Dan and I have really become addicted to New England style IPAs (aka NEIPA). The secret (not really) to a good NEIPA is the juicyness. It has to remind you of orange juice. The pulpy, sweet delicious kind. NEIPAs are typically not orange flavored, but they can have citrus notes and sometimes pineapples or other tropical fruit flavors. This comes from some uniquely delicious strains of hops. And we are huge fans of these hops. We seek out breweries now that have NEIPAs - and they are clearly becoming popular nation-wide because every brewery is putting out their version. The "pulpy" part I mentioned to NEIPAs refers not to floating orange pieces, but rather to a particular fuller mouthfeel. This apparently comes from using high-protein grains like flaked wheat and rolled oats during the boil, instead of the normal specialty grain malts.
We decided to try our hand at making a NEIPA. We started by figuring out what hops are typically found in NEIPAs and what flavors would go well together. The hops are obviously the primary player here, and you typically add at least 10 oz of hops to a beer! But instead of imparting too much bitterness they provide the juicyness and fruit profiles. The higher alpha hops are typically great for NEIPAs. We have tried quite a few NEIPAs with Mosaic hops at several breweries, so we decided to make that our primary flavor. The secondary hops were Citra and New Zealand Wakatu. We had 2 oz of the Wakatu left over from some other beer recipe and it has a fairly high alpha with notes of citrus and florals.
Apparently there's also a secret to great NEIPAs that requires soft water. We tried to soften ours by using purified bottled water and calcium carbonate. We need to do some testing with this. I'm not sure if this helped.
Recipe (5 gallon batch)
- 3 gallon boil
- 1 lb un-malted flaked wheat
- 1 lb rolled oats (not quick oaks)
- 6 lbs gold liquid malt extract
- 1 oz Amarillo hop pellets
- 2 oz New Zealand Wakatu hop pellets
- 3 oz Citra hop pellets
- 4 oz Mosaic hop pellets
- Wyeast London Ale III, 1 pack
We started with 3 gallons of water and steeped the 2 lbs of flaked wheat and rolled oats together pre-boil for 20 minutes, until the temperature reached about 180 F or so. One thing we realized afterwards was how much water we lost. In our experience, we typically lose about half a gallon for a normal 3 gallon batch of beer. This one we lost a full gallon and had to add a good 3 gallons to the fermenter. Definitely starting out with more in the boil next time! Another thing we noticed is the oats and wheat make the boil very foamy. We use a good 8 gallon kettle for the boil, but the foam was dangerously close to spilling over at several points. Finally, we vowed to use a lighter malt extract next time we make a NEIPA. This one looked blood orange during the boil and after bottling took on a deep red hue. It still had some juicyness, but didn't give us the pulpy orange juice look we wanted. Gold liquid malt extract was just too dark.
We added all 6 lbs of the liquid malt extract at the start of the boil. Then 30 minutes into the boil, we added the 1 oz Amarillo hops. This was so we had a little hop bitterness. It was subtle in the end.
At flame-out (end of boil) we start the whirlpool. This is apparently a crucial part to any NEIPA. You want to cool things rather slowly and mix a bunch of hops into the beer during this point. We added 1 oz Wakatu, 1 oz Citra, and 1 oz Mosaic at this point. Then stirred for 40 minutes for the whirlpool. After the whirlpool, we cooled the wort enough to transfer to its primary fermentation vessel and added enough water to make 5 gallons. This ended up being about 3 whole gallons. Dan aerated and we pitched the yeast.
About 24-48 hours after the start of fermentation began we started dry hopping. We purchased two nifty little mesh bags from our local homebrew store to use for dry hopping. This keeps the bulk of hops contained, so you get as little hop dust as possible leaching into your beer and staying in it for the long-haul. This can lead to grassy flavors, as we discovered the hard way with our Nelson Sauvin single-hopped beer. We left the hops in for about 5 days.
We promptly proceeded with the second round of dry hopping right after the first dry hopping stage. For future reference, we will probably wait to do the secondary transfer, if we're doing one. Apparently you typically don't need to do secondary fermentations for NEIPAs. But we were worried about not enough debris settling out, so we transferred to secondary to get some more to settle before bottling. This could have meant the hops sat too long and then we let the beer settle in secondary too long. The second dry hopping consisted of 1 oz Wakatu, 1 oz Citra, and 2 oz of Mosaic. Again we left the hops in for 5 days.
Bottling proceeded as normal...with the exception that I had to make a label that Ashley would find funny (we were going to bring some of this beer over the next time we hung out with them). So I decided to give this beer a gross name: Moist. Overall, this beer did not blow our skirts up, gentlemen. But we did enjoy it for what it was: our first attempt at one of our favorite types of beers. Weirdly, this should really be drunk within a few weeks since we've noticed a caramel-y flavor coming through in bottles that have been sitting for a couple months. Still ok, but not as good as it was at the start.