Fair warning here: I think this is my (and your) best India Pale Lager, but as it’s a “style” that doesn’t yet have much (any?) definition, you may need to adjust this if the brewing community starts to coalesce around a different interpretation! For my part, though, IPL is really about making sure the “L” part (lager) is getting its due. I’ve never thrown my standard IPA recipe against a lager yeast (until today—right now, as a matter of fact, as I’m mid-mash) because if you’re going to justify a shift from ale to lager and think of it as a distinct style, then the defining characteristics shouldn’t just be “my IPA, minus some esters.” So, in that spirit, let’s dive in with the goal of making something that’s clearly a lager but also features hops in a way that doesn’t overwhelm the palate or the grist.
Style
So, what makes a lager a lager? Lordy, we could go ’round and ’round on that one for days, I’m sure, but let’s take as our guiding light both the attributes of common lagers and the flavors produced by lager yeasts (and they do exist). Hops vary in intensity in lagers, from the high of Pilsners through the balance of Dortmunders to the low, low lows of generic Continental and American lagers. The common thread, though, is usually something to do with rounded, low-intensity-but-still-present malts and a touch of atypical fermentation character. German Pils is probably the hoppiest lager, but even it calls for clear grainy flavors and allows for a touch of sulfur. Bohemian Pilsner, by comparison, allows a bit of diacetyl and is bursting with Saaz flavor backed up by “rich, complex maltiness.” With that in mind, it seems consistent to say that if we’re making an IPL, then we should, by all means, feature hops, but that we should also produce a beer with complex (but soft) malts and a bit of fermentation character. This isn’t just some stripped-down IPA with all hops and no esters.
Ingredients
Begin with a 50/50 blend of Maris Otter and Munich malts (if you want to go lighter in color and aim more for croissant than biscuit, swap in some Pilsner for either/both), up to a target OG of 1.050. On top of that, add 0.5 pound (227 g) each of biscuit malt and Caramunich malt. Those grains will give you a rich and complex light-malt flavor, and while in other recipes I might recommend something to “dry” that mix out a little, here we’re going to let the hops handle that. You should end up with a target gravity of about 1.060.