Oerbier Reserva Inspired - Dark Sour Beer

Dark-strong-sour beers have some serious magic in them. They age gracefully practically forever, developing deep complexities. De Dolle Oerbier Special Reserva is one of my favorites: tart, vinous, blue-cheesy, warming (but not hot, despite 13% ABV), and lightly oaky. Russian River Conseration, BFM Abbaye De Saint Bon-Chien, The Lost Abbey Cuvee de Tomme, and Boulevard Love Child are a few others worth seeking.

For the first Modern Times brew-with-Mike Kickstarter reward, I decided to brew something along the same line. I don’t know the recipe for the base Oerbier, but I’d assume a selection of specialty malts and some candi syrup are involved. In a beer like this, the specifics of the fermentables aren't terribly important as the bugs and wood will change their character. I also aimed for substantially less alcohol (8-8.5% ABV) to make it something I can drink with a bit more regularity.

For almost their first 20 years, De Dolle pitched a culture they picked up at Rodenbach. When the source dried up, they continued to repitched the culture, which eventually resulted in bottles exploding as the yeast became more attenuative and alcohol tolerant. The remaining bottles were transferred to used red-wine barrels to create the first batch of Stille Nacht Special Reserva. The result was so good they've released several versions of Stille Nacht like this (although I enjoy Oerbier Special Reserva more). A house Brettanomyces strain for these beers was re-cultured from an old keg returned from Finland.

Luckily the De Dolle's brewer’s yeast strain is purportedly available from Wyeast (3942, Belgian Wheat), unluckily the night before brewing I managed to knock my precariously balanced 5L flask off my under-sized stir-plate. A good reason to always keep a selection of dried yeasts on hand!

Rather than risk pitching bottle dregs from such a strong beer, Nick from The Yeast Bay offered to culture and isolate the dregs from a bottle of the 2012 vintage that I shipped to him. The two yeasts he isolated turned out to be not particularly attenuative, which may not be the worst thing for a strong beer like this. I pitched both strains because multiple Brett isolates generally preform better than one. I saved some of each culture for single Brett trials when I get to it though.

I added a few Port-soaked oak cubes I’ve had sitting in a mason jar for a couple years when I racked to secondary. I always have oak cubes sitting in a variety of liquors, ready to add when I need them. Another nice thing to have on hand.

Hopefully this batch turns out well, we've got 30 bbls of a similar recipe (with different microbes) aging in red wine barrels at the Modern Times Beer Fermentorium!

Rocksteady

Recipe Specifics
-------------------
Batch Size (Gal): 5.50
Total Grain (Lbs): 15.00
Anticipated OG: 1.070
Anticipated SRM: 20.9
Anticipated IBU: 13.7
Brewhouse Efficiency: 70 %
Wort Boil Time: 90 Minutes

Grain/Sugar
--------------
63.3% - 9.50 lbs. American Pale Malt
18.3% - 2.75 lbs. German Munich Malt
6.7% - 1.00 lbs. Candi Sugar Syrup D90
5.0% - 0.75 lbs. Biscuit Malt
5.0% - 0.75 lbs. Crystal 60L
0.8% - 0.13 lbs. Carafa Special III
0.8% - 0.13 lbs. Sauer(acid) Malt

Hops
------
0.63 oz. Palisade (Pellet, 6.50% AA) @ 60 min.

Extras
--------
0.50 tsp Yeast Nutrient @ 15 min.
0.50 Whirlfloc @ 15 min.

Yeast
------

DCL Yeast T-58 SafBrew Specialty Ale
Yeast Bay DDOSR C1
Yeast Bay DDOSR C2

Water Profile
----------------
Profile: Washington, DC

Mash Schedule
-----------------
Sacch Rest - 60 min @ 151 F

Notes
-----
11/13/13 Made a 3 L stir-plate starter of Wyeast 3942, nearly 3 months old. Started quickly.

Broke it...

5 gallons of mash water, w/ 3 g CaCl. 4 gallons sparge water with 3 g of CaCl. 2 tsp of phosphoric acid added to the batch sparge. Collected 7 gallons of 1.053 runnings. Added D90 candi syrup.

Chilled to 70 F. Added 1 packet of T58, and pitches of two isolates from Yeast Bay of De Dolle Oerbier Special Reserva (DDOSR C1, and DDOSR C2).

12/7/13 Racked to secondary with 1 oz of Port-soaked French oak cubes.

Added dregs from Modern Time Empty Hats as there wasn't much funk.

