Sunday 17 October 2021

NEIPA/Hazy IPA - Recipe Creation Guide

NEIPA/Hazy IPA Style Overview

An American IPA with intense fruit flavours and aromas, a soft body and smooth mouthfeel. Appearance is often opaque with substantial haze. Less perceived bitterness than traditional IPA's, but always massively hop forward. Emphasis on late hopping - especially dry hopping with hops provising tropical fruit qualities lending to the 'juicy' character for which the style is known.


Vital Statistics

These are taken directly from the BJCP style guidelines for New England IPA

ABV: 6% - 9%
IBU: 25 - 60
SRM: 3 - 7
OG: 1.060 - 1.085
FG: 1.010 - 1.015

Malts/Grains

Pale/Pilsner Malt - 60-70% (base malt - 50/50 mix of pale/pilsner is common)
Munich - Up to 20% (optional - can be used to add some sweetness and depth of flavour)
Wheat - 5-15%
Oats - 5-18% (some recommend up to 20% or even 25-30%). If using 20% oats, drop the wheat to 10% or so.
Crystal 1-5% (optional - mainly used for adjusting colour and aiding in head retention)

Make sure you include rice hulls in your grain bill to help with sparging - high levels of oats and wheat are known to create a thick, sticky mash that often gets stuck during sparging, or even mash recirculation.

Mash (Temperature & Time)

Mash @ 65C (for a drier/crisper finish)
Mash @ 67-68C (for a fuller bodied, softer, sweeter finish)
Mashout @ 75C for 10 minutes

Water Chemistry

Chloride to sulfate ratio of 2:1
Good starting point is:
150-200ppm chloride
75-100 ppm sulfate
<150ppm calcium


Hops (Boil, Bittering, Whirlpool & Dry Hopping)

Look for fruit forward and American new world style hops. Popular/common examples are;
  • Citra
  • Amarillo
  • Simcoe
  • Mosaic
  • Galaxy
  • El Dorado
  • Centennial
  • Cascade
  • Chinook
  • Columbus

Some popular  hop combinations are;
  • Citra + El Dorado + Mosaic
  • Galaxy + Amarillo + Simcoe
  • Falconers Flight + Moutueka + Citra
  • Idaho 7 + Galaxy + Vic Secret
  • Citra + Mosaic
  • Azacca + Simcoe + Lemon Drop
  • Vic Secret + Nelson Sauvin + Amarillo
  • Citra + Simcoe + Mosaic
  • Calypso + Azacca + Amarillo
  • El Dorado + Citra + Galaxy

Bittering hops are rarely added as a 60 minute addition. Earliest they should be added is 10-15 minutes left in the boil. Often no hops are added to the boil and bittering is achieved by a large amount of whirlpool hops. Use brewing software to calculate this (Brewfather, BeerSmith etc).

30 minute boils are common.

Whirlpool hops are added at ~80C and left for anywhere from 10-30 minutes before further chilling the wort. Aim for 3-4g/L for the whirlpool addition. You also have the option of multiple whirlpool additions to add complexity and extract different types of hop flavours.

Lots of dry hopping - timing and scheduling of when this should happen is widely debated. Multiple dry hops are common. Some recommend first dry hop to happen at high krausen or during active fermentation to achieve biotransformation of the hops. There's a counter-argument to this though that there's enough of this that happens with the hops that have been added at whirlpool. A classic case of try yourself and do what works for you.

A recommended limit on dry hops though is 240 grams in total for 25L batch to avoid overpowering or hop burn. There is also a recommendation that dry hops shouldn't be in contact with the beer for more than 5 days. Though once again, Neil Fisher from WeldWerks Brewery in Colorado states that their sweet spot for dry hopping is a contact time of 8-9 days. 

Aim for 10-12g/L as a starting point - we've read people using as much as 37g/L. Dry hopping no doubt reaches a point where it becomes less effective/efficient, but the exact limit with what this is is still unknown.

Yeast

Go for a medium attenuating English style yeast. Some popular/common options are below

Liquid
  • London Ale III (Wyeast 1318)
  • Dry English Ale (White Labs WLP007)
  • Vermont/Conan
  • Imperial A38
  • Gigayeast GY054 Vermont IPA
Dry
  • Fermentis S-04
  • Lallemand BRY-97
  • Mangrove Jacks M36 Liberty
  • Verdant IPA

Fermentation Temperature

Begin fermentation at the lower end of the yeasts recommended temperature range. After at least 5 days of fermentation, begin raising the temperature 1C per day for 3 days (for a 3C total increase in temperature).

Pressure Fermentation

Pressure fermentation is not recommended for this style of beer - at least not at the beginning of active fermentation. The pressure will suppress the colourful yeast flavours that are desirable in this style. If you do want to use pressure - begin applying it (or closing your spunding valve) after at least day 5 of active fermentation.

Cold Crashing

This one is optional - the style expects a certain amount of haze, so cold crashing to drop more yeast out of suspension will lead to less yeast in the finished product - which will contribute to less haze. Haze will still be obtained from the wheat/oats in the grain bill as well as hop haze from the large amount of hops that are added.

Sample Recipe

Check out our favourite NEIPA all-grain recipe


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All-Grain Recipe List

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