AG2 Lagunitus IPA

[Bobba]

Evenin' all. Thought I'd report back on a very chaotic brew day yesterday. Think I got a bit too adventurous and all got out of hand.
The recipe was adapted from one I got off the Brewing Network podcast, The Jamil Show, which had an American brewery Lagunitus brewer on the show, where he detailed their IPA recipe. I tried this beer in California earlier this year and it's absolutely amazing! Blew my socks off!!
The mash on this one is a bit nuts, at -> 71C <- and it uses the Fullers yeast which I've liked brewing with before so thought I'd give the recipe a crack

For the record here's the recipe from the show....

23L OG 1.060 FG 1.019
4.95Kg 2 row pale malt
0.6Kg Munich malt
0.4kg Wheat malt
0.37kg caramel/crystal 10L
0.25kg crystal 60L
Mash at wait for it..... 71C
BOIL
60 min 4g Summit 18.5% + 10g Horizon 12%
30 min 11.5g Centennial 10%
30 min 23g Williamette 4.75%
80C Steep cascade 5.8%
Ferment 19C until 85-90% atten (~4 days), then rise to 21C over a few days
Yeast WLP002 (Fuller's)
When bright, yeast <1mil/ml, dry hop 21g cascade, 21g centennial
Rouse after 2 days
Crash to 5C after 2 days
Bottle after 1 week

Here's my adapted recipe for what I could get my hands on easily. Subbed Lager malt for the 2 row. Couldn't get any summet or horizon, and didn't want to get a whole load of williamette as well just for 20g in this brew, leaving me with cascade and centinnial throughout, apart from a small amount of fuggles as a williamette sub.

GRAIN
4.2kg Lager malt (instead of 2 row)
.6 munich
.6 pearl pale (to use it up)
.4 wheat malt
.35 caramalt (to replace 10L crystal)
.25 crystal

HOPS
90min FWH 12g cascade 6.3% + 12g centennial 11.7%
30min 15g fuggles 3.6% (instead of williamette - was aiming to use 30g but I only had 15g when it came to it, so put extra centennial to compensate)
30min 17g centennial
80C steep 30g cascade

90 min mash
90 min boil
Expected OG 1.063
Expected FG 1.020
Yeast: cultured from Fullers 1845

Here are the pics before I get into the mess of it all. Only took a few in the quiet spells I'm afraid


Mashed in, hit 70C instead of 71C but I was happy with that

First cockup. pH was low at 4.9. Not sure why. Followed Graham's calculator, to get 2:1 on auto mode, adding gypsum, CaCl + NaCl, and used CRS to get to 20CaCO3 which I checked it before and after. Dont understand at all why it when it ended up so low - any ideas???

New pump making its debut. What a beauty it is! Well chuffed with it. So much so that I decided to try out fly sparging instead of the batch sparge I used in AG1. It went pretty well and the pump worked v well for this.
Recirculated for 15 minutes after the 90 min mash (prob a bit long, don't really know) which helped clear it up a lot.

The cockup with the sparging came with my hot liquor tank (doubling as the boiler). I'd made a relay circuit thingy controlled by my ATC800+ temp controller, so I could use it to control the kettle element despite it being of a higher current rating than the ATC800 can handle. The switch worked well in testing, but when it came to the crunch, it kept popping the fuse for the kitchen electrics as well as its own fuse. Drove me up the wall as kept loosing power, meaning the pump would start sucking back, drawing air in, and the sparge temp would drop. Had me running about like a nutter. Not sure why it didn't really work out, but best saved for another post.
Oh, and I totally hadn't sorted out the fittings to connect the to the different vessels. Pissed quite a bit of water and wort at various hand burning stages all over the floor.

The 90min boil went well (sorry no pics) I think. Rehydrated the irish moss for about 30 mins before I used it. Added gypsum to the boil also.
Cooled to 80C with IC, added aroma cascades, waited 30mins, then crashed to 25C. It was full of break material, so rested for 30mins but still found it was very merky. So I slowly recirculated with the pump for 15 mins. Didnt help at all, drained it slowly into a bucket to make the most of the hop filtering, and then into FV quickly to aerate.

Here's the puzzling part.....
I measured the gravity after the mash and it was bang on. BeerSmith predicted 1.053 and I got 1.035@65.2C which comes to 1.053@21C, for the required boil volume of 26.5L (topped up 2L from tap, which I had prob lost to the floor in the pump fiascos) - Brilliant I thought.
Once in the fv I measured it to be just 1.055@23C. And I only collected 20L, not the 22L of 1.063 I was aiming for.
How do I get a lower gravity AND a lower volume?!!! Absorption of sugars by the hops?
If anyone has got any clues here it would be much appreciated.

The yeast I used was cultured up from Fullers 1845: 140ml for 2 days, 500ml 2 days, 2L 2 days, the pitched it on brewday
It's fermenting nicely this evening. Nothing much this morning, but a good head on it this evening.
Shame it's going to be lower alcohol than intended. Is sensible to consider increasing this using sugar/spray malt and adding the extra 2L ??

[Bobba]

Been wondering what difference the mash time and boil times make on the beer. I went for 90min as Graham suggests it's the thing to do, but what happens if you mash for too long and will 90 instead of 60 min hurt your beer in anyway (apart from boil off) ? Thanks

[trucker5774]

I can't account for the gravity issue but the recipe has changed from the beer you first set out to brew so, why bother about the gravity? Enjoy it for what it is and drink more if you want to be more pissed!

