American IPA, brewed 1/28/06
Ingredients:
Wyeast London III, pitched to starter of 4 cups water 2 cups DME for 1 day
6.6 lbs light Malt Extract
1.5 lbs dry Malt Amber Extract
1 lb Caramel Malt, 1/4 lb wheat (both steeped pre boil)
3: 1oz Centennial Hops pellets (9.5), 2: 1oz Styrian Goldings pellets (4.2), 1: 2oz Willamete whole leaf (5.2)
1 Tsp Irish Moss
6 gallons spring water (5 for batch, 1 for boil off).
Process:
1/28-Sunday
*Caramel and Wheat steeped for 30 minutes as 3.75 gallons of water brought to boil (added at 110 degree, and removed at 190 degree). *Once boil starts 1 oz of Centenneial hops added and boiled for 45 minutes.* Additional 1oz of Centennial hops and liquid/dry malt extract added at 45 minutes into boil, burners turned off during addition. * 1oz of Goldings added at 1.25 hours. * 1/2 oz of Centennial and 1/4 oz Goldings added at 1.5 hours of boil. * 1/2 oz of Centennial and 1/8 Goldings added at 1.8 hours. * 1.4 oz of Goldings added at 2 hours.
Wort cooled to 70 degrees via ice baths and addition of chilled mineral water (to 5 gallons) and 3 cups of Londan Ale III DME starter yeast pitched into 6 gallon carboy.
1/29
Came home today to find that the fermentation taking off furiously. So intense that much has blown off through the airlock, leaving some brew on the ground and certainly on the sides of the carboy. Which of coarse was a huge pain in the ass to clean up, but as you'll notice in the slideshow, I relaxed and had a homebrew (2 kinds actually, an Irish Stout and an IPA) Hooked up a quick blow off tube using my airlock and some Eheim tubing (aquarium gear), basically it fitted over the inner tube on the airlock and is "blowing off" into a bowl of water/iodaphore mix. I will leave it like this until I go to bed today, so total time on blow off will equal 5 hours, then it's back on the airlock for the next week. Secondary fermentation will take place next Sunday (2/4) which I'm looking forward to, going to experiment with a couple 1 gallon jugs and some fruit.
2/4
Well today the batch is being moved to the secondary however instead of just putting the IPA directly into the secondary I decided to experiment with filling the secondary with CO2 from the primary, as it is still bubbling at about 6 bubbles per minute out of the airlock. As you can see in the photo I attached the same Eheim tubing as it was for the blowoff tube (see entry from 1/29), and instead of blowing off into a small batch of sanitized liquied it is bubbling into my secondary 6 gallon glass carboy, which has been sanitized and has approx 3 inches of sanitized liquid left at the bottom where the tube is submerged. I've left it this way for just one hour prior to moving the liquid, which should give me an ample "head" of CO2 to siphon into. If you are unfamiliar as to how this works it is due to CO2 being "heavier" than Oxygen (O2), thus if you have CO2 in a container it will settle to the bottom, and as you fill it with liquid that combination will effectively push the O2 out of the container. The reason to get the O2 out is due to it's negative effect on beer.
Dry hopping starts today as well, add were 1oz of whole Willamete Hops as well as 1/8 of a cup of boiled honey to add a little more dimension as well as move fermentation on a little bit more. Because of this I am only adding 1/2 of my dry hop additon today, for fear of scrubbing out too much of the aroma. Another 1/2 oz will be added later in the week (day 7 of secondary), and the remaining 1/2oz will be added at day 10. I'm currently considering adding some oak chips at that point as well.
EDIT** I decided against the addiiton of honey to the secondary fermenter due to the apparant attenuation of the yeast currently, it is still on a roll, and will not need a boost. Also I have decided to get a good sense of these new hops I'm using and do not want to cloud my impressions with adjuncts.
As mentioned in the prior post I had thought about experiementing with some fruit this time around, but I was not able to track down any 1 gallon carboys (and deciding against experimenting with the whole batch, which was greatly influenced by 1/2 pint of Dogfish Heads "Fort" rasperry ale (wow!), but brouight back down to earth after my buddy Anthony and I spoke about it.
The last pic with 4 beers presented are my current collection of "wow" beers, the Fort and 120 minute IPA because I cant believe I found them, and the Anderson Valley IPA and Victory HopDevil IPA because they are DAMN good IPA's.
2/17
Got up pretty early this morning to hit the excercise bike and thought I would knock out the bottling of this IPA and move a cherry stout that is in primary. Bottling went smoothly, I "experimented" a little by letting the bottle caps sit on the bottle w/o being fastened for 25 minutes before doing so, the hope here is that I would have more CO2 in the bottle and thus force out more O2. My main concern was moving the brew to an actual bottling bucket (normally I had not been doing this due to using premeasured droplets for bottle carbonation), but in this instance I had to due to all of the whole leaf hops (2oz Willamete ) used for dry hopping and that would clog up my siphon pretty quickly otherwise. The reason I dont like moving to a bottling bucket (other than the above mentioned) is I am somewhat new to homebrewing and am very cautious about moving my beer and encouraging any sort variable into the final product that I might have been able to avoid had I not moved it...but like I said, I think I am just new and overly cautious about these things.
Slideshow is updated with pics at the end of the bottled beers, ended up with 44 bottles, which by my account is about 4.60 gallons, not too bad of a yeild considering the amount soaked up by the 2oz of dry hopped whole leaf Willametes.
Thoughts on this brew at this point. I'm a little concerned (told ya :) that I did not use any sort of water salts with the mineral water which was used in this batch (no Chicago water...all mineral), and that this might take away from the bite I usually love with my IPA's, but we'll see. For future batches, I will be paying a bit more attention to the water I use, and not being overly cautious of Chicago water. This is definetely the aquarium guy in me coming out with the anal desire for pure water.
Stay tuned, periodic taste tests starting soon, first will be in one week on 2/24.
Here is a snap shot of my high tech bottling operation here on Chicago's northside, without giving away any trade secrects I will tell you that Kermit the Frog, and the wok play very important rolls and should not be considered simply props.
