Most of my early days in home brewing was spent recreating classic styles of beer such as English bitters, brown ales, porters and stouts, German lagers and Belgian classics.Following a trip to the States in about 1994 a home brewing mate of mine brewed a beer using American Cascade hops and the US 1056 strain of yeast, it opened up a whole new world of possibilities of flavours. He went on to win a major brewing trophy with this beer and impressed quite a few people with it.

While I still loved traditional style of beers I shifted my brewing perspective to this highly aromatic and bitter style of beer. They can really assault the senses (in a good way!) and I really love drinking these punchy styles of beer.

My recipe is for an American Style IPA at around 6% alcohol with about 40 - 45 bittering units and plenty of body to round it out.

Ingredients

5kg Pale Malt
300gms Dark Crystal malt
5gms Calcium Sulphate
25gms Chinook hops @ 11.3 aau (start of boil for bittering)
20gms Chinook hops @ 11.3 aau (15 mins before end of boil for bitterness & aroma)
50gms Cascade or Amarillo hops (end of boil aroma)
Wyeast 1056 ale yeast or equivalent

Method

Mash in malt with Ca SO4 to 16litres hot water to achieve 66deg C mash temp. Hold for one hour before raising mash temp to 72deg C and hold for 10 mins. Raise temperature to 78 deg C before transferring to lauter tun.

Sparge to collect around 25 litres.

Boil for 1 hour adding hops as per ingredients list. Cool, transfer and pitch yeast into sterile fermenter ASAP. Hold fermentation temperature as close as possible to 18 deg C for entire time of fermentation.

When fermentation is complete rack beer into sterile vessel and cold condition for 2 weeks. Keg or bottle as per your usual method.

When ready kick back and blast your taste buds…