Hazy IPA IPA No-Boil Raw Ale Recipe

Lazy haze.

Lazy Haze No-Boil NEIPA
Lazy Haze — 7% ABV — 40 IBU?

Recently, there’s been a lot of chatter in homebrewing circles (particularly on the HomeBrewTalk forums) about no-boil brewing. It’s actually a very old concept in brewing in general—particularly in the Nordic and Baltic states, and heck, even AB InBev does it—but it’s a relatively new idea in modern homebrewing. It’s easy to see the appeal, though: you can brew a batch in half the time it usually takes, or even less.

When I saw a thread about a no-boil NEIPA recipe, some things clicked into place in my head. First, you want haze in an NEIPA, and skipping the boil creates haze (or at least prevents clearing). Second, most NEIPAs don’t even use bittering hops, they just add them at flameout and as dry hops. This might be the perfect style for a no-boil beer! And then I had another thought: I know dry malt extract (aka DME) can make a damn fine beer, so why not use it here and save even more time?

No mash, no boil, no time wasted!

So I decided to try my own attempt at a no-boil NEIPA. After all, what’s the worst that could happen?

What’s in it?

Doesn’t get much simpler.

The Vitals

  • Method: Extract
  • Batch size: 4 gallons
  • Mash: Nope
  • Boil: Nope
  • OG: 1.064 (15.7 Brix)
  • FG: 1.011 (7.6 Brix)
  • ABV: 7.0%
  • IBU: Not sure! 40ish?

The Grain

  • 6 lbs Briess Bavarian Wheat DME

The Hops

  • 60g CTZ [17.1% AA] @ Whirlpool (20 mins @ 170F)
  • 66g El Dorado [14.4% AA] @ Dry Hop (3 days)
  • 40g Idaho 7 [12.8% AA] @ Dry Hop (3 days)
  • 26g CTZ [17.1% AA] @ Dry Hop (3 days)

The Rest

  • Yeast: Safale S-04 English Ale (1x, dry)
  • Water: Distilled/RO + 2g calcium chloride
  • Etc.: A few process notes, if you please: First, add the CaCl2 and heat the water to around 160F. Turn off the heat and dissolve the DME. Then add the whirlpool hops and circulate for 20 minutes. Chill to pitching temp and ferment, adding dry hops on day 2. Bottle or keg after 2 days at steady final gravity.

How’d it go?

Brew day was a breeze. I used my brand-new AMCYL 10 gallon kettle on my (gas) kitchen stove to bring 4 gallons of store machine-bought water to around 160F, then cut the flame, mixed in the 6 pounds of DME, and stirred thoroughly to dissolve. Then I briefly lit the burner again to get it back up to 160, turned it all the way down to the low setting, and added my whirlpool charge of 60 grams of CTZ.

Bombs away!

Then I started my upper body workout for the day: manually whirlpooling for 20 minutes using a spoon. Don’t laugh, it’s hard work!

After about 10 minutes, I cut the flame entirely and kept whirlpooling to gradually chill the beer. Once the whole 20 minutes was up, I hefted the kettle (no rest for tired arms!), carried it outside, and chilled it to 65F with my trusty copper immersion chiller while enjoying the balmy 20F ambient outdoor temps.

Back inside, I used the kettle ball valve to transfer the wort to a fermentation bucket, pitched a pack of Safale S-04 English Ale yeast dry, and stuck it in my “fermentation chamber” (aka the guest bathroom shower) with the window cracked to ensure ferm temps wouldn’t get out of control.

Within 6 hours I had airlock activity, and the following morning it was bubbling like crazy. The smell in the guest bathroom was… intensely hoppy.

A beautiful sight.

Around midday on the second day, with fermentation still ripping, I added my dry hop charge: 66g El Dorado, 40g Idaho 7, and 26g CTZ. (I was slightly concerned about the El Dorado hops, because they were much more of a golden color than the typical green you see in pellet hops, but they smelled fantastic so I just went with it.) Anyway, let’s just say the aroma in the room got exponentially stronger from there.