10/23/15 Added 16 oz King's Orchard Montmorency Tart Cherry Juice Concentrate (equivalent to ~10 lbs of cherries!)

9/10/16 Bottled resulting 4.5 gallons with 92 g of table sugar.

5/15/17 Tasting notes. FG 1.011, ~8.5% ABV including the cherry concentrate.

Rum-Raspberry Sour Brown Tasting

I have a complicated relationship with fruited sour beers. When I’m buying I shy away from them because the fruit tends to conceal the interesting flavors from the fermentation and barrel. Some of them are so delicious though, that I can’t help myself. When I drank Jester King’s Atrial Rubicite earlier this year it was one of those “wow” beers for me, saturated with concentrated raspberries (from hundreds of pounds of fruit in each barrel), without being sticky sweet like New Glarus Raspberry Tart.

For my take on the concept, I soured a brown base for four months in a third-use five-gallon rum barrel. When it had extracted sufficient character from the toasted oak, I racked four gallons onto 14 lbs of frozen/defrosted raspberries (purchased for $50 at Trader Joe’s on the way home from proposing to Audrey… I’m romantic). Considering a gallon of beer weighs a little over 8 lbs, adding 3.5 lbs of raspberries to it is pretty significant.

Recently someone asked me where I get the ideas for my recipes. In this case, in addition to the Jester King beer, I’d read that a compound (ethyl formate) found in both rum and raspberries is what the center of the milky way smells like, talk about brewing a clone!

Intergalactic Raspberry Sour Brown

Appearance – Light pink/tan foam floating on a ruby-brown body. Mild haze when held to the light, but pretty clear. Not actually that much redder than some of my Flemish reds. The head dissipates fairly quickly.

Smell – No getting around that this beer is all about the fruit. The aroma is saturated with jammy raspberries. It is good, but a bit seedier than I intended, thanks to five months spent on the fruit (I would have preferred only three, but I was in San Diego at the time... the sacrifices I made!). As it warms the vanilla from the barrel peeks out, but otherwise there isn’t much else going on.

Taste – Tart, but not forcefully sour. The fruit carries through nicely, unlike many raspberry beers that impress in the nose and fall flat on the tongue. There is a hint of toastiness, I suspect from the oak. Fresh and lively. Not much Brett presence yet, shares many similarities with the rounded lactic acidity from our bourbon barrel (no coincidence considering it got dregs from the Sour Brown from it).

Mouthfeel – Medium-full for a sour beer (not chewy, but enough body to support the fruit and malt). The medium-low carbonation is all I need in a dark/sour beer.

Drinkability & Notes – Despite the intense fruit flavor, it is easy to drink. The added lactic acid from fermentation really helps the fruit to pop. It would be a perfect beer to pair with a rich dessert, loads of flavor and enough acidity to cut through without providing a double-dose of sweetness. Mine is not quite as vibrantly colored as Atrial Rubicite, but nearly the level of raspberry aroma and flavor. It’ll be interesting to see how the gallon I reserved without fruit tastes.

Brett/Rye Farmhouse Ale (Not a Repost)

Going back to one of my favorite combinations: saison with rye malt in the mash and Brett in the fermentor! My friend Nate and I were both furloughed from our federal government jobs for a few weeks in October, during that time we decided to enjoy a sunny afternoon drinking beer, eating fried fish, and brewing. A couple years ago, we brewed a similar batch, that we wanted to refine. Young it was enjoyable, but it became obnoxiously horsey/rough/funky as it aged. That character could have been the result of several things, but I suspect it was simply the strains we pitched.

We split this batch three ways to try three different Brett blends, each with the same combination of saison ale yeasts. The Brett we pitched came from bottle dregs (from the abovementioned drinking), and a couple isolates that Bootleg-Biology Jeff dropped off a few weeks prior.

As with hops, sugar, and other ingredients, split batches are a great way to learn about microbes. This is especially handy with mixed-fermentation beers as the feedback loop is so long. If a batch takes a year or longer to be “ready,” the tweak and re-brew method could take a decade to arrive at the ideal formulation and process. As fun as the single-strain Brett experiments that I’ve done in the past have been, mixing strains is where things tend to start getting interesting!

