Recipe: Tim Sciascia’s Tropical DDH Hazy IPA

Layers upon layers of hop character from Riwaka, Nelson, and Citra create an attention-grabbing brew. Add that to highly elevated levels of stone fruit, grapefruit, and passion fruit from Berkeley’s Tropics Boost, and you have a beer that will turn the head of even the most critical hazy IPA fan.

ALL-GRAIN

OG: 1.068 (16.5°P)
FG: 1.016 (4.0°P)
IBUs: 20
ABV: 6.8%

MALT/GRAIN BILL

75% pilsner
10% flaked oats
15% dextrin malt

HOPS & ADDITIONS SCHEDULE

3 lb (1.4 kg)/bbl dextrose at 10 minutes
3 lb (1.4 kg)/bbl brewer’s crystals at 10 minutes
1.5–2 lb (680–907 g)/bbl Riwaka T-90 at whirlpool (180°F/82°C)
100ml/bbl Berkeley Tropics Boost at knockout
1 lb (454 g)/bbl each Citra Cryo and Nelson Sauvin T-90 at first dry hop
1 lb (454 g)/bbl Nelson Sauvin T-90 at second dry hop

YEAST

Berkeley Tropics London

DIRECTIONS

Mill the grains and mash at 150°F (66°C) until converted. Recirculate until the runnings are clear, then run off into the kettle. (Turbidity at this point will do more harm than good because astringency can be extracted from grain particulate during the boil. Get your haze from your hops and yeast!) Boil for 60 minutes—or more, depending on how vigorous your boil is—adding the sugars according to the schedule. After the boil, do a whirlpool step: Drop the temperature to 180°F (82°C), if possible, and add the whirlpool hops. Chill the wort to 65°F (18°C), aerate to 10 ppm, and pitch the yeast (target 750k cells/ml/°P), and set your tank to 68°F (20°C). While transferring, add Tropics Boost to the fermentor. Once fermentation is complete and gravity has stabilized, drop/remove the yeast and add the first dry hops. The next day, drop/remove the hops and add the second dry hops. The next day, drop/remove the hops again—and do so again each day until packaging. Once the beer has passed a forced diacetyl test, crash to 32°F (0°C) and carbonate to 2.6 volumes of CO₂. Allow at least 48 hours—more is better—for further settling of yeast, hops, and trub before packaging.

BREWER’S NOTES

Some hazy IPA recipes are sweeter and more juice-like. Because of the double dry hopping, this recipe has a noticeable hop bitterness that gives it a different, hop-focused texture.

Water profile: 50 g/bbl calcium chloride, 20 g/bbl sodium chloride. If you have very soft water, add 50 g/bbl calcium chloride to the mash. This will preserve your mash enzymes, help establish a proper mash pH, and lead to a rounder mouthfeel. Adding sodium chloride to the kettle will further increase the softness. We choose sodium chloride over more calcium chloride to avoid adding too much calcium, which results in a chalky sensation.

pH: Target a mash pH of 5.45. You may need to acidify your sparge water to prevent your last runnings’ pH from going above 5.8, to help prevent extracting astringency from the grain. Post-boil, add the sodium chloride and any additional acid to achieve a final wort pH of 5.0. Your whirlpool hops will raise the pH of the wort, so you want to undershoot the pH a little.

Whirlpool: Two common techniques for hitting the whirlpool temperature are to boil a somewhat concentrated wort, then add cold liquor or city water after the boil to hit target gravity; or recirculate the wort through the heat exchanger.

Diacetyl: Tropics London does not have Berkeley Yeast’s low-diacetyl Fresh™ technology, so you may want to consider adding ALDC enzyme at some point throughout the brewing or cellaring process.

Tropics Boost: The day after fermentation starts, you are going to notice the distinct aroma of passion fruit accompanying the fermentation gases. That is the technology of Tropics strains and Tropics Boost at work, transforming previously odorless compounds into pure tropical amazingness.