If you’ve never made a hazy IPA, adding dry hops during active fermentation—usually at high krausen–is a useful way to both add permanent haze and intensely citrusy flavors. Through something called biotransformation, the active yeast interact with the hop oils to transform both flavor and appearance. The underlying science is very much in debate, but the results seem thus far seem to indicate that it’s a good strategy if haze and “juiciness” are what you’re after.

Dry hopping during fermentation also minimizes oxidation caused by dry hopping. Since the yeast are still producing CO2, any O2 introduced by dropping the hops into the wort gets scrubbed out of the airlock by the CO2 pressure, or used by the yeast to reproduce.

But let’s get back to the brew! On the evening of the second day, a few hours after dry hopping, I did a gravity reading and found the SG had already dropped to 1.022. BeerSmith predicted a FG of 1.018 (though I often find its predictions conservative, to say the least) so I knew I was getting close. The following morning, it had dropped even further, to 1.016. Several days later, it was down to 1.013. Another couple and it was at 1.011 and FG. The sample was amazing, with a huge tropical/citrus aroma and flavor, light but present bitterness, and soft mouthfeel.

One problem, though: In those intervening days, I slipped on the ice while walking the dog and absolutely destroyed my ankle. So, six days after brew day, I found myself in the hospital for surgery and trading my usual diet of a beer-or-two a day for six times daily Percocet. The injury is going to put a damper on my brewing activities for the next couple months, but I have three beers in process and I’ll be damned if I’m going to let them go to waste!

Soon after getting home from the hospital and confirming the beer was at FG, I sweet-talked Allison into taking the fermenter out to the garage (where it’s hovering around freezing most of the time) and setting it on top of the keezer. I let it cold crash for the better part of a week before using gravity to transfer it to a purged keg. This time I burst carbed it at 30 psi for a day before reducing to a target of 2.4 vols (42F and 12 psi).

How’s it taste?

Looks like orange juice, tastes like orange juice… plus weed.

I’m learning quickly that beer needs at least a week in the keg to achieve peak flavor, even a must-drink-fresh beer like a no-boil NEIPA. When I first sampled it after the 24-hour burst carb at 30 psi, it was muted, with limited hop character and more bitterness than I wanted or expected. Four or five days later, it’s a different beer entirely.

Appearance: Well, if haze was my aim (and it was), I hit a bullseye. This beer is a totally opaque orange that absolutely glows in the right light. I intentionally carbed a little low for softer mouthfeel, and the head reflects that. A thin layer of lacing that sticks around and sticks to the sides of the glass as you drink.

Aroma: Dankness hits you first, and then wisps of citrus—mostly mandarin and cara cara orange, in my estimation. The weed smell is quite strong, though, which I figure has to be the CTZ and Idaho 7 tag-team in action. Can’t smell the alcohol, which is nice since this finished up a little higher than I intended at 7%.

Taste: Huge hop flavor, again mostly dank weediness with a strong undercurrent of orange and a hint of lemon. I think I hit the water profile pretty close to just right, because the hoppiness comes across almost entirely as flavor and not as bitterness. There’s a bit of bitterness coating the back of the tongue, but just enough. Again, the alcohol is well-hidden.

Mouthfeel: This beer is really full on the tongue, but with just enough prickly carbonation to add a little zing. It finishes dry, which means there’s a nice journey from the start of the sip to the finish, and makes you want another sip right away. I don’t think this keg is going to last long.

Would I brew it again?

That’s a resounding yes. This is going to be a staple in my keezer, especially over the summer months, given how quick and easy it is to make. That said, I’ll be interested to see how well it holds up—and whether the haze hangs on—over the next few weeks, given the no-boil nature of the brew. (Purportedly, no-boil beers go off faster than traditionally brewed beers, even when kegged.)

36 Comments

  1. Does it taste like a wheat beer? I am very interested in making a simple NEIPA like this after struggling with the allgrain type. What are your thoughts on mixing like half DME half wheat DME ?

    1. Wheat beers taste the way they taste primarily because of the yeast, not the grain. It tasted to me like any other hazy IPA, honestly. (Briess Bavarian Wheat DME actually contains 65% Malted Wheat and 35% Malted Barley, just FYI.) I think you could do it with half Wheat DME and half Extra Light or Pils DME; I just used all Wheat for simplicity’s sake and also for the proteins (head formation and added haze).

