Home Brew Forum

I was doing a "spare-parts" brew, taking all my spare hops and grain to make some sort of beer for Christmas. The style I was aiming for was a kind of souped-up version of my normal American Style IPAs - an Imperial IPA.

Here's the recipe I threw together:

5kg Maris Otter Extra Pale
1kg Munich Malt
1kg Light Crystal Malt

Mash 75 mins at 65C
Mash out 10 mins at 75C
Fly sparge to collect 27 litres.
Target volume: ~20 litres

90 minute boil.

50g Perle @ 60 mins
50g Saaz @ 60 mins
47g Centennial @ 15 mins
36g Amarillo @ Turn off (steep 30 mins)

1 x Whirlfloc @ 15 mins

I didn't get a chance to collect a pre-boil gravity because I started my boil half-way through the sparge. However, after cooling to 18C, I measured the OG as 1.078 !!!

After checking my brew sheet, I realised that when I was concocting my recipe, I misread the pre-boil estimate of 1.060 as the OG.

So, yeast is now pitched (one pack of SA-04 plus one pack of SA-05) and we'll see what happens. According to my calculations, if it ferments out to anything near 1.010, I'll get a 9.1% ABV Christmas Beer! Perfect.

I think that is going to be a cracker Mmmmm, though I bet you won't get down to 1010
Do you have any American hops left to dry hop with say 30g for a week?

Yeah - I think 1.010 will be pushing it.

I've got an unopened pack of Willamette here. So I could use them to dry-hop. I've never done dry hopping before, so when's the best time to add them to the FV?

if you do decide to dry hop, do it after the initial fermentation has settled/finished, leave them for a week with the occasional stir with a sanitised paddle.
Obviously figure out how to keep the hops out of your bottles if you are going to bottle... Before! You have to bottle, sanitised hop bag and Marbles for weight or sanitised Tea-ball-Infuser etc

Or just leave it, I'm sure it will be rather good anyway

Fermenter's gone crazy - airlock is bubbling once a second at least!

There's so much yeast activity, the temperature rose to 23C. I needed to cool it down to ensure it didn't get too hot, so stuck it outside all day to bring it down to 17C. The yeast certainly slowed down a bit, but it's picking up again at around 19-20C.

I'll keep an eye on it for the next day or two to make sure the temp stays inside the 15-24C range.