With summer in full swing, we wanted to brew up a light, easy-drinking, low ABV beer that’s drinkable on any hot summer day. That’s why we brewed up a Lazy Hazy Summer Session IPA, a perfect summertime beer. We used a pilsner base malt, a few adjuncts like flaked oats and wheat, and a bunch of tropical hops to make a hazy and tasty final product. Read on or watch the video to see how we brewed this beer using Clawhammer's 10.5 gallon Electric Brewing System.

Session IPA Style Guidelines

• Golden or copper color with a hazy look
• High hop aroma
• Low ABV - beers higher than 5% ABV are not considered Session beers
• IBUs - 40-55 with a medium to high perceived bitterness
• Original Gravity - 1.038-1.052
• Final Gravity - 1.008-1.014

Lazy Hazy Summer Beer Video

If reading isn’t your thing, we made a video of the beer from start to finish, which you can watch here. However, full recipe details are further down in the article.

Water

The beginning water volume was 7.98 gallons (30.2 liters) with water chemistry adjusted to give our beer a hazy final look

Malts

• Pilsner (2 Row) Ger (2.0 SRM) - 6lbs (2.7kg)

Pilsner malt

• Flaked Oats (1.0 SRM) - 2lbs (907.2g)
• Flaked Barley (1.7 SRM) - 1lb (453.6g)
• Flaked Wheat (1.6 SRM) - 1lb (453.6g)

We finely crushed all of our pilsner malt in a mill before mashing - our flaked malts do not need to be crushed

Mashing

We mashed at 160 degrees Fahrenheit (71.1C) for 60 minutes. 

Mashing in

We've brewed this recipe before, using a lower mash temperature. We decided to bump the temperature up on this one in the hopes that the beer will turn out a bit sweeter and will also have more body.

Boil & Hops

At the beginning of our boil we added a 60 minute bittering addition using .25 oz (7.1g) of El Dorado hops.

Adding El Dorado hops at the beginning of the boil

This was the only addition to the actual boil. Once the boil was complete, we chilled the wort down to 180 degrees Fahrenheit (82.2C) and completed a hopstand using 2 ounces (56.7g) of Mosaic and 2 ounces (56.7g) of El Dorado hops.

Weighing out hopstand hops

Whirlpool additions add tons of juicy hop flavor without bitterness, which is what we're going for with this beer.

Fermentation

To ferment this beer we chilled the wort to 70 degrees Fahrenheit (21.1C) and added White Labs WLP013 London Ale Yeast.

Dry Hops

We waited two days until we added some dry hops and used 2 ounces (56.7g) of El Dorado hops.

We added our dry hops to a mesh bag that goes inside our fermenter

This dry hop addition will help give our beer a nice fruity aroma that will compliment the flavor. We let these hops sit in the fermenter for three days before taking them out.

Benchmarks

• Volume Into The Fermenter - 5.50 gallons (20.8 liters)
• Original Gravity - 1.047
• Final Gravity - 1.020
• ABV - 3.54%

Final gravity reading right at 1.020

Tasting Notes

Our Lazy Hazy Session IPA finished excellently. We threw out adjectives like pineapple, tropical, and fruity to describe its final flavor. It was definitely a sweeter beer overall due to our high mash temps and with its ABV of 3.5% you can enjoy a few on a hot summer day and not get wasted. This is definitely the beer to brew if you’re looking for something light and refreshing to enjoy.

Take this to your 4th of July party like Rachael did!