haze should be derived from the yeast, while others claim that it is  from the huge quantity of late additional hops. I tend to think that you can go down the middle. Don’t skimp on normal brewing practices such as kettle finings (like whirfloc) or fermentor finings (such as gelatin). The hop additions are almost entirely at flameout or after as whirlpool additions, not to mention huge dry-hop additions; this will give a well defined haziness to the beer.

While this beer has a pretty high calculated bitterness, it is very soft and the higher finishing gravity helps to balance the beer.

Beer Profile

Batch volume: 20 L
Pre-boil volume: 27 L
Pre-boil gravity: 1.041
OG: 1.066
FG: 1.017
ABV: 6.4%
Bitterness: 79 IBUs
Colour: 6 SRM
Efficiency: 70%

Ingredients

Method

A few hours before you begin the brew, make a vitality starter with the liquid yeast. A vitality starter is similar to a traditional start, but much smaller (about 500 ml) and is designed to wake up the yeast and feed it, before pitching it into the full batch.

Mash the grains at 67ºC for one hour. Batch sparge at 76ºC for 20 minutes. Bring the wort to the boil and wait for the hot break to form. Boil for 60 minutes adding the Irish moss with 10 minutes to go, along with the immersion chiller. This kind of IPA uses a lot of hops and therefore isn’t suited to no-chill methods.

If you setup allows you to hold temperatures, then do so for the following steps, otherwise allow for the wort to slowly cool over time. After the boil add in the first lot of whirlpool hops and let them stand for 20 minutes. After the 20 minutes cool the wort in the kettle to 82ºC and add the remaining whirlpool hops and allow to stand for a further 20 minutes. After the hop stand is finished, chill the wort as quickly as possible and rack to a fermenter.

Bring the wort to 18ºC and add in the dry hops. Ferment at 18ºC raising the temperature to 21ºC after the gravity reaches around 1.022. After the FG stabilises, clarify your beer if you so choose (see here on how to do it) and rack into a keg or into bottles.

Carbonation and Storage

Carbonate to around 2.5 volumes and if bottling store for at least 30 days prior to drinking.