Down Under IPA ideas?

[Monkeybrew]

I am planning to make use of some hops that I already have for a 10L extract brew in the style of an American IPA, but with some hops from Down Under.

I've got Galaxy, NZ Cascade & Green Bullet and I'm thinking an OG of 1.060-1.065 with 50-55 IBU's.

How does this hop combo look?

MB

[seymour]

I'm not familiar with Green Bullet, but the Galaxy and Cascade from New Zealand are wonderful. I'm sure your concept will be delicious. I'd recommend using entirely pale malt, or keeping caramel and specialty grains <5% in order to keep the hops in focus.

[CestrIan]

When I was in Oz last year I noticed that a lot of the pale ales had a big slice of wheat malt in the grist, like little creatures and stone & wood pacific ale. They are all hazy beers! You could try using a percentage of wheat spraymalt. It helps lighten the body and gives better head retention and like seymour says it will let the hops dominate. These are great hops. I would bitter with the green bullet and go in big at the end with the galaxy and the NZ cascade, but it's your beer! You cant go wrong with these big fruity flavours.

I have just got my hands on a bottle of Little Creatures pale ale and plan to reculture the yeast from the bottom of the bottle. The beer will be a galaxy / motueka combo. Can't wait!!

[goldstar]

CestrIan, just so you know any yeast you re-culture is their bottling strain only for conditioning. Various comments suggest their primary strain could be a Californian ale yeast. Try Wyeast's Dennys Favourite if you can find it. I find it works well to help re-produce something similar. Cheers.

[beernsurfing]

Use the Galaxy later rather then earlier, as it can be a harsh bittering hop if you use a lot for your 60min addition. Lots of people ( including me ) get a lot of the IBU's from later hop additions. A little dry hopped goes a long way too.

[CestrIan]

CestrIan, just so you know any yeast you re-culture is their bottling strain only for conditioning. Various comments suggest their primary strain could be a Californian ale yeast. Try Wyeast's Dennys Favourite if you can find it. I find it works well to help re-produce something similar. Cheers.

Thanks for that goldstar! I'm surprised this is a bottling strain though. It's light and fluffy and doesn't stick to the bottom. They would be better using the cal ale for bottling IMO, unless you are meant to drink this yeasty like a bottle of coopers? I've seen bar men roll a bottle of coopers up and down the bar before popping the cap to serve!

Can you give us any links to a little creatures recipe?

[super_simian]

Like any proper beer, the recipe for LCPA changes over time (as harvest variances for the raw ingredients are factored in) but I reckon you're on the right track mixing a pale malt base with some Munich, Carapils, wheat malt and unmalted wheat, aiming for an OG of around 1052 and an FG of 1012; using EKG for bittering and Galaxy and (southern hemisphere) Cascade for flame-out and perhaps a dry hop. And one of the 1056 yeast family (or perhaps 1272 for a twist?) It's pretty much a classic APA type recipe.

P.S. - I drink my Coopers clear, thank you very much! (But not Coopers Clear, which is a rubbish lager!)

[Monkeybrew]

How does this look then?

Down Under IPA - Extract #6

Brewlength - 12L
2.000kg Light DME - 10 EBC (95.2%)
0.100kg Crystal Malt - 120 EBC (4.8%)


15g of Green Bullet Leaf Hops 14.4%AA @60mins

15g of NZ Cascade Pellet Hops 7.5%AA @5mins
15g of Galaxy Leaf Hops 15.0%AA @5mins

20g of NZ Cascade Pellet Hops 7.5%AA @0mins
20g of Galaxy Leaf Hops 15.0%AA @0mins

Colour - 24 EBC
Bitterness - 50 EBU
OG - 1.060
FG - 1.013
ABV - 6.1%
Yeast - 11g Nottingham (rehydrated)
Fermented @19C

I will probably dry hop too, but may decide on this once primary is over, and I've had a little taste and sniff

MB

[Rookie]

CestrIan, just so you know any yeast you re-culture is their bottling strain only for conditioning.

Anyone have any idea what strain it is? Just because it's a bottling strain doesn't mean it wouldn't work to ferment a full batch. Does it?

[seymour]

CestrIan, just so you know any yeast you re-culture is their bottling strain only for conditioning.

Anyone have any idea what strain it is? Just because it's a bottling strain doesn't mean it wouldn't work to ferment a full batch. Does it?

Any type of yeast "will work" in the general sense of fermenting grain sugar to alcohol and CO2, but Cestrian makes a good point. The only incentive to reculturing a yeast from a beloved bottle of beer is to recreate their particular characteristics: attenuation percentage, ester and phenol profile, characteristic flavors, unique ability to ferment diverse malt sugars, etc.

