Big IPA Recipe (1 lb of hops)
With a couple exceptions I have always been a bit underwhelmed by the quality of my hoppy beers. They are generally solid, but they never taste quite as bright, clean, fresh as the top shelf commercial IPAs (and double IPAs). With hop prices back down close to their "pre-crisis" levels, I though it was time to give another shot at brewing a really hop forward beer.
The malt-bill is loosely based on Russian River's Pliny the Elder, with a gravity walking the line between IPA and Double IPA at 1.071. I want a base beer that will be nice and dry to accent the hop bitterness and flavor (too much crystal in a big IPA and it tastes like a barleywine to me). I used a good ol' American pale malt, which has a neutral, less malty flavor than the English Marris Otter I tend to use for ales. On top of the pale malt I added some carapils for head retention and body and a touch of crystal 40 (since I had a bit left over from another batch). For added dryness I added .75 lbs of clear candi sugar to the kettle during the sparge, normally I would've just used table sugar, but I had the candi sugar left over from my white sugar experiment. As a side note, I recently heard an Interview with Vinnie (the owner/brewer at Russian River) where he indicated that he originally added the combination of carapils and sugar (which work against each other in terms of body) to boost the gravity when his mash tun couldn't handle just doing a beer with more basemalt (but he likes the results so much he has kept on doing it even now when he could just add more basemalt).
I added 5 g of gypsum (Calcium Sulfate) to the strike/sparge water, which assuming my water report is accurate, brought it close to 150 ppm sulfate, which I have found to be a good level to accentuate hop bitterness without making the beer taste minerally. The calcium in gypsum also helps to keep the mash pH in check for such a pale beer with minimal specialty malts.
One of the biggest things I am working on in this batch is keeping oxidation to a minimum, now that I have a kegging system this should be a bit easier. I left the blowoff tube on until I transferred to the keg for secondary (no samples) to ensure that no oxygen gets into the fermenter. I flushed the keg with CO2 twice before I transfer the beer into it for dry hopping, I even flushed the auto-siphon with CO2 to make sure it doesn't add any oxygen to the situation.
I used the same three hop combo from the boil for dry hopping as well. I transferred the beer to the a keg after primary fermentation was complete along with 3 oz of whole hops in a mesh bag (whole hops are easier to deal with at this stage and don't give a grassy/vegetal flavor like pellets can with extended exposure). The beer will sit on these hops for 10-14 days at room temperature (since the hop oils are more soluble at those temps). After that I am going to open up the keg and remove the spent hops, replacing them with an identical second dose of hops that will sit in the beer as it force carbonates. This second dose of hops will stay in the keg allowing for a full, bright hop aroma that is fresher than if I had to wait 2 weeks for natural bottle conditioning post-dry hopping. Hopefully the tweaks to my recipe and technique this time around will result in the hoppy beer I've been dreaming of.
DIPA BombRecipe Specifics (All-Grain)
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Batch Size (Gal): 5.50
Total Grain (Lbs): 15.07
Anticipated OG: 1.071
Anticipated SRM: 4.7
Anticipated IBU: 171.3
Brewhouse Efficiency: 69 %
Wort Boil Time: 100 min
Grain/Sugar
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89.6% 13.50 lbs. American Pale Malt
5.0% 0.75 lbs. Clear Candi Sugar Rocks
5.0% 0.75 lbs. Cara-Pils Dextrine Malt
0.5% 0.07 lbs. Crystal 40L
Hops
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3.00 oz. Columbus (Pellet 11.00% AA) @ 90 min.
1.00 oz. Columbus (Pellet 11.00% AA) @ 45 min.
1.00 oz. Simcoe (Pellet 12.40% AA) @ 30 min.
3.00 oz. Amarillo (Pellet 8.60% AA) @ 0 min.
2.00 oz. Simcoe (Pellet 12.40% AA) @ 0 min.
