3 Tips to Brewing New England IPA

Most home brewers will tell you that New England style beers are extremely easy to make; a can’t-miss recipe of flaked oats, two row malt, a low to mid-flocculating yeast that maintains that milky look we all pine after, and a combination of two or three hops out of a short list [Citra, Mosaic, Galaxy, etc.] that are added late in the boil, whirlpool, or in the dry hop at high krausen. This is likely a hot take but in actuality, anyone who tells you that is wrong. New England Pale Ales and IPA’s are actually incredibly difficult to make; so much so that I took a full calendar year within my second year of brewing and strictly performed Research & Development on the style brewing in order to find what I thought was my favorite combination of hops, yeast, and malt to bring out the best aspects of the style in the perfect visual, aromatic, and palate pleasing representation of the style that I could.

 

While learning during that year, I also created a list of techniques that, for me and my taste, are ones that I will never shy away from when brewing a solidly juicy beer. Let me reiterate, these brewing techniques work for me and by no means are the end-all, be-all of home brewing.

 

Every single time I added hops within the first 48-72 hours of fermentation, I’d always get an overtly bitter, taste-lacking finished beer. I’d go as small as 1oz or as high as 8oz. It wasn’t until I started dry hopping when the beer was done or close to being fully fermented out that I realized the difference it made in the finished product. With that said, the technique I adopted wasn’t something I created. Some years later it became more popular as pro brewers would slowly release their secrets.

I began doing this early on in my experimenting but quickly ditched it in favor of no boil additions but picked it back up some years later when a good buddy of mine started adding a mid-boil kiss of noble hops. I adopted this method but experimented with different low alpha hops in order to get a smoother bitterness with less bitterness bite. For example I found that Warrior hops provide a harshness to the beer that’s unbecoming of this amazing style but Cascade, when added at the right time during the boil not only provides the beer with the backbone it needs to help round out the flavor but it also adds an interesting citrus peel character that gives the beer that extra UMPH! If you will.

Many articles will tell you that 180-185 is the sweet spot but I’ve found that temperature brings out more bitterness in a style where I’m already adding hot side hops. Even in the versions where I didn’t add anything during the boil, it came across similar to how it did when I dry hopped at high krausen.