#43 – Imbalanced Pale Ale

Style: American IPA
Batch size: 2.5 gallons
Brewed: April 5, 2013
Bottled: April 27, 2013
OG: 1.054  FG: 1.012
IBUs: 77  ABV: 5.5%

Grains
6 lb U.S. 2-Row Pale Malt
8 oz Caramel Malt (40L)

Hops (Whole leaf)
FWH: 1 oz Centennial (10.9% AA)
10 min: 0.5 oz Centennial (10.9% AA)
0 min: 0.5 oz Centennial (10.9% AA)
Dry Hop (14 days): 1 oz Centennial (10.9% AA)

Yeast
1 liter starter of Northwest Ale (Wyeast Labs #1332)

This was a tweak of last year’s Imperialist Pale Ale recipe…which was one of the ruined beers, but it also had too much caramel malt (it was an overall poorly designed recipe).

So I set out to change the recipe to bring down the ABV, but increase the hops…in a way where the BU:GU ratio would be way imbalanced, hence the new name (I’ll save the old name for use in a IIPA). That ratio for this beer is 77:54, or 1.4. The typical range for an IPA is 0.5 to 0.9; the higher the number, the more bitter it is.

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