21B Specialty IPA: Red IPA
Mean Doses RIPA (clone)
Grain bill
| Gladfield Ale Malt | 4.56 kg | 67.9% |
| Gladfield Vienna Malt | 0.94 kg | 14% |
| Gladfield Aurora Malt | 0.47 kg | 7% |
| Gladfield RedBack Malt | 0.47 kg | 7% |
| Gladfield Shepherds Delight Malt | 0.27 kg | 4% |
Adjuncts
| Yeast Nutrient | 2 g @ 15 min |
| Whirlfloc | 1 g @ 15 min |
Hop schedule
| Hop | 60 min | 15 min | 5 min | WP 85°C | DH#1 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pacific Jade | 12g | · | · | · | · |
| Mosaic | · | 15g | 40g | 15g | 60g |
| Simcoe | · | · | 20g | 15g | 60g |
| Nelson Sauvin | · | · | · | 15g | 60g |
Yeast
| Safale S-04 | 2 packets |
About This Beer
Mean Doses RIPA is a clone of a Red IPA recipe provided by Dean at Mean Doses brewery for the Beat the Brewer Challenge 2025 — a competition where homebrewers attempt to replicate a commercial brewery’s beer using their actual recipe.
The grain bill follows a classic Red IPA approach: a substantial Gladfield Ale Malt base, Vienna for malt sweetness and body, then Aurora, RedBack, and Shepherds Delight layered in to build the red colour and add bready, dried fruit, and caramel depth.
Ingredients
The five-malt grain bill does specific colour and flavour work. Vienna at 14% anchors the malt character. Aurora and RedBack Malt push the colour into the amber-red range while adding bready complexity and dried fruit notes. Shepherds Delight contributes a deeper toffee character. The hop schedule runs Pacific Jade for clean, firm bittering; Mosaic through mid and late boil additions; Simcoe for resinous support; and then all three — Mosaic, Nelson Sauvin, and Simcoe — through the whirlpool and dry hop for aroma and biotransformation character. Total dry hop: 180g.
SafAle S-04 is the yeast of choice — an English ale strain with good flocculation and a clean, slightly fruity profile that works well in hoppy red ales.
Brew Day
Friday evening brew. Mashed in at 66°C with 16.5L for 60 minutes, mash out at 76°C, sparged 16L at 76°C for a 29L pre-boil volume. 75-minute boil reduced to 28L post-boil. Whirlpool at 85°C for 20 minutes. Volume into the fermenter was just under 23L — the boil was not topped up after boiling, resulting in slightly less wort and a starting gravity of 1.069 rather than the target.
Fermentation
Fermentation was quick. By day 2.5 the gravity had already dropped to 1.018, giving approximately 6.5% ABV. Day 5 gravity was around 1.016; after another 48 hours only a single point of change to 1.015. Dry hopped day 5, temperature raised to 20°C, and the spunding valve was closed to capture carbonation. Pressure reached 10psi overnight. Final gravity 1.013, ABV 7.2%, 19L final volume.
Packaging
Kegged and carbonated as usual.
Notes
Overall malt flavours and hop aroma was very good, however disappointingly seemed to have diacetyl, this detection could have been confused or attributed to the toffe caramel notes but likely my treatment of the S-04 yeast using pressure in the same way as yeasts like Pomona or BRY-97 was not ideal. It had time to clean up, but perhaps not as much as it needed, and with the increasing pressure I guess that the yeast activity was further suppressed.