The history in this book is absolutely fascinating, and Mitch writes in a conversational style that's extremely approachable while remaining authoritaThe history in this book is absolutely fascinating, and Mitch writes in a conversational style that's extremely approachable while remaining authoritative. The section on specific brewing techniques for the various styles of IPAs is great, but the big disappointment for me was the recipes.
IPA has a couple dozen recipes for everything from the historical British IPAs of the 1800s to the modern craft brew American IPAs and double IPAs we all love today. Unfortunately, the recipes aren't very easy to follow, especially for an inexperienced homebrewer.
I imagine that most homebrewers make 5 or 10 gallon batches, and every recipe book I've ever seen (and I have seen a lot of them -- I own too many to ever brew all of the recipes in them) presents the malt bill and hop schedules in amounts that typical homebrewers use. IPA presents the malt bill as a percentage of the total rather than simply giving the totals needed for a 5 or 10 gallon batch. It's not the end of the world (it's easy enough to calculate using brewing software or a calculator), but it's a bit of a pain in the ass. Where the recipes [i]really[/i] fall short, though, is with the hops schedules. Most of these recipes don't tell the brewer how many ounces of hops to use, instead just listing something like "a combination of CTZ, Amarillo, and Simcoe" or "37% Cascade at 60, 14% Chinook at 30" etc. This is freaking book about brewing IPAs, and the most important component of the IPA isn't even clarified in the recipes! The only thing I can figure out is that we're expected to calculate a hops schedule by working backward from the target IBU, which is really goddamn difficult and makes me want to use any one of the other dozens of recipes I have on my shelf instead of figuring out how to do Blind Pig. It's a real shame, because the recipes given are for some of the greatest IPAs ever, including Stone Ruination and Sublimely Self-Righteous. I really wish this book, like Stone Brewing Co.'s Guide to Craft Beer: Recipes and Techniques from the Leading American Microbrewery, gave recipes for a 5 gallon batch of homebrew, with the percentages in a sidebar for those who wanted to scale up or down.
As a historical text, and as an addition to the homebrewer's library, IPA is a great book. As a collection of recipes that you can brew yourself, though, it falls very disappointingly short. If you're looking to get some understanding of the style, as well as augment your basic knowledge of brewing the style, it's great. If you want to open it to a recipe and head to the homebrew supply, you're going to be very disappointed....more
