Crawl Through the Woods IPA

[Richard]

I tend to ignore any sucrose when looking at BU:GU for an IPA, since it doesn't really balance anything. The ratio gives you a rough idea of the balance of the recipe (maltiness:bitterness), although that doesn't mean 1.0 is the holy grail or anything - just I've rarely had IPAs with a ratio below 1.0.

TBH I think a better measure would be FG:GU, for perceived bitterness - as that would discount sweetness that was fermented out... however much of our tools in homebrewing are rough and ready, so whatever

[Justin C]

Maybe a Noob question, but what is BU:GU ratio?

[Richard]

bittering units to gravity units, IBUs versus OG.

[brew]

Ratio is IBU divided by OG (thousandths), so if the IBU are 50, and the OG is 1.050, your ratio is 1...

[Justin C]

Got It, Thanks

[brew]

omfg this is one of the best beers I've had in a long time! Tried it last night, after 8 days primary and 10 days secondary with dry hop (simcoe) and two days carbing at 30psi, I landed on this:

Recipe: Crawl In the Woods IPA
Style: American IPA
Batch Size (fermenter): 18.93 l
Boil Time: 60 Minutes
OG / FG / ABV / Ratio: 1.063 SG / 1.009 SG / 7.2 % / 0.697
Color / IBU: 7.7 SRM / 44.1 IBUs

Grains: Amt                   Name                                     Type          #        %/IBU        
5 lbs                 Pale Malt (2 Row) US (2.0 SRM)           Grain         1        43.5 %        
3 lbs                 Pale Malt, Maris Otter (3.0 SRM)         Grain         2        26.1 %        
2 lbs                 Munich I (6.0 SRM)                       Grain         3        17.4 %        
8.0 oz                Caramel/Crystal Malt - 60L (60.0 SRM)    Grain         4        4.3 %        

Boil: Amt                   Name                                     Type          #        %/IBU        
1 lbs                 Brewers Crystals (0.0 SRM)               Sugar         5        8.7 %        
0.50 oz               Galena [12.50 %] - Boil 60.0 min         Hop           6        21.7 IBUs    
1.00 Items            Whirlfloc Tablet (Boil 15.0 mins)        Fining        7        -            
0.50 oz               Simcoe [13.00 %] - Boil 10.0 min         Hop           9        8.2 IBUs      
0.50 oz               Centennial [10.00 %] - Boil 10.0 min     Hop           8        6.3 IBUs      
0.50 oz               Simcoe [13.00 %] - Boil 5.0 min          Hop           11       4.5 IBUs      
0.50 oz               Centennial [10.00 %] - Boil 5.0 min      Hop           10       3.5 IBUs      

Ferment: Amt                   Name                                     Type          #        %/IBU        
1.0 pkg               American Ale (Wyeast Labs #1056) [124.21 Yeast         12       -            

Mash Schedule: Single Infusion, 150F Two Sparges

[Richard]

oic, you do do IPAs now - my bad.

[brew]

Well - this was only my first IPA...

[Chris Craig]

How come you decided to lower the IBUs to 45?  You're overlapping into an APA now.  In fact, it'd probably do better in the APA category of a competition than the IPA category.  One of your earlier versions was up around 60 IBUs.  That probably would have worked a bit better.

Either way, it's always to to branch out to new styles.  Good on ya!

[Richard]

Baby steps, CC - he's no hop-head.

[brew]

I gotta say though this balanced out real nice. I'm going to do up 10G more of this asap as I'm pretty sure it wont last long.