Brett'd Saison - Furlough Edition

Recipe Specifics
--------------------
Batch Size (Gal): 10.50
Total Grain (Lbs): 21.40
Anticipated OG: 1.055
Anticipated SRM: 4.0
Anticipated IBU: 30.2
Brewhouse Efficiency: 75 %
Wort Boil Time: 90 Minutes

Grain
------
42.1% - 9.00 lbs. German Pilsener
28.0% - 6.00 lbs. American Pale Malt
18.7% - 4.00 lbs. Rye Malt
9.3% - 2.00 lbs. Wheat Malt
1.9% - 0.40 lbs. Sauer(acid) Malt

Hops
------
5 ml HopShot (Extract) @ 45 min.
4.00 oz. Czech Saaz (Pellet, 2.80% AA) @ 10 min.

Extras
-------
1.00 tsp Yeast Nutrient @ 15 min.
1.00 Whirlfloc @ 15 min.

Yeast
------
White Labs WLP585 Belgian Saison III
White Labs WLP568 Belgian Style Saison Ale Yeast Blend

Water Profile
----------------
Profile: Washington, DC

Mash Schedule
-------------
Sacch Rest - 60 min @ 147 F

Notes
-------
Brewed 10/8/13

Stir-plate starter made the morning of, 2L with two Saison III and one Saison Blend.

4 g of CaCl to 8 gallons of pre-boil filtered DC water.

Mash pH measured 5.6 initially, so we added 2% acid malt. Should drop it to 5.4 at room temperature.

Added 4 g of CaCl and 1.5 tsp of phosphoric acid to 8 gallons of filtered DC water for the sparge.

Chilled to 78 F and pitched the starter. Very clear wort, left a gallon or so with the trub behind.

Pitched a half bottle each of 100% Brett Nanus and Naardenensis into one third of the batch, two Bootleg Biology Pithos isolates into another third, and dregs from a Dark Saison IV into the final third.

Placed at 68 F to begin fermenting.

12/2/13 Still sitting in primary, ambient is upper 50s F.

12/7/13 Racked to three 3 gallon secondaries.

8/7/14 Bottled each aiming for 2.8 volumes of CO2. 2 7/8 oz table sugar n DS4, 2.75 in Nanus/Naardenensis, and 2.3 oz in Pithos.

5/12/15 Tasting notes on all three versions.

The DS4 version ended up being one of my favorite batches of funky saison!

Calculating ABV for Sour Beers

Yesterday I got into a discussion about what adjustments needed to be made to accurately determine the alcohol content of a sour beer. I’d always assumed that the souring process didn’t have much effect on the standard method, using a formula that takes into account the OG of the wort and the FG of the beer, but I’d never spent any time looking into it.

When we calculate the amount of alcohol in a beer we are judging the relative density of the wort before- and after fermentation. This reduction in density (specific gravity) comes from a couple sources (including yeast biomass growth), but most of it is from the conversion of sugars in the wort to ethanol and carbon dioxide by fermentation. I’d always read that the CO2 escaping into the atmosphere was the main cause of the reduction in density during fermentation.

During a clean fermentation a single molecule of glucose is fermented to create two molecules of CO2 and two molecules of ethanol. So our formula is only valid if one molecule of CO2 produced always means the creation of one molecule of ethanol. Luckily alcoholic fermentation is the same regardless of which brewing yeast (Saccharomyces or Brettanomyces) is responsible. However, these aren’t the only microbes at work in a sour beer.

The production of lactic acid by homofermentative strains of lactic acid bacteria utilizes sugar to make lactic acid and essentially nothing else (no CO2 is produced). This could theoretically lead to a higher FG than otherwise as these sugars would not be available for alcoholic fermentation, but it wouldn’t disrupt the calculation of ABV because these microbes don’t generate carbon dioxide as a byproduct. So our original assumption is still valid.

The heterofermentative production of lactic acid produces 1 molecule of lactic acid, plus 1 molecule each of CO2 and ethanol from each molecule of glucose. As a result you’ll still get the same gravity drop for each unit of alcohol produced. The molecule of lactic acid is incidental, similar to homofermentative lactic acid production.

This spurred a question about what was really causing the gravity of the wort to drop as it is fermented: the loss of CO2, or the addition of ethanol? To get a lower density we either need to decrease the mass, or increase the volume (because density is mass/volume). As I’ve never finished with more beer than the amount of wort I started with, I assumed that the loss of weight to gaseous CO2 made sense.