1st Dry Hop
1.00 oz. Columbus (Whole 11.00% AA)
1.00 oz. Amarillo (Whole 8.60% AA)
1.00 oz. Simcoe (Whole 12.70% AA)
2nd Dry Hop
1.00 oz. Columbus (Whole 11.00% AA)
1.00 oz. Amarillo (Whole 8.60% AA)
1.00 oz. Simcoe (Whole 12.70% AA)
Extras
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1.00 Whirlfloc @ 10 Min.(boil)
0.50 Tsp Yeast Nutrient @ 10 Min.(boil)
Yeast
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WYeast 1056 American Ale/Chico
Water Profile
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Profile: Washington DC + 5 g gypsum
Mash Schedule
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Sacch Rest 60 min @ 152
Notes
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Brewed 1/30/10
Made a 1 qrt starter the night before. Yeast was fresh , manufactured about a month earlier.
5 g of gypsum added total, 2 to mash, 3 to sparge
Candi sugar added to the kettle while the wort drained to give it time to dissolve.
Did a fly sparge until the last 1.5 gallons, then did a modified batch sparge stir/vorlauf/drain.
Collected 7.75 gallons of 1.056 wort.
Added 1 oz of Amarillos at flame out, 1 oz each Amarillo/Simcoe right after I started the chiller, and 1 oz of each again 1 minute later.
Cooled to 66, strained, let sit for ~10 minutes to settle before transferring to carboy. Gave 60 seconds of pure O2 and pitched the yeast starter (at full krausen). Still plenty of hop/trub in solution. Left at ~62 ambient.
Strong fermentation after 12 hours. Surprisingly no blow-off needed.
2/5/10 Fermentation looks about finished, beer is moderately clear.
2/6/10 Transferred into a keg with the first 3 oz of dry hops. The gas poppet seemed to be leaking at first, but adding more CO2 seemed to do the tick getting it to seal.
2/15/10 Moved keg to fridge at 40 degrees to help it drop a bit clearer before the second dose of hops is added.
2/16/10 Pulled the dry hops, added the 3 oz of keg hops. Sealed it back up, flushed twice with CO2, and left it to carb at 11 PSI.
2/18/10 Pulled a sample to get rid of some of the yeast and take a gravity reading. Down to 1.010 (86% AA, 8.1% ABV), nice lingering bitterness and a huge hop aroma despite the minimal carbonation.
3/04/10 1st tasting, turned out very well. Big hop aroma and plenty of bitterness, all the work on this one was well worth it.
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Hopping schedule info for great commercial hop bombs:
Russian River Pliny the Elder - Kettle hop extract, Simcoe, Columbus, Centennial. Dry Hop Simcoe, Columbus, and Centennial.
Russian River Pliny the Younger - Bittered with extract, Amarillo and Simcoe (plus others?) in the boil.
Dry Hop Schedule
DH 1 Simcoe, Amarillo, Centennial for one week and remove
DH 2 Amarillo, Centennial for one week and remove
DH 3 Simcoe for one week and remove
DH 4 Simcoe, Amarillo Dry Hop in Keg
Surly 16 Grit - Kettle hopped with CTZ extract, Amarillo and Glacier hops. Twice dry-hopped with Glacier and Amarillo.
Bell's Hopslam - Hersbrucker, Centennial, Glacier, Vanguard, and Crystal in the kettle, and then dry hopped with Simcoe.
Ballast Point Sculpin - Dry hop with Simcoe and Amarillo only. For a 5 gallon batch dry hop with about 3 oz of each.
Cigar City Jai Alai - Kettle hops: Ahtanum, Columbus, Cascade, Amarillo, and Centennial. Dry hopped with Simcoe.
Town Hall Masala Mama - Amarillo, Cascade, Centennial, and Mt. Hood
Southern Tier Unearthly IPA - Kettle Hops: Chinook and Cascade, Hop Back: Styrian Golding, Dry Hopped: Cascade, Centennial, and Chinook
Coast The Boy King - Citra, Chinook, Nugget, Cascade, Centennial and Columbus Hops.
Posts
16 comments:
Is this the first hop forward beer you've done since getting the kegerator?
I think it's really hard to make a decent IPA unless your force carbonating
Pretty close, the saison I kegged a month or two back was pretty hoppy (Saaz), but nothing like this.