  2. Just curious — debating whether i should go through the hassle of doing a closed transfer for this. Did you experience any oxidation or loss in flavor over time given a lack of closed transfer?

    Thanks

    1. Hey Jack. For this beer I did a semi-closed transfer, or as closed as I ever get. I filled my keg with Star San solution, purged it with CO2, and then gravity transfered it in directly from the fermenter. What I didn’t do was purge the headspace in the fermenter or feed the CO2 exiting the keg back in on top of the beer, so there was some O2 exposure on top of the beer, but otherwise it was closed. To answer your question, I didn’t notice any significant oxidation—no darkening of the beer. The flavor changed over time, but not in a way I’d relate to oxidation.

  3. Hello! Newbie homebrewer here (fourth batch fermenting as I type). Just found your blog and I’m enjoying it tremendously.

    This looks like a very interesting beer that I’d love to brew, but I must ask: since there’s no boil, did you do anything extra to ensure good sanitation? Boil the water beforehand and let it cool, perhaps? Also, were all the hop additions pellets? Also also, did you leave the dry hops after their addition until kegging?

    Thanks for making this great blog! I’ve already bookmarked lots of pages for future brews.

    1. Hey Harrison, thanks for reading!

      So, one of the nice things about whirlpooling at 170F is that it pasteurizes your wort pretty quickly—like less than 30 seconds. (Source: https://beerandbrewing.com/dictionary/edvVKFchSZ/) You just need to make sure everything else is clean and sanitized, including of course your fermenter, the kettle ball valve (if you have one), or your siphon (if you don’t). If you’re chilling in your kettle, you can sanitize the chiller by leaving it in the 170F wort for a few minutes, but remember to Star San the parts of it that don’t make contact with the hot wort.

      To your question about the hops, yep, all pellets. And yes, I left the hops in until kegging. Kegging was a bit of a PITA with that much particulate in suspension, so I’ve been moving toward bagging them in subsequent batches.

      1. Haha, wow, thanks for the quick and helpful response! I had no idea you could brew without boiling and stay sanitary at the same time. I have this bookmarked for a future brew!

        One more question: in your experience, is it possible to bottle a NEIPA like this and retain the juicy hop flavours? Per Jack’s question above, I’m wondering and worried about oxygen exposure during packaging and conditioning.

        1. Hey, sorry for the late response on this one. For some reason I didn’t get a notification.

          I would say your chances of oxidation when bottling this are pretty much the same as with any other NEIPA. I don’t think boil or no has much to do with it.

  4. Well, my version of this is in the fermenter as we speak. I followed the fermentables, but used Cascade BE 2.4% as my first charge, then only Huele Melon 10% as my dry hop on day 2. The smell, even from a 1 gallon batch, is pretty noticeable in the bathroom and INCREDIBLE.

    Gonna give it a few days to finish fermenting and then bottle before waiting a week or so. Thanks for the incredibly easy recipe! I’ll report back soon.

  5. Hi Ben,

    Looking forward to trying this recipe out with a few tweaks to the hop combo. Can you tell us a little bit more about the bitterness? I’ve been reading that whirlpool hops only get like 3-5% bitterness utilization when used at 160-170F. You put an estimated ~40 IBU but according to this that can’t be right.

    1. Yo Esteban! This beer has long since kicked for me, but what I can tell you is that it had plenty of apparent bitterness in my recollection. Many (maybe even most) NEIPAs these days involve no boil hops and instead rely entirely on whirlpool/hopstand and dry hop. I know what the numbers say, but you’d be surprised how much bitterness (or at least apparent bitterness) you get. What I’d say is to do something like I did, and if you don’t think it’s bitter enough, dose it with hop tea at packaging until it’s at a level you like.

  6. Hello. great write up. With your 4 gallon batch and large dry hop additions about how much beer actually made it into your serve keg? (Im just trying to see if I can fit the finished product using your recipe into 2.5 gallon keg)

    Second question. Have you done this recipe again and if you did what did you do different.

    thank you

    1. Hey Aaron! I haven’t re-brewed it, and it’s been a while so my memory isn’t perfect re: how much got kegged. My guess, though, would be between 3 and 3.5 gallons.