It turns out that fermentation converts sugar into 51.1% ethanol and 48.9% CO2 by weight (a mol of ethanol weighs 46.07 g, a mol of CO2 weighs 44.01 g). A 20 L batch with an OG of 1.050 weighs 21 kg (water weighs 1 kg/L, this wort is by definition 5% denser than water). If fermentation generated 5% alcohol by volume, this would be 1 L of ethanol (which has a density of .789 kg/L). So .789 kg of ethanol. This means that we've fermented 1.544 kg of sugar, and created .755 kg of CO2 in the process. If the total volume remained constant, we'd have 20 L of beer with a weight of 21-.755 = 20.245 kg, divided by the weight of 20 L of water (20 kg) gives us a gravity of 1.0123.

Plugging those numbers (OG=1.050, FG=1.0123) into an alcohol calculator I get 4.95% ABV. Which is almost exactly what we'd expect given that 5% ABV was one of the conditions I specified. This indicates that most the gravity lost is in fact a result of CO2 leaving the beer.

However, it brings up an interesting question, if we are creating 1 L of alcohol, why don’t we see a volume increase as a result of fermentation? When you add rum to a Coke, it certainly seems like it would have the same effect on the volume as adding an equal amount of water. It turns out that when you mix equal parts water and ethanol the volume increases only 1.92 fold. So we’ll only get 92% of the increase from adding the ethanol, .92 L in this case (close enough that we don’t notice a difference mixing spirits with water-based drinks).

If we simply added the same 1 L of pure ethanol to our 20 L of 1.050 wort, we'd have a resulting density of ((.789*1)+(1.05*20))/20.92 = 1.042. So the addition of alcohol is not itself enough to account for much of the drop in gravity we see during fermentation.

In a fermentation we aren’t just adding alcohol, so we’d also need to consider the reduction in volume from the sugar that is fermented (1.544 kg in our case - the sum of the CO2 and ethanol created by our hypothetical fermentation). I couldn’t find similar numbers for maltose, so I’ll treat this sugar as if it were sucrose. When you dissolve sucrose in water, approximately 54% of the volume is added to the volume of the solution. Sucrose weighs about .869 kg/L, so our 1.544 kg of sucrose would take up 1.778 L dry, the loss of which from the wort would result in a .960 L decrease in its volume).

So the loss of volume attributed to the destruction of sugar (.96 L) during fermentation completely cancels out the volume gained (.92 L) from the resulting ethanol, which is why we don’t see a noticeable volume increase (or decrease) during fermentation!

When trying to determine the ABV of a sour beer specifically, there are four other factors you might consider.

1. Highly acidic beers are around 1% lactic acid. As the formation of lactic acid doesn’t directly lead to anything entering or leaving the fermentor, we know the mass of the beer will remain constant regardless of how much lactic acid is created. Any change in the beer’s density would purely be the result of a change in the total volume.

1 molecule of glucose goes to create 2 molecules of lactic acid in homofermentative lactic acid production. Glucose has a density of 1.54 g/ml, and a molar mass of 180.16 g/mol. Lactic acid has a density of 1.2 g/ml and a molar mass exactly half that of glucose, 90.08 g/mol (which makes sense). In a 20 L batch of beer, 1% lactic acid by volume, would be 200 mL of lactic acid. The equivalent of 240 g of lactic acid, or 2.66 mol. This would require the fermentation of half that number of glucose molecules, 1.33 mol, which is 155.59 mL.

If we assume glucose behaves similarly to sucrose when dissolved in water, the loss of wort volume attributed to 155.59 mL of glucose converted to lactic acid would be 84.02 mL. I can’t find a number for what happens to volume when you mix lactic acid and water, but even if we assume the entire volume of lactic acid goes to increasing the beer’s volume, we’d be increasing the volume of the beer by 115.98 ml, just .58%. This is the equivalent of causing the 5% ABV calculated to be .03% too high (the larger volume with the same mass would indicate a more substantial reduction in gravity than would have been actually caused by alcoholic fermentation).

2. Acetic acid production by either Acetobacter or Brettanomyces consumes a molecule of ethanol along with a molecule of oxygen. This reduces the alcohol content, but also raises the mass slightly as the oxygen comes from the atmosphere. It seems like without the carbon atom of the CO2 released during fermentation the gravity would rise slightly less than what is lost during fermentation, causing an infinitesimally small over-estimate of the ABV. Acetic acid is legally limited to.15%, so it shouldn’t play a major role anyway (even if flavor wasn't a consideration).

3. Ester formation by Brettanomyces could have a small impact on alcohol content because esters are formed by combining an alcohol with an acid (e.g., ethyl lactate is a combo of ethanol and lactic acid). However, all of these are present in parts per million at the most, making their presence too low to substantially impact ABV calculations.

