Brew Your Best Session IPA

By: Living a Stout Life

The demand for low alcohol beers is higher than ever. And with summer right around the corner, it might be time to reconsider a crushable option to your beer line-up. Enter the Session IPA.

Many craft consumers are seeking out low- or no-alcohol options. For some, it may be for health reasons. For others, it’s simply a way to counter the summer heat. The segment is certainly growing.

According to Brewbound, low- and no-alcohol options are poised to grow to $3 billion in retail sales by 2025. That’s a lot of barrels!

A Session IPA can be a great way to reach these drinkers without sacrificing flavor.

While hops certainly steal the limelight when it comes to any IPA, the malt backbone can play an even more critical role when you’re trying to keep the ABV low.

If you want your Session IPA to truly stand out, Malteurop Malting Company (MMC) has some excellent malts that do some of the fancy footwork to keep your beer from feeling thin or seeming watery. We’ve put together a few sample grain bills to help light the way to a truly stunning Session IPA.

 

The Grain Bill: Not all Session IPAs are Created Equal

What your grain bill looks like for you really depends upon what you hope to achieve with your beer. Are you looking for light, bright and refreshing? Are you trying to hang on to the flavor profile of a West Coast IPA? Or are you simply looking to keep it simple and crushable?

Here are a few sample grist bills and a little bit about what some of the malts you might be less familiar with will achieve in a Session IPA.

Keep It Simple

Pale Ale: 90%

Steamed C3.5: 5%

Dextrin: 5%

If you want to shoot for a straight forward, easy drinking IPA, keep your recipe’s grain bill on the simple side. There are still a couple minor tweaks that will help keep your beer from coming across as thin or watery.

Instead of going all-in with a single grain, try a recipe that is a majority (90%) MMC Pale Ale to give it that nice light malty backbone. For the final 10% of the bill, split it between MMC’s exclusive Steamed C3.5 crystal malt and Dextrin malt.

Neither the Steamed C3.5 nor the Dextrin will impart much color, keeping your beer in that golden hue. The Steamed C3.5 will add a nice drop of honey sweetness for the hops to play off of. The Dextrin imparts almost no perceptible color or flavor, but improves mouthfeel and head retention, which is a concern with sessionable beers.

 

Light and Bright

Pilsen: 75%

Wheat: 15%

Steamed C3.5: 5%

Dextrin: 5%

Keeping things a little bit on the lighter side, a grain bill featuring 75% MMC Pilsen would do the trick. Pilsen is our lightest two-row malt, keeping this recipe light in malt sweetness and color.

But adding Wheat at about 15% and Steamed C3.5 at 5% of the bill adds just a little more malt character without darkening the color much. Wheat also adds a nice soft mouthfeel and aids in head retention, which combined with Dextrin at 5% would make this a fun summer beer that again lets the hop character shine.

 

Session the West Coast

2-Row: 70%

Wheat: 10%

Steamed C40: 15%

Dextrin: 5% 

Just like our first two recipes, we’re shooting for malt flavor that is often lacking in many Session IPAs. But if we’re going for malt, why not go all the way and create a sessionable West Coast IPA?

Utilizing 70% of our classic 2-Row base malt and 15% Steamed C40, you’ll get that more robust malt backbone that you need for a more bitter IPA. Our Steamed C40 adds a toffee sweetness without burnt notes to really balance out those early hop additions.

Again, adding Wheat at 10% and Dextrin at 5% of the grain bill gives this West Coast Session IPA the body and head retention needed to let the hops steal the spotlight.

 

Hops are still an important consideration

The use of hops really is mission critical in any IPA, but perhaps even more-so in a Session IPA. It’s easy to manipulate the malt bill to produce less alcohol, but achieving a malt bill that still provides a stage for the hops is crucial. So is the hop profile.

When it comes to hops, remember that less can be more, particularly in a Session IPA. The character of the hops can actually be diminished by overdoing it.

As famed brewer Mitch Steele wrote in his book on IPA, “The risk or challenge in brewing (a Session IPA) is avoiding excessively grassy and vegetal hop character, as the reduced alcohol in the beer changes the way the hop flavors are carried.”

Whether you are going with classic American hop additions like Amarillo and Centennial or getting a little funky with a New Zealand hop or even some new experimental variety, be cautious on the quantities. The lighter the beer, the more the hops are going to pop.

 

Don’t forget the yeast

Most traditional IPAs are produced with a clean yeast that doesn’t impart much by way of flavor characteristics. That is still certainly a good way to go with any Session IPA.

It’s also an opportunity. Changing things up a bit with a less attenuating yeast, and one that might impart a bit of complexity, can add to the character when trying to avoid thin, watery descriptors.

Something like an English or Burton yeast strain can add a bit of subtle complexity to a session beer that might not be as necessary in a traditional IPA at a higher ABV.

 

Session IPA… more than a summer seasonal

Though session beers are wonderful additions to the summer line-up, the fact is that the demand for more crushable options isn’t going away once autumn rolls around.

Big, boozy barrel-aged stouts and barleywines aren’t going anywhere. There’s also going to be a place for a more traditional IPA or those special double and triple IPAs. But why not round out the menu with some options for those beer drinkers that want a more crushable option without foregoing the flavors they love?

Let us help you brew your best Session IPA!