  7. Looks great! Newbie brewer here. I’m not experienced at all with creating the right pH levels, etc with the water. Am I really just good using distilled water from the store and adding the CaCl2 to that? I’m used to just using my tap water but filtered.
    Also, I bottle and was wondering how long I should probably leave in the bottle before chilling. I usual do 2-4 weeks. Thanks for the help!

    1. Yep! Extract is beer that someone else already made for you, so pH doesn’t really matter and you can safely assume it was made with a pretty neutral water profile (so that it would be suitable for a wide variety of beer styles). Adding a little CaCl2 will help provide that characteristic soft mouthfeel.

      For bottle conditioning, I’ve had good results in as little as 7-10 days, depending on yeast strain and ambient temperature, but 2-4 weeks would be fine too. Also, be very careful when bottling hazy IPAs to minimize oxygen exposure, because they will oxidize more readily than other styles (turning them dark/murky brown instead of bright golden).

  8. Another question. Beer is currently fermenting in my closet 🙂
    How long specifically was yours in the fermenter before transfer?
    Also my color of the beer is a little lighter right now and not as bright orange. Is that a problem or will it brighten up?

    1. Color depends a lot on the specific DME you used and also the quality of the light when you’re drinking it (or taking photos). I wouldn’t worry too much about that yet. 🙂

      I believe mine fermented for a little over a week, but the truth is that beer is done when it’s done. With a hazy, you just have to keep an eye on the gravity and dry hop when there are a few gravity points left. Once it hits a stable final gravity I’d package ASAP, since these are best fresh. Cheers!

  9. Hello I’m going to give this a try looks amazing you said you cold crash it for the better part of a week, would a couple hours work and than keg it. Thanks

    1. Hi! If you can contain the hops during all stages of brewing (like with a hop spider) then you could probably do that without any issues.

  10. Hi,
    How do you dry hop (I’m confused as I read about many different methods).
    Do you open the fermenter and simply throw in the pellets?
    Do you first dissolve the pellets? If so, in water, or in wort?
    If you write “3 Oz. Citra (Dry Hop ~7 Days)” – what does “7 days” mean?
    Thanks

    1. Hey there,

      Most people simply open the fermenter and drop them in. Some add them in a sanitized hop bag (fine mesh—painter’s straining bags work well) if they’re worried about containing the hop debris. You don’t need to dissolve the pellets before adding; they’ll do that on their own in the beer. As for the “7 days,” that refers to the amount of time the dry hops are in contact with the beer before it’s packaged (kegged or bottled).

  11. Hi! Interesting read.
    One question: did the beer have the same hazy apperence after a couple of months in the keg?

    1. Hey Torben, sorry for the slow reply, I was on vacation. The haze definitely stuck around, but I have to report that the keg didn’t last several months. 🙂

    1. Hey Jacob, I haven’t! But hazies also don’t usually involve many specialty grains, so I’m not sure what you’d want to steep in there. A small amount of a very light crystal (C15?) or golden naked oats could work, I guess, but anything beyond that would definitely not be to style.

  12. A long time ago, I know, but do you recall if you used 2grams or 5 grams of CaCl? The image of your brew journal has 5g written, but this webpage says 2g…

    1. Hey there, where are you seeing 5g? I don’t see a photo of my brewing journal here. Anyway, I checked my notes in BeerSmith/Brewfather and it was definitely 2g. 🙂

  13. Awesome write up- thanks for sharing. I’m curious, the dry hop on day 2- was that day two of fermentation (30-40 hours after activity) or day two of the yeast pitching (24 -30 hours after activity)?

    I brewed yesterday, and it smells great coming from the airlock- but need clarification on when to drop the hops in. Also, you just did the single dry hop, and not a “double dry hop”? Is that because you were able to package so quickly?

    If you were bottling, would you have divided the hops into two deliveries?

    Thanks!

    1. Hey Thomas! So sorry for the late reply. Life has been crazy lately and I lost the notification of your comment in the shuffle. Unfortunately I didn’t take notes on this, but I would think it was day 2 after pitching.

      I don’t tend to double-dry hop since I want to minimize O2 exposure as much as possible. 🙂

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