4. While not specific to sour beers, evaporation from a barrel reduces the amount of both water and ethanol a beer contains. As ethanol has a lower boiling point than water, it would tend to evaporate at a faster rate. The humidity in the room apparently plays a role in the relative evaporation rates as well (higher ambient humidity reduces the evaporation rate of water). At 70% humidity, the loss of alcohol and water is supposedly about equal.

In relation to these various areas, when compared to the errors in calibration and measurement I don't think it is necessary to make special considerations for the ABV calculations of mixed fermentation sour beers. This has been one of those things I spend hours thinking about only to come to the conclusion that I was better off ignoring the whole thing.

That said, this isn't exactly my area of specialty, if anyone sees any issues with my assumptions, data, or math, please let me know! I'm sure I've oversimplified some things, like the sugars, or how a water molecule is added when some polysaccharides are split, but I think I'm close enough to prove the point.

Simcoe & Sons Pale Ale Tasting

After posting earlier this week about the IPA I have fermenting with Conan, it seemed like a good time to knockout the tasting notes for the American pale ale I fermented with the pitch initially. This is a beer in the “new” American mold of Hill Farmstead Edward, Half Acre Daisy Cutter, and Tired Hands HopHands. As my friend Nathan refers to them, aromatic pale ales. That is to say: hopped for gigantic aroma, without excessive bitterness. He’ll have his own version on tap at Right Proper when they finally open their doors in a few weeks.

Simcoe & Sons Pale Ale

Appearance – Hazy. Conan is not a flocculant yeast strain apparently. Blonde body supports a small, tight, snowy head with fine retention.

Smell – Ripe summertime peaches. Wow! One of the most unique aromas I’ve had in a clean/hoppy beer. This is the sort of nose I strive for. While I enjoy the “nose in the hop bag” effect that some hoppy beers exhibit, I’d rather get the volatile aromatics without all the vegetable matter.

Taste – Similar to the aroma, saturated with juicy peaches and apricots. To the point that I could probably pass it off as a fruited pale ale. The hops become more resiny through the sip, lingering as a firm bitterness. The malt stays out of the way for the most part, adding an ever so faint toastiness. Very bright, crisp, and balanced.

Mouthfeel – Medium body, doesn’t taste the 1.015 FG I measured it at. Carbonation is about where I like it, medium-ish.

Drinkability & Notes – Like a good Belgian beer the yeast combines, not with spices in this case, but with the hops to create a profile that is difficult to attribute to one or the other. I’m officially a Conan believer (although I want to try the other isolates out there). Interested to see if the IPA fermented with the yeast harvested from this batch exhibits a similar aroma, or if different hops radically change the perception.

Conan the IPA (and Yeast)

There are too many ale yeast strains to count. While they’re all members of the same species (Saccharomyces cerevisiae), they contribute a huge assortment of flavors and aromas. This is because over millions of fungal generations, brewers around the world have placed selective pressures on them based on their own preferences, process, and equipment. One strain that is rapidly gaining popularity is named Conan. Its sudden spike in popularity is in large part thanks to the reputation of a beer fermented with it, Heady Topper from The Alchemist.

Conan is rumored to have an English origin, and gained a foothold in New England thanks to its use by Greg Noonan at Vermont Pub & Brewery. The general description of the yeast is appealing, mostly clean, but with a citrusy/apricot character. A more flavorful alternative to the straight-ahead Chico strain (WLP001/WY1056) favored by many breweries for their “American” style beers.

Heady Topper is an IPA that is completely saturated with hop aromatics, while not being gratingly thin or overly-bitter. In a beer with that much aromatic punch, how much difference could the yeast possibly make? The amazing thing about aroma is that small additions can greatly influence the overall perception. For example, the same four oils account for most of the aromatic compounds in every hop variety, but small fractions of other compounds create each hop's unique impression.

In his book IPA, Mitch Steele reports that The Alchemist uses a relatively low pitching rate (less than a .5 million cells per ml per degree Plato), fermenting at 68 F for a few days then up to 72 F. Elsewhere it has been reported that as the generation count rises, the attenuation drops. This is a larger concern for craft breweries, as few homebrewers reuse yeast for more than a couple of generations. A yeast which requires a bit of special attention.

