Quarantine IPA: Quick and Easy Homebrewed Beer

Quarantine IPA is a homebrew beer for those wanting to make beer at home. This recipe is easy to make and ready quickly – two weeks from grain to glass.

Quarantine IPA Recipe:

10 lbs – 2-row American Pale Malt (Briess)
1 lbs – Caramel 40 (40.0 SRM)
1 lbs – Munich Malt – 10L (10.0 SRM)
2.00 oz – Centennial Pellets [10.40 %] – Boil 30.0 min
1.00 oz – Cascade Pellets [6.20 %] – Boil 5.0 min
1.00 oz – Amarillo Pellets [8.50 %] – Boil 0.0 min
2.0 pk – German Ale/Kolsch (White Labs #WLP029)
1.00 oz – Amarillo Pellets [8.50 %] – Dry Hop

Mash – 152F
Boil – 30 minutes

Let’s fix this. I’m Martin Keen and I’ve been working my way through the BJCP style guidelines for each of the 99 beers in order (the Homebrew Challenge.)

But today that is on pause while I take care of a more pressing issue. The lack of beer in this house while we’re in quarantine. So I’m going to whip up an IPA and I’m going to make it under two requirements.

1. It has to be sourced with ingredients that are already in the house considering that we’re understay at home orders.
2. It needs to be ready as soon as possible.

As for the parameters for this beer, I’m going to go with the rule of six for this IPA. So an original gravity of 10 60 which will give a 6% there and for bitterness, how about a bitterness of 60 that should be a nice, well-rounded IPA.

And in terms of character, I’m going to err more on the side of a fruity IPA rather than a piny-IPA. All right, with those requirements in place, let’s see what we can do.

For the base malt, I’m going to use 2 row pale malt. Now I am brewing a 5 gallon batch, so I’m going to use 10 pounds of base malt. That’s 84% of the grist. Now while the predominant character of this IPA is obviously going to be hoppy, we do need to give this bit a malt backbone to support those hops. So having a look around, see what I got and what I’m going to add in is one pound or 8% of Munich 10 and then another one pound or 8% of caramel 40 just to build that malt character into the beer.

Looking for a pre boil gravity of 10 43 which should be about a 40 minute mash and its mashing at 152 Fahrenheit or about 67 Celsius.

Digging through my hop freezer and this is what I’m going to go with with the hops. So here I have Centennial hops. These will be my bittering hops. I’m going to throw two ounces of these in at 30 minutes cause I’m doing a 30 minute boil. That’s going to deliver about 54 IBU.

Then with five minutes from the end of the boil, that’s where cascade will come in to give a little bit of those floral and citrusy aroma and a little bit on the flavor. And then at flameout 1 ounce of Amarillo, which will really bump up that citrisy profile of the beer as well. And I’m also gonna throw in another one ounce of Amarillo in the dry hop.

So as for fermenting this beer, I’m going to use this, which is a “Fermszilla all arounder.” The reason that I’m using this is it’s a fermentor that is capable of holding pressure and this will help me with my requirement two of getting things done a little bit faster.

What I’m going to do is when this beer is ready to dry hop, so as the fermentation is coming to an end, I’m going to put the dry hops in, I’m going to seal it back up again, and then I’m going to store it at 15 PSI of pressure. What that means is that while the fermentation is finishing up and those dry hops are infusing in the beer, the beer will also be carbonating.

So that will reduce the time that I need to actually make the beer fizzy at the end. And we’re going to overlap a few steps.

For yeast. I dug around in my frozen yeast bank to find some suitable ale yeast. And what I’ve got is WLP029 German ale. I made a starter with this yesterday, which I’ll pitch in. Fermenting at 68 Fahrenheit, which is 20 Celsius. Brew Day is done!

We are 4 days into fermentation now and the beer has come down to 10 19. Beersmith tells me we should expect to get down to a final gravity of about 10 14 so we’re nearly done with fermentation and it’s at this point that I like to do my dry hopping. So I’m going to open this up and throw my hops in.

Okay, so close the lid up and yes, I did open this lid and expose the beer to oxygen. It’s not good, but because fermentation is not done, then that oxygen should get consumed by the yeast. And this is not going to be an issue.

Now I want to get this beer ready super quick. It’s so I am going to start carbonating it now. The way I’m going to do that is to use a spunding valve. So I’m going to put this spunding valve here on the gas post and I’m going to let the pressure build up to about 15 PSI in here, which will happen as the fermentation comes to a close. And then that bill will be sitting at 15 PSI. So it will naturally be carbonating as it’s finishing up.

So it’s tasting time on, we are here at our neighborhoods. Um, what are we calling this neighborhood? Quarantine Happy hour to try the quarantine IPA. It’s been two weeks since we got it. So we’re just gonna try this beer and see what we think of it. It’s actually really good for an IPA. For despite the fact it’s an IPA is quite good. Yeah. Cause I don’t like IPAs. It’s a, yeah. Tropical fruit. Quite fresh, I think. Oh, it’s got tropical fruit?

No, it’s got hops that give that impression. Oh, everybody I thought its tropical food. Um, Joe, you were all the way over here. What do you think? I think it goes down pretty good. Pretty good. What kind of glass are you drinking? A whiskey glass from Twitty and company.

Well, glad you like it. Cheers. Cheers.

Steve Thanos

Former President of my homebrew club, Plainfield Ale and Lager Enthusiasts (PALE) in the western suburbs of Chicago, IL. I brew on my BIAB system with my incredibly patient and understanding wife, adorable 9 year old daughter, and 12 year old brew dog.