With a boil time of 15 minutes, you’re getting a lot done. This recipe is designed mostly to test varieties of hops in a somewhat controlled environment. I add a small bag of specialty grains, in my version, to add just a hint of malt flavor behind the hops–I think it provides a better backboard for tasting the hops.
First, the recipe for a 1 gallon batch and then the process:
15 Minutes IPA
Grains, Yeast and Hops:
- 1 oz hops, your choice. (I’ve used Citra, Mosaic and Chinook)
- 1.5 lbs Light Dry Malt Extract [DME] (keeping it simple)
- 4.8 oz Caramel/Crystal Malt 60L
- SafAle English Ale #S-04 (1/2 packet)
Process:
- Mash
Heat .12 gal of water to 168.2 F, add the Caramel/Crystal grains and hold it at/above but near 156.0 F for 50 minutes. For this small amount of grains I do not mashout. I use a grain bag for this step in my brewpot to speed things up. - Boil
Replenish the water up to 1.5 gallons in the pot. Add the DME to the wort that we created in the above step and bring it to a boil. When it hits boiling, keep it at a nice vigorous boil but nothing crazy, and start your timer. As you start the timer add .1 oz of hops. At 5 minutes boiling add .2 oz of hops. At flame out add .5 oz of hops. (You will have half an oz of hops left over, store this in the freezer). - Ferment
Cool the wort (I like to put it in the sink with ice for small batches and run cold water around the pot). When it reaches room temperature (72 F in my kitchen) siphon your wort into the fermenter, aerate by agitating, and add half a packet of yeast. I do not stir it at this point. Attach a blow off tube and let it sit for at least a week. - Dry hop
When bubbling in the blow off tube has slowed considerably (about one week to 1.5 weeks) Take your last half oz of hops and, I’d advise using a hop bag which you can sanitize by boiling or by soaking in vodka, put the hops into the fermenter. - Bottle
I won’t go into too much detail here, but I use honey as priming sugar. For these beers I used .87 oz of honey boiled with water to sanitize and added to the fermenter after cooling. I then gently stir the sugar into the finished beer and bottle from there.The hardest parts are over, now you just have to wait two (or more) weeks to drink it. - Drink
After two weeks the beer was ready to drink. Because these are hop forward I chose to skip the conditioning period.
BeerXML and the Actual Recipes:
Note: these are cleaned up as best I could, I don’t use all of BeerSmith’s functionality for small batches like this, so these are provided as is with no guarantees.