Many breweries understandably take steps to protect their "competitive advantage" by filtering-out their special primary yeast strain and "re-seeding" the bottles with a differnt strain whose sole purpose is to create lots of CO2, without regard for any of the aforementioned aroma/flavor/mouthfeel considerations. If your bottle doesn't contain the real strain you're hunting, it still requires just as much work to culture-up, and won't result in nearly as nice a beer as simply pitching an inexpensive dry yeast like Muntons, Coopers, S-04, Windsor, Nottingham, etc.

[CestrIan]

I have my doubts! It is a lot of effort to go to. Filtering out your primary strain and then bottle conditioning with a secondary strain is a lot of hassle to go to just to protect your yeast strain. Brewers really don't usually go to these lengths for information protection. The big breweries in the uk filter their beer and force carbonate before bottling and heat treating the bottles. This is to make sure the beer is clear and that it has a long shelf life. When I have suspected a secondary strain is used is usually when the micro brewery doesn't bottle their own beer. The beer from the micro is cooled in batch conditioning tanks to drop the yeast out for cask or keg or it is then transported by tanker, sometimes to the other end of the country, to a bottling plant where they are re-seeded with a bottling strain before packaging. The only thing is though if you were going to use a secondary strain to bottle condition, surely it would be a strain that drops like a stone and sticks to the bottom of the bottle like glue. This strain from Little Creatures is like a snow globe if you tilt the bottle more than a few degrees and this is something that is typical in traditional Aussie beers, like the classic Cooper's. I am going to try and reculture this strain from LC and see how it turns out. Maybe I'm wrong but it seems to have the characteristics of a classic Aussie yeast.

[super_simian]

Many breweries understandably take steps to protect their "competitive advantage" by filtering-out their special primary yeast strain and "re-seeding" the bottles with a differnt strain whose sole purpose is to create lots of CO2, without regard for any of the aforementioned aroma/flavor/mouthfeel considerations.

All due respect, that is A-grade horseshit. No brewery who filters and re-seeds does it for "competitive advantage", they do it for sedimentation and shelf-stability reasons.

[seymour]

Cestrian and super_simian, I stand corrected with regards to English breweries, where it sounds like things are much more open, and there is a historical precedent of breweries freely sharing yeast strains with each other.

But I assure you, in the USA anyway, successful commercial breweries maintain state-of-the-art in-house yeast labs, not just to build up fresh starters, but also to develop more characteristic and efficient strains, and they go to great lengths to prevent their proprietary yeast strains from getting out to competitors or homebrewers. Here on Jim's Beer Kit, there are many reports of English breweries freely sharing yeast with homebrewers. This absolutely does not happen in the US. Believe me, I've asked many times, and brewers are so offended they won't even answer questions much less provide a jar of the good stuff. It was a very big deal when "yeast rustlers" were able to acquire the Budweiser lager strain from discarded beechwood spirals, which themselves were smuggled-out the brewery gates. This culture of secrecy and competition is also a reason why yeast labs have all carefully removed any references to commercial breweries from their product offerings and refuse to answer direct questions as well.

I have a feeling this isn't entirely "A-grade horseshit" in the UK either, since Brewlab is the most careful of all about not revealing their sources. I take that back, the NCYC is just as bad, which is ostensibly a scientific institution! Another case-in-point: Adnams is famously secretive about the ratio of their proprietary dual-strain yeast. I agree sedimentation and shelf-stability are main reasons, which I failed to list in my earlier post, but that doesn't fully explain why Adnams substitutes the yeast in conditioned bottles but not mini-casks.

I think as the brewing world continues to become more and more standardized, commercialized, consolidated, and competitive, there are some powers-that-be, at least, who feel that since everyone has equal access to very similar grain-malts, hops, and almost indistinguishable modern brewhouses, then the desired characteristics provided by a unique/superior yeast strain become ever more important to their bottom line. When your beer tastes different mainly because of yeast, once your yeast gets out, there isn't much to stop someone else from producing a near-identical beer.

[Barley Water]

Well I can't speak to current practices concerning bottling yeast strains however keeping a tight reign on the strain a particular brewery uses has historial roots. For that reason, it would not surprise me to learn that some folks use a different bottling strain to avoid losing their advantage. Of course, speculating on someones motives for doing anything is fraught with peril.

Here is the thing though, even though I may be using the exact same strain as a particular brewery and even if I have a pretty good idea concerning the grist, there are so many variables to control when making beer that it is unlikely that I could exactly clone their beer. Especially when I comes to beers where yeast flavors are the dominant feature, the tasks gets almost impossible. Actually though, I see that as a positive thing because if God is smiling on me and I by some fluke make a really great tasting beer, I am fairly confident that nobody will have that much sucess cloning me either.

[CestrIan]

I agree BW! You can have all the right ingredients: the right hops, the right grain bill and the right yeast, and it is still difficult to make the same beer. That's why there are so many posts about cloning TTL? It's not easy, but seymour has a point, it is impossible if you don't have the right yeast and as I work for an American company I understand how paranoid some can be about information protection.