Several small yeast labs, including GigaYeast (GY054 Vermont IPA) and The Yeast Bay (Vermont Ale), have cultured the strain to allow us to pitch Conan without the effort of growing it from a can of Heady Topper. I got a vial of East Coast Yeast's version, Northeast Ale, and decided to try it in a pale ale, and then repitch into an IPA. For whatever reason, reports have been that the ECY culture isn’t as attenuative as many brewers expect it to be. I experienced only 71% AA in the pale ale, and have yet to take a final reading of the IPA. Luckily the pale ale doesn’t taste overly sweet or thick.

In his article Vermont Cult Clones in the October 2013 issue of BYO, Dave Green mentions that "[I]n my conversations with the brewers it was indicated that Conan is no longer the strain that is being used." However there isn’t an explanation of whether this means that The Alchemist is no longer using the original isolate because it mutated, or if they have switched to a different yeast strain. (Luckily down in the comments, Art filled me in on his conversations with the author of the BYO article and John Kimmich of The Alchemist. Apparently they are still using Conan for Heady Topper, it is Hill Farmstead that is no longer using Conan, something I wasn't aware they did in the first place).

The IPA recipe below was tossed together with what I had on hand. Apollo and Pacific Jade hops purchased for Modern Times test batches never brewed, and CaraRed left-over from my Red Rye IPA. I’ll be interested to see how it all comes together!

Conan the IPA

Recipe Specifics
----------------
Batch Size (Gal): 5.50
Total Grain (Lbs): 14.13
Anticipated OG: 1.075
Anticipated SRM: 5.0
Anticipated IBU: 74.8
Brewhouse Efficiency: 79 %
Wort Boil Time: 90 Minutes

Grain/Sugar
------------
85.0% - 12.00 lbs. American Pale Malt
7.1% - 1.00 lbs. Wheat Malt
3.5% - 0.50 lbs. Table Sugar
3.5% - 0.50 lbs. CaraRed
0.9% -  0.13 lbs. Sauer(acid) Malt

Hops
------
2.00 oz. Columbus (Pellet, 11.9% AA) @ 45 min.
1.00 oz. Apollo (Pellet. 13.00% AA) @ 0 min.
1.00 oz. Pacific Jade (Pellet, 11.00% AA) @ 0 min.
0.50 oz. Nelson Sauvin (Pellet, 12.00% AA) @ 0 min.
1.00 oz. Apollo (Pellet. 13.00% AA) @ -15 min.
1.00 oz. Pacific Jade (Pellet, 11.00% AA) @ -15 min.
0.50 oz. Nelson Sauvin (Pellet, 12.00% AA) @ -15 min.
1.00 oz. Apollo (Pellet. 13.00% AA) @ Dry Hop
1.00 oz. Pacific Jade (Pellet, 11.00% AA) @ Dry Hop
0.50 oz. Nelson Sauvin (Pellet, 12.00%) @ Dry Hop
1.00 oz. Apollo (Pellet. 13.00% AA) @ Keg Hop
1.00 oz. Pacific Jade (Pellet, 11.00% AA) @ Keg Hop
0.50 oz. Nelson Sauvin (Pellet, 12.00%) @ Keg Hop

Extras
------
0.50 Whirlfloc @ 15 min.
0.50 tsp Yeast Nutrient @ 15 min.

Yeast
-----
East Coast Yeast ECY29 Northeast Ale

Water Profile
-------------
Profile: Washington, Hoppy

Mash Schedule
----------------
Sacch Rest - 60 min @ 153 F

Notes
------
Brewed 11/3/13

Water 50% filtered DC Tap, 50% distilled. 6 g of epsom salt and 6 g of CaCl added total. 2 tsp of phosphoric acid added to the sparge water. Collected 7.5 gallons of 1.055 runnings with a fly sparge, then added the sugar.

Half aroma hops added at flame out, the remainder 15 minutes later. Did not start chilling for another 15 minutes.

Chilled to 70 F. Pitched 3/4 cup of loose slurry from "Simcoe & Sons Pale Ale." 45 seconds of pure O2. Left at 63F ambient to ferment.

Good fermentation by 12 hours.

10/9/13 Raised ambient temperature to 66 F to help it finish out.

11/11/13 Added half of the dry hops to the primary fermentor.

11/16/13 Added three droppers full of BioFine Clear. Dropped temperature to mid-50s to help clear before kegging.

11/26/13 Kegged with the remainder of the dry hops. Still pretty cloudy. Got down to 1.012 (84% AA, 8.3% ABV), happy to see it that low!

1/6/14 Tasting notes, the Pacific Jade (I suspect) added a spicy edge that doesn't mesh well with the fruitiness of the other hops and the yeast. it is still a pleasant IPA, but not my favorite batch.