loose cannon has been my go to ipa in 2011 for at home drinking. its so good!!!!!!

i used to drink the red hook longhammer a lot around 5 or 6 years ago. my liquor store at the time was selling 12 packs for $10.99 so i liked it a lot back then.

besides sam adams, harpoon, red hook, does anyone know of any other breweries putting out 12 packs of ipa?

I was at a party last weekend and there were a few 12 packs of Harooon IPA cans.

What part of the country do you live in? There's countless 12 packs of IPA in the West; some I will mention have pretty wide distribution - Deschutes , Widmer, Sierra Nevada (limited for their IPA I think), Lagunitas, Full Sail, Alaskan, Bear Republic, Bridgeport, New Belgium....Plus I'm sure there's a lot more I'm missing.

Out in TX right now and was able to get some New Belgium Somersault and Fat Tire. Yum!

even though i hate supporting harpoon in any way i do love those ipa cans, i think its better than the bottle. and its fantastic golf bag beer.

i did buy the whales tale pale ale 12 pack of cans on memorial day, i was not very impressed with that can incarnation.

live in boston,the only things i see from your list around me are lagunitas and bear republic products but it is always in 6 packs. not that i mind buying two 6 packs either. just wondering if any crafties are doing 12 packs anywhere.

I would cut the crystal down to about 5% of the grain bill. I find 10% crystal in an APA to leave to much residual sweetness.

I also agree with bumping back the hop additions. Matter of fact, other than the 60 minute addition I would bump the rest back to like 20,10, and 5 minutes.

I would shoot for an IBU to OG ratio of around 0.8 or so.

Here is my own APA recipe. It's a big hit with my drinking buds. Zeus is essentially the same hop as Columbus. This is for 6 gallons post boil.



Thunderstruck Pale Ale

Grain Bill: (OG 1.052)

6.0lb Pale American 2-row
3.0lb Maris Otter
0.5lb Vienna
0.5lb Crystal 40
0.5lb Munich

Mash:

Single infusion at 152, 1.85 quarts/pound, no mash out, batch sparge

Yeast:

Safale US-O5

Hops: 43 IBU total, IBU to OG ratio 0.83:1

Zeus 0.5oz @ 60 minutes (28 IBU)
Perle 0.75oz @ 10 minutes (9 IBU)
Cascade 1.0oz @ 5 minutes (6 IBU)
Cascade 1.0oz DH
Zeus 0.5oz DH
Chinook 0.5oz DH

Misc:

Whilfloc @ 15

American style IPA, weighs in at 6.2 abv

I'm more of a hop guy and this was weak on hops and kind of watery.

Decent session beer I suppose but, as far as this brewery goes, I strongly prefer the small batch 471.





Another American Style IPA, this one was a bit hoppier but, nowhere near the awesomeness of Bluepoint's Hoptical Illusion.

Not a very good trip to the beer guy this week.. try again next week.. I need hops!

If you're willing to provide me with feedback on my beer, please PM your mailing address and I'll send you a couple of bottles of my homebrewed American style IPA.

It's about 8% ABV and has 8 ounces of hops in 6 gallons. I used Zeus, Centinial and Citra in equal proportions for every addition - with the bittering hops added by first wort hopping, the flavor hops added by hop bursting, and then dry hopped with 2 ounces.

bought a 6 pack of southern tier ipa last night. probably my least favorite ipa i have bought in my life. it was so malty and flavorless i didnt think i was drinking an ipa. not so happy about my purchase, never again

How do you find the Maris Otter to work with that bill? Wouldn't the later hop additions not add as much flavor to the wort as earlier hop additions? What exactly does the Whilfloc tablet do? I am such a noob .


Pick me pick me pick me!!!!




I went to Wichita Falls, TX this week and was able to get a lot of New Belgium beer which was fantastic. I had Flat Tire once before and I remembered it being a lot better before, this time I was overwhelmed by the maltiness of it. The taste reminded me of the smell of my LHBS lol. Also got to finally try Brooklyn Lager. While it was good I definitely thought their Summer seasonal out right now was muchhhhhh better.

I think the Maris Otter works well with it. I wouldn't want to go much more than 30% of the grain bill for MO as you want an APA to have a crispness to it and too much MO would work against that.

IMO the later the hop additions the more flavor the hops add almost right up to flameout. If you look at my recipe, other than bittering additions and dry hops there is only a 10-minute addition and a 5-minute addition and it's full of hop flavor. I actually tried a batch subbing the 10-minute Perle addition with more Cascade, but switched back to Perle because it was almost too full of grapefruity flavors for what I was looking for.

