Brewing Balanced DIPAs: Tips from the Pros
At first glance, double IPAs (DIPAs) may be looked at as ramped up regular-strength IPAs — crank up the ABV, throw in more hops, and you’re off to the races. However, as these experts explain, there is more nuance when aiming for a balanced DIPA that is worthy of recognition (and they should know with the awards they’ve all won!).
John Montes De Oca is the Co-Head Brewer at Barebottle Brewing Co. in San Francisco, California.
Intensity of character while minimizing harshness is the key to a great DIPA. I don’t mind a bit of alcohol heat in these beers because it helps distinguish a DIPA from a single IPA and often tempers my drinking. I’m not looking for just a higher alcohol beer, though. I’m looking for flavors that don’t exist in smaller beers and a great DIPA can achieve that.
While it sounds easy to just take a recipe and ramp up the sugar and grain to increase the alcohol, I think that can often produce a beer that amplifies the wrong things. The higher alcohol in DIPAs can help bolster perceived sweetness and juiciness. I often will lower the amount of specialty and flaked grains for our hazy DIPAs compared to a 6% IPA or even a pale ale since the elevated ABV will help amp up the body and perceivable sweetness of the beer. This means we are anywhere between 10–20% specialty/flaked grains. Too much can make the beer cloying and less drinkable. We will sometimes use dextrose to help boost the alcohol and help with attenuation, but never more than about 5%. It’s a balancing act with desired final gravity, mash temperature, and the yeast.
Most of our hazy beers don’t get any kettle hop additions. We use the whirlpool for all of our hot-side additions, changing the amounts based on desired bitterness. For a DIPA, we’ll just increase the whirlpool amount. Our hazy DIPA dry hop additions tend to hover between 3.5–5 lbs./bbl (1.8–2.6 oz./gallon or 13–19 g/L). With the introduction of concentrated hop pellets, that number is sometimes effectively even higher. We’ll add about 25% of the dry hops before fermentation is over and add the rest right as the beer is hitting terminal gravity. We’ll then rouse the tank multiple times over a day or two and taste the beer until we feel that the hops have fully made it into the beer. If I were a homebrewer, however, I would dry hop in a single charge since the surface area / volume ratio of the smaller fermenters works in your favor and to reduce the amount of times the vessel is open to limit dissolved oxygen. Since different hops are pelletized differently, some hops dissolve faster and easier into the beers than others, needing less time. So we don’t have any hard and fast rules about timing and duration of dry hops; we let the flavor of the beer guide us there.
We do harvest yeast but never from our DIPAs. We work the schedule to ensure we have a pale ale or IPA we can harvest from for these beers. Hopping can get aggressive with these beers and by not harvesting from our DIPAs we don’t have to worry about any future beers using that yeast.
A common mistake I see from homebrewers that gets exacerbated in DIPAs is unhealthy and under-attenuated fermentations. The yeast in these beers need all the help they can get. That means proper aeration and pitching enough healthy yeast. That will let you start fermentation a couple of degrees cooler to limit fusel alcohols.
Don’t be afraid to have a slightly elevated final gravity compared to what you may be used to, particularly in hazy DIPAs. This can help amp up the juiciness. And keep dissolved oxygen down. This is the perfect time to learn to do closed transfers from your fermenter to a keg. Oxygen can easily mean the premature death of an IPA. Also look for synergies in your hops. I love Citra® and I love Idaho 7®, but for me, personally, they clash. However, Mosaic® and Idaho 7® are amazing together.
Justin Burdt is the Head Brewer at Ghost Town Brewing in Oakland, California .
I like to make West Coast double IPAs as dry as possible with as little color as possible. This helps the hops shine and helps balance out the high alcohol. I use a blend of T90 hop pellets, Cryo® pellets, and CO2 extract (for the bittering charge) to really pack a punch with hops, but keep vegetable flavors in check. Hop additions are at the same times as our regular strength IPA, just a heavier dose. We add hops at the start of the boil, whirlpool and dry hop. Here’s the breakdown of my DIPA hopping schedule:
Start of boil: 0.2–0.4 lb./bbl (0.1–0.2 oz./gallon, 0.7–1.5 g/L)
Whirlpool: 1.8–2.25 lbs./bbl (0.9–1.2 oz./gallon, 7–9 g/L)
Dry hop: 5.5–6.5 lbs./bbl (2.8–3.4 oz./gallon, 21–24 g/L)
Mosaic® is my favorite hop for this style. Nose Goblin, which won Gold at the 2021 Great American Beer Festival, is a combo of Mosaic®, Nelson SauvinTM, and StrataTM. It’s a beautiful hop combo. I use 100% Pilsner malt in my West Coast DIPAs and some dextrose in the kettle in the 5–10% range, which I’d recommend if you are going over 8% ABV to help dry it out. The ABV will give it the body that specialty malts give to lighter beers. This style is all about the hops. Don’t overthink it and keep it simple — one or two malts and three hops.When creating your own DIPA recipe, if you already have a recipe you like for a regular strength IPA you can ramp up that beer. Add some dextrose and you will also have to increase hop additions in both kettle and dry hop. Fermentation temperature (I like to ferment at 62 °F/17 °F for the first 72 hours to keep the fusel alcohol in check before increasing the temperature slightly), yeast pitching rates, and oxygenation will need to be taken into account for higher ABV beers.
I’d definitely recommend using a neutral yeast strain. We use White Labs WLP001 (California Ale), which also attenuates very well. We never re-pitch off of a DIPA, or anything over 7%. Nowadays, we pitch more off of weight, smell, and taste. When I had more time for cell counting it would be 1,100,000 pitching rate per degree Plato per mL. For a homebrewer, I recommend making two 1-liter starters (or the equivalent) with WLP001 and get a lot of oxygen in there!
Matt Katase (left) is the Co-Founder and CEO of Brew Gentlemen in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Chris Carr (right) is the Head Brewer at Brew Gentlemen.
A really good DIPA, like most great beers, comes down to balance. The ABV, hop combination (bitterness, flavor, and aroma), and mouthfeel all have to work in sync. Average ones tend to go too extreme in one direction, throwing the whole beer off. More, more, more is not always better. A common mistake with this style is overdoing it — we’ve heard people dry hopping at 8–10 lbs./bbl (4–5 oz./gallon or 31–39 g/L) or with 7–8 different hops. Strive for balance. Less can sometimes be more. Not too many of our hoppy beers are dry hopped over 4 lbs./bbl (2 oz./gallon or 15 g/L).
When developing a DIPA recipe we usually start from scratch and build it like any other recipe. We have a vision for the finished product and apply what we know and have learned on our system. Don’t try to correct too many variables at once so you can see what each tweak does. Scaling linearly from an IPA to DIPA doesn’t necessarily translate to hitting the balance mark. As the total grain bill increases, the percent of specialty grains slightly decreases. We do usually add some dextrose for the DIPAs (less than 5%). Most of our DIPAs also have some flaked oats or flaked wheat in them.
We tend to keep our DIPAs under 8.5% ABV. We find that when you go over that, some of that alcohol heat shows up. A lot of our DIPA fans say they’re dangerously drinkable.
We do reuse yeast from DIPA batches. We never use a first- or second-generation pitch for DIPAs though. After fermentation is complete we’ll do a soft crash, harvest yeast, and then dry hop.
Our last words of advice for homebrewers is don’t rush the beer, don’t be afraid to experiment, and try to make small, continuous improvements.
