AG#17 - Tapir IPA (pics)

[andybiochem]

Hi!

Brew No. 17 - Tapir IPA

Thornbridge's Jaipur IPA is my absolute favourite ale to date. Luckily enough, I also live in an area where it seems to do the rounds quite frequently, so hardly a month passes without a savoring.

It'll be a hard one to imitate, in fact, I'm only really looking to getting somewhere close to the amazing hop flavour and aroma of Jaipur. A hunt on their website, reveals the hops they use: Centennial, Ahtanum, and Chinook.

Armed with this info, I tried (see here) to come up with a recipe:



Looks ok, so on with the brew!!!

Label


10L of RO water for the mash


Weighing out the DLS


Grain


Waiting for strike temp (73.1 deg c)


Check pH


Mash temperature


While mashing, prepare hops



Sparge (2x batch)


Wort
20L of 1.045 collected. 17L on to boil, 3L waiting for room in the copper


Protofloc


Boil


Cool


Trub
Might not look like much here, but this is after I squashed all the wort out of the hops.
They retained almost 2.5L of yummy wort.


Ready for bed
The wire running into the airlock is a temp probe for my fridge (next pic)


In fridge
Set to 20c (+/-0.3c, 10 min relay), brewbelt for heat source, PC fan to circulate when cooling.



All went very smoothly.

Ended up with 15L of 1.055, so 5 points out. With my recent brew history this is excellent, and I'm chuffed.

Cheers!

[WishboneBrewery]

Looks good, liking your blow-off and temp probe

[Manx Guy]

Hi,

Looks Good... I'd like to give Jaipur a go in the future... Need to get a few more lower gravity beers don first though I think...

Be interested to see how close you get!



Guy

[leedsbrew]

Looks good, liking your blow-off and temp probe

What he said!

[Birdman]

Looks good, liking your blow-off and temp probe

What he said!

Like the idea, but would this be at the same temp as the fermenting wort? fermentation is exothermic so the wort is usually a couple of degrees above ambient temp....

[andybiochem]

Thanks for the replies!

Like the idea, but would this be at the same temp as the fermenting wort? fermentation is exothermic so the wort is usually a couple of degrees above ambient temp....

The probe is IN the wort. It travels through the blow off tube and sits about 2 inches below the surface of the wort.

[Birdman]

doh!

didnt look at the pic properly, thought it was just in the blow off

[bellebouche]

Love, the pics, the recipe, the tech, the bottle label... it's all good stuff! Bravo.

[adm]

Good stuff!

Keep us posted on how this one turns out......it sounds good to me.

[yashicamat]

Good stuff!

Keep us posted on how this one turns out......it sounds good to me.

Mmmm indeed, the recipe sounds excellent. I'll be very interested to see how it turns out too. Can't beat a super hoppy IPA.

[bosium]

Looks like it went very smoothly, I like the way you were so prepared for each step.
Some intelligent use of equipment and bits and bobs to get what you want done - are you an engineer?

[andybiochem]

6 days at 20 deg c has reduced the wort to 1.014, so I'm now planning the fining / secondary stage.

I've dropped the ale down to 6 deg c to get some chill-haze going, at which point (probably tomorrow) I'll get some gelatine in there and leave for a week.

I supped the hydrometer test beer to see how it was going. Initial notes:

Very, very, nice indeed! Fantastic hop flavour, and was instantly reminded of Jaipur...although it's not exactly there. The sample was quite bitter, which I assume has come from the Chinook additions, but - as expected - it's a moderately harsh bitterness, not like the smooth Jaipur I know. My thoughts are that Thornbridge do not use Chinook as a bittering hop, and since Ahtanum is low-alpha, I'd expect that they use Centennial to bitter.

Also, a flavour that I could only just detect in my sample, is one that is right at the front in the original cask version. The flavouring hops need a little re-arrangement to bring that flavour to the front. I don't think it was Chinook, so that leaves Ahtanum or Centennial. Again just because of the cost of using more Ahtanum, perhaps the flavour comes from more late Centennial?

It also has a little less body than I remember of Jaipur. There's no way I'd violate this brew with a crystal malt addition, so perhaps there's some Munich or Vienna going in at Thornbridge? I've never used either, so I couldnt say.


Either way, this is the nicest ale I've brewed so far! Can't wait to get the yeast out of it and have a nice clear pint!!
Photos will definately follow!

[andybiochem]

Looks like it went very smoothly, I like the way you were so prepared for each step.
Some intelligent use of equipment and bits and bobs to get what you want done - are you an engineer?

I'm a Biomedical Scientist for the NHS. Most of my work involves blood analysis and fixing analytical devices when they (frequently) break.

It's not an engineering job per se, but is has elements of understanding the complicated engineering of scientific analysers. e.g. a few months back I was sent on a course to learn how to field-strip a tandem mass spectrometer. Very interesting!

[andybiochem]

Update:

Tapir has now been about two weeks in the bottle, this is a glass I had a few days ago.



A quick review...

Appearance:
Fairly light gold, not much head going on. The beer is very clear, but with a bit of particulate matter floating about, i.e. it's not cloudy, but has a few bits in.

Aroma:
Weak hop aroma, orange.

Taste:
Initial hoppy tang, followed with lots of orange, oranges all the way to the end. Quite bitter, and not as harsh as it started out after the primary. Quite a nice bitterness, infact.

Mouthfeel:
Perfect carbonation...i.e. hardly any fizz at all, doesn't have the obvious smoothness of a hand pull, but definately has the right co2 for cask ale. Definately going to stick with this priming rate for future brews. FYI I used 20g household sugar in 15L beer, so that's 1.3g per Litre... I wonder if I could get away without priming at all?. Long-lasting bitterness.

Overall:
Is this Jaipur? No, not by a long shot The initial flavour you get from a gulp definately starts out Jaipur-like, but a few seconds later just turns to orange and tangerine. In fact, as an IPA, I'm not even sure if I like it that much...too much orange going on. It's not even particularly hoppy, and makes me wonder exactly how much hops I need to add to get that Jaipur / Punk IPA level of flavour. This brew has 174g of hops in it. So that's 11.6g for every litre of beer. Is this not enough?

Has anyone had any experience with these hops? Where is the orange flavour coming from? At a guess, I'd say the Centennial hops.

Anyway, consider this a failed recipe for Jaipur. As an ale in itself, it's probably actually quite nice and I'd categorise it as a fairly hoppy bitter with lots of orange flavours. It's just not the hard tangy IPA I was hoping for.

If anyone can point me in the direction of a recipe for a hard, tangy IPA with a similar hop hit to Jaipur or Punk IPA, I might give it a go for my next brew.


PAH!

[monkeyboy]

it might not be what you wanted, but it looks and sounds pretty damn good to me