If you do a 20, 10, and 5 you will have plenty of hop flavor. You won't get much aroma from those though so you will also want to dry hop.

Whirfloc is just Irish Moss in a convenient tablet form. It's used to help make the beer more clear.


Ok PM your mailing address and I'll send a couple of bottles. Right now it's kegged and it will be a couple of days before I can break out my bottling gun and fill a few bottles, but I'll get them shipped by the end of the week.

The offer is off the table for anyone else unless Kevroc doesn't take me up on it.

While I generally agree, I did a MO/Amarillo SMASH w/ a standard Cali ale yeast and it came out plenty crisp for an APA. In fact, that was the beer that got me hooked on simplifying my recipes since it was so delicious. IMO, the yeast and mash temp are more critical than the base grain but w/e not a big deal.

/nitpick

Have you guys experimented w/ first wort hopping? Ever since doing a hoppy pils w/ it, I use it in almost all of my recipes now. Great smooth bitterness, great aroma, saves hops. Definitely worth a shot if you haven't tried it.

Yeah I've been experimenting with FWH as I develop my IPA recipe and I like it a lot. I haven't noticed much of an affect on the hop aroma (maybe because I've used it in styles that I dry hop massively anyway) but I agree it really smooths out the bitterness and I think it adds quite a bit of flavor and kind of a "creamyness" to the mouthfeel.

I haven't used it on my APA yet just because I really love how it turns out with my current hopping schedule.

I'll try FWH with my upcoming APA.

Anyone doing a brew for 4th of July besides me?

I'm hoping to get 10g of an O'fest and 10g of a BoPils done this weekend.

Me n' a buddy made a Carrot Cream Ale a couple of weeks ago to drink at his bbq Sunday. It's a very simple beer for drinking outside and experimenting with carrots for the first time.

We put 2lbs of carrot scrapings in the mash; word is it smells great. It gets racked and starts carbonating tonight. I'll report the results next week.

I'm thinking of doing a Kolsch this weekend but my tap water is starting to warm up and I'm not sure how easily I'll be able to chill the wort to 56 degrees F which is about the the temp I want to pitch at.

Has anybody tried using a pump and recirculating ice water through an immersion chiller? I see Home Dept has small pumps with garden hose fittings for about $100 and I'm thinking of trying one.

Mmmmm Kolsch.

What I do is take my old immersion chiller, stick it in a cooler, fill it with ice and use the whole contraption as a pre-chiller. The water entering my plate chiller is <50F this way, and I'm in central Texas so it gets plenty hot.

That sounds like a nice set-up.

Yeah, that's the way to do it .

Thought I'd see if New Belgium Abbey Ale is any good, and damn, is it ever. If you're looking for an affordable and available Belgian style, I think you aren't going to find anything better.

Starting to get into IPA's finally. Never liked them but they started to grow on me and now I can't get enough. I've been sampling random kinds lately, and recently had the Myrcenary Double IPA. That blew me away, it is full of flavor but I was shocked by the smoothness. Very smooth.

RunDownHouse just pointed me to this thread after I started a homebrewing thread in EDF the other day

I'm German, read the first couple of posts about Warsteiner and couldn't help but chuckle. It's one of the worst German Pilsener brands that isn't concidered cheap that we have in my opinion (the other one being Veltins). Tastes are of course subjective to a degree but ask away if you have any questions about German brands. I'm also a huge friend of Belgian beer in general.

I'm not a huge fan of the Reinheitsgebot (heated debates with friends) and just started homebrewing.

I don't have too much range, looking to expand it a bit. Using the Periodic table of beer stlyes I've had:
Berliner Weisse, Weizenbier, Dunkelweizen, Belgian gold ale, Belgian dark ale, German pilsener, Bohemian pilsener, American pilsener, American lite, American standard, Munich Helles, Dortmunder, Munich Dunkel, Schwarzbier, Doppelbock, Traditional Bock, Kölsch, Alt

My mainstream beer of choice right now is Dortmunder Kronen (Dortmunder type Export) but I also enjoy the beer from a local nonobrewry.
I want to try Porter+Stout varieties and a good IPA and Cascadian next and will have a Smoked Beer on my upcomming trip to Bamberg

There's some internet sellers that import US beer and I'll get a mixed batch sometime later this year. The breweries I've found so far are (kinda sad that it seems to be impossible to get DFH):
Anchor, Brooklyn, Sierra Nevada, Flying Dog, Snake Dog, Left Hand, Anderson, Victory, Great Divide

If you want to pay for it + shipping I'll send you some from my local store clown.

I agree that Reinheitsgebot is silly since it confines a lot of fun flavors, but it does seem the best beers follow that law .