Northern Brewer sells the Hopshot if you're ever interested in using the same hop extract that Pliny uses in the boil. I'm 99.9% sure it's the exact product he's using just repackaged. I just bought 5 of them to share between me and a friend. I'm going to try an malt extract pale ale with all hop extract and dry yeast pretty soon.
(Should have said that Vinnie uses in the boil FOR Pliny.)
is that Hopslam hopping schedule confirmed?
I got the Hop Slam hop schedule off a message board at some point, but something that weird strikes me as legitimate.
I had been eying that extract at some point, but I had so much Columbus in my freezer it didn't seem worth it this time around. I'd love to brew the same recipe again and just make the change to bittering extract to see what difference it makes. The way Vinnie talks about it, not only does it save wort but it also reduces the grassy character of the beer. I'll be interested to see the results on your blog.
Mike I live in SE Michigan and I've found some wild hops growing near my home. They have a great fresh smell. Should I try and harvest them and make a beer or mead out of them?
Chris, go for it! Either use them fresh and green right after harvest, or dry them first. The hard part will be figuring out how bitter they are, so you might want to use commercial hops for the first addition, and the wild hops for the additions near flameout. Good luck, hopefully they are tasty enough that you can go back to the same spot every fall to get some for an annual batch. Good luck.
I happen to live down the street from the head brewer from Three Floyds, and he gave me a nice tip as to getting that super green fresh hop flavor that craft beers have. The main thing to aim for is not so much HOW MANY hops you use, but WHEN you use them. Essentially, he recommended trying to get 50% to 75% of your IBU's from the flavor and aroma additions. Meaning, you're basically going to end up with a pretty small bittering charge, and most of the hops will end up being put in the beer in the last 15 minutes.
Following this one closely - I'm a big fan of a specific variety of hopbomb, i.e., the intensely dry, full of hop flavor but not overly pungent or bitter west coast variety (Sculpin, Alesmith IPA, PtE, etc.). I've long thought along the lines of Kevin that leaning towards late hop additions (as well as freshness) are the key to this (the brewer at Alpine once said something very similar), but the wife and I are just now starting down the road to all-grain brewing, so it may finally be time to test these ideas. The extract discussion is interesting as well.
Looks like this will be a good one. Where had you heard that pellet hops will give a grassy/vegetal flavor? There's plenty of debate about grassy flavors from dry-hops, but I haven't heard anything specifically about pellets. Also, your wort look like it has a lot of settling to do... do you remove the hot/cold break? If not, are you tasting any off-flavors?
It is turning out very nicely, just had my first partially carbed sample over the weekend. Huge pine forward hoppy nose, lingering bitterness, deceptive alcohol etc...
That pellet hops giving a grassy flavor is an observation I've made. It makes sense as the pellets are broken into smaller pieces and the cell structure is damaged making chlorophyll (which I assume is responsible for the grassy flavor) more available for pick-up by the beer. It would be an interesting side-by-side experiment to dry hop to portions of the same batch with an equal amount of pellets and cones and taste them over the course of a month or two to see how the flavor changes.
I strain the wort through a sieve post-cooling to remove most of the hops and some of the break material. Never had any off-flavors (to my knowledge) from not doing a better job to remove the break material.
Speaking of hop extract, I believe Hop Stoopid by lagunitas uses extract as well (according to the label of the bottles I have had)...although I don't know where in the process. It has an awesome hop aroma and taste. I would assume with the extract they also use tons of late hops like lots of the hop bombs these days do.
How much liquid did you leave in the kettle? I find with beers with lots of hops I am better off bumping up the recipe volume an extra .5 gallons or so due to hops soaking up wort and also not wanting to clog ball valves and chillers.
btw...first comment on this blog, but have been reading for quite a while. cheers!
If I recall correctly Lagunitas actually makes their own hop extract and uses it for all of their additions. That is certainly something that not many other breweries are doing.
Despite the recipe for 5.5 gallons I was at only 5 when i racked to the fermenter. I dump my wort through a sieve, but with 10 oz of hops I lost a good deal to absorption.
How did this beer turn out? It looks like its a nice one.:) I've got a few IPA's on my blog you might fancy trying? Did you get on any further with the brewery upgrade you were planning?
http://bennachiebrewery.blogspot.com/
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