Home Brew Forum

Following on from my last couple of (hopefully) red beers this was going to be a nice strong red IPA type beer with loads of New Zealand hops (Galaxy, Nelson Sauvin and NZ Cascade) but I got distracted during the mash by NASA's latest launch to Mars so I decided to go with more of a space theme.

Grains:
Pale Malt 3500g
Munich 1000g
Carared 500g

Hops:
Galaxy 13.8%AA 20g 90 minutes
Apollo 19%AA 20g 90 minutes
Galaxy 13.8%AA 20g 15 minutes
Apollo 19%AA 20g 15 minutes
Galaxy 13.8%AA 20g 5 minutes
Apollo 19%AA 20g 5 minutes
Galaxy 13.8%AA 20g 0 minutes
Apollo 19%AA 20g 0 minutes

Mashed low for a thinner body, I'll be putting 500g of white sugar in towards the end of the boil to up the OG, FG should be around 1.015.

I'm looking to get about 15 litres into the FV at 1.080+ but there are going to be considerable losses to the hops so we'll have to see. IBU's should be up around 100 even with my reduced utilisation. I'll ferment with some top-cropped US-05 from the red rye I made a couple of days ago so the little beasties should be in the mood for a high gravity brew by now

After a week or two I'll dry hop with at least 20g each of Galaxy and Apollo, possibly something else as well depending on how it tastes. This will be going into 330ml bottles for a while before it becomes fit for consumption.

The boil is just starting so the hops might change yet, I'm not convinced there are enough in the recipe yet

Cheers!

Looking good Lug, would that be IRA then
I like the whole space theme, but never had either of those hops to my knowledge, what are you expecting from them, appart from huge bitterness and massive flavour

Cheers Spud!

Not too sure to be honest, I've used Apollo for bittering before but never as a flavour/aroma addition, they're meant to be orangey/spicy apparently. Galaxy's new on me too, I have an all-Galaxy beer fermenting at the moment and it's REALLY fruity, citrus but different from the American C hops, more tropical I think. But all in all, probably huge bitterness and massive flavour!

And yes, after posting I realised I'd created a beer called IRA but thought I'd try not to draw attention to it

I couldn't help myself - found a part bag of Amarillo in the freezer when I was putting the dry hops away so it got 20g at 15 minutes and 20g at 0 minutes, another 20g will be used for dry hopping

Sounds deadly, Amarillo is my favourite hop, that can only be good.

Sounds like fun, hope its a good one

I overshot my volume on this and ended up with 18 litres at 1.074 but it should still end up being around 8% when it's done. Colour looks OK, the wort is absolutely disgusting, sickly sweet and hideously bitter - result!

The ferment seems to be going well, about 3 inches of krausen and a lovely hoppy smell coming out of the FV. Looks like the top-cropped yeasties were in the mood for something strong