Batch 15

This is the second recipe I’ve written myself and I chose the pretty uncommon style White IPA. The first recipe I did myself was the Imperial stout in Batch 10 and that one turned out really good, I hope this one will turn out just as good!

I fell in love with this style when I had the brewery Poppels “WIPA” which is a white IPA and as a homebrewer I of course wanted to make my own but it was really difficult to find a clone recipe and I wasn’t lucky enough that Poppels had released their own recipe. So I had to get inspiration but even that was difficult, the style seemed not very popular among homebrewers. The nearest I could get was people saying “just throw in a couple of percentages wheat malt and you’ll be good” but.. that didn’t sit well with me because I need facts, how much wheat is enough wheat? Will it taste how I want it to taste and feel? because I wanted the perfect mix between a witbier and IPA which is not just adding some wheat malt, that much I knew.

So I decided to make my own recipe and just give it a go. The biggest question was still, how much of everything? Am I supposed to do a IPA with wheat yeast and add 30% wheat malt? Should I then lower the amount of hops or keep the same I would with a regular IPA? It’s very common for wheat beers to have 50% wheat malt of its total malt bill, so I thought brewing with 30% would not give the full power but just enough. I went with a regular amount of hops and chose the great combo of Mosaic and Citra to add citrus and tropical fruits flavor. Amarillo made their company during dry hopping and even though these hops are pretty similar, they have their own special traits. I selected the US-05 yeast which ferments clean and doesn’t add much flavor, great for IPAs for example where the hops should be the main character.

I was looking for a feeling of “holy shit”, but after tasting the finished product it just wasn’t there. I couldn’t taste any wheat at all and there I was making this recipe, worrying that I would add too much! Next time I’ll add more, all the way to 50% and I think that the yeast I picked wasn’t the best choice, and I believe that Poppels are using a different one. I might go all in next time with both 50% wheat malt and a wheat yeast!

I usually start with any newly invested goodies for the brewery but this time it’s the other way around since recipes I make myself do deserve to begin batches. Alright, so I’ve thought about getting kegs for a looong time now (I started brewing not even a year ago but anyway) and it looks so nice with people who use kegs and since my two batches Batch 10 (Imperial stout) and Batch 13 (IPL) were low on carbonation I decided I wanted to make sure that all my beers would’ve the amount of carbonation I decided for, not leave it up to carbonation done by fermentation which can be lottery sometimes. Not having any sediment in the bottles bottom is just a bonus as well.

I made a small change to the label by adding a darker, worn paper feeling as background. I think it looks much better this way, it gives a better impression altogether when it’s not simply – white.