[trucker5774]

Been wondering what difference the mash time and boil times make on the beer. I went for 90min as Graham suggests it's the thing to do, but what happens if you mash for too long and will 90 instead of 60 min hurt your beer in anyway (apart from boil off) ? Thanks

I have been interrupted by visitors, stuck at appointments and all sorts of reasons for mashes between 2 and 4 hours I can't say I have ever noticed any detrimental effects on the beer

[Bobba]

I can't account for the gravity issue but the recipe has changed from the beer you first set out to brew so, why bother about the gravity? Enjoy it for what it is and drink more if you want to be more pissed!

Oh yeah it's true it's a completely different beer to the original, but every potential to be jsut as delicious. It's just wacky and puzzling about the gravity that's all

[Bobba]

Been wondering what difference the mash time and boil times make on the beer. I went for 90min as Graham suggests it's the thing to do, but what happens if you mash for too long and will 90 instead of 60 min hurt your beer in anyway (apart from boil off) ? Thanks

I have been interrupted by visitors, stuck at appointments and all sorts of reasons for mashes between 2 and 4 hours I can't say I have ever noticed any detrimental effects on the beer

Ace! That's good to know. I've seen on here stuff about overnight mashes, but I take it the temp is adjusted to compensate for those

[trucker5774]

Most of my mashes tend to be around 68C, with a drop of about 1C per hour. There is probably a technical chemistry answer to the mash temp/duration issue...............I just cant remember it or if I have ever learnt it The knowledge on here is outstanding (chrisx1 springs to mind), but I just make beer. I have found it hard to make a bad one, but some are better than others I experiment a lot and learn from it. If I had your gravity issue I would be going over everything I had done and would find it hard to rest till I had the answer (irritating innit)

[Bobba]

ha absolutely! it could have been that the preboil temp was not right as i took that quite high (65c) and it has quite a massive effect on the gravity. either that or the hops ate the sugars in the boil!

[Bobba]

As for the pH....is 4.9 lightly to scupper things much? I should add less gypsum next time i take it. It's a bit hard to judge fora few grams here and there

[mysterio]

Just caught this thread, how did the beer turn out?

[Bobba]

Hey Mysterio,
It turned out fantastic. It's a pretty interesting recipe, with quite a ton of crystal, and the Fullers yeast to leave it sweet, but then heavily hopped. It seems quite contrary to a lot of the APA's. Also my first use of cascades
Very well balanced brew. One prob is I didn't dry hop it in a sealed container (FV nto a keg) which I think contributed to a reduction in utilisation in the dry hopping. The original Lag IPA is much more zingy dry hopped. Still a lovely brew though

[phatboytall]

Great post, losts of information there to mull over and consider for my own brewing.

The recipe sounds great, i love the Jamil show, i did the Arrogant Bastard ale from there the other month and it turned out superbly. viewtopic.php?f=24&t=39261 Will have to give this a go!

Also, loved this line, answered a question i've been dying to know for ages, how to upscale once you have captured a yeast! Simple!
"The yeast I used was cultured up from Fullers 1845: 140ml for 2 days, 500ml 2 days, 2L 2 days, the pitched it on brewday"

[Bobba]

Great post, losts of information there to mull over and consider for my own brewing.

The recipe sounds great, i love the Jamil show, i did the Arrogant Bastard ale from there the other month and it turned out superbly. viewtopic.php?f=24&t=39261 Will have to give this a go!

That looks like an interesting brew, and a good single hop brew for testing chinook - which I haven't tried yet - might have to brew that one soon

Also, loved this line, answered a question i've been dying to know for ages, how to upscale once you have captured a yeast! Simple!
"The yeast I used was cultured up from Fullers 1845: 140ml for 2 days, 500ml 2 days, 2L 2 days, the pitched it on brewday"

Glad it came in handy! It's not complicated, you're just looking to repitch the the yeast into a larger volume when it's fermenting like mad, which is normally after 2 days, and it works best if you pitch into a volume about 4 to 6 times greater than what it's in. It can be pretty rough though, so don't worry about it much when you go for it. Fullers 1845 is a good one to use - I've had a lot of success with this one and it definitely is the primary strain, which some of the other bottle conditioned beers aren't.

[leedsbrew]

Hi bobba.

I'm gonna be doing a version of this from the BN CYBI recipe with pdtnc at the end of the month. We are gonna be doing 40L. Is there any advice regarding recipe etc that you can give? Does it come out close etc?

I'm gonna be using a re-ppitch of wlp013 (worthy white shield) yeast? what ya think?

Cheers

LB

[Birdman]

This thread has some legs

Absolutely love every Lagunitas beer I've ever tried. Visited the brewery when I was out in California in May. Well worth a trip if you get the chance, and they have two beers on cask, and a couple of barrel aged on keg also (including an awesome bourbon aged imperial stout). Here are a few pics...


Taster plate

Fermentors!

Beer garden


The day I visited they had a cycle race beginning and starting at the brewery, the day after they had a beer circus (still dont know what that is) on. These guys no how to party...


The Little Sumpin was on CYBI recently, and I really fancy a bash at that. The recipe is something like 50% two row, 39% Wheat Malt, 10% Torri wheat, 1% Roasted Wheat then hopped with a shed load of west coast hops.