Yankee B4stard IIPA

[adm]

I've just knocked up a quick recipe for a Citra Pale Ale:

3Kg Lager Malt
1Kg Munich Malt
1Kg Wheat Malt
(No real reason for this grain bill other than I want to use up some excess wheat and lager malts, and I think the Munich will be nice!)

10g Citra FWH
15g Citra 15 mins
15g Citra 10 mins
15g Citra 5 mins
15g Citra Flame Out

That should be about 38 IBU - which is sparing for me! Although I might reduce the hops a bit more - maybe take the 10, 5 and Flame Out hops down to 10g each. Then I can see how it comes out and adjust for the bigger beer accordingly.

I also read somewhere that it can smell really garlicky while it's fermenting. I'll be interested to see how this turns out....

[mysterio]

Sounds perfect. If it's not hoppy enough you can always chuck some dry hops in.

[adm]

Well.....buggeration and buckets of blood.

So I set up my HLT for this beer (the "standard" citra pale ale) last night, came down this morning to find it hadn't heated up - not sure why yet, but I think the SSR must have given up the ghost.

I plugged the HLT in directly to the socket to check the elements and they work fine.

Next problem. Went to start weighing out the grain to find the kitchen scales didn't work. Replaced the battery. Still no joy

Next problem. I started weighing out the water treatment salts and thought "Hmmm.....seems like a lot of salts". Checked the little digital scales with a 2p - and they are way off - and the reading keeps moving. So they are fecked as well.

OK - so this beer doesn't seem to want to be brewed today. It is 10/10/10 after all - or 42 in Binary, which makes it Meaning of Life Day. So I'm going to go cycling instead and ponder life, the universe and everything.

I'll try this one again next week after I've fixed or replaced all the bits of kit.

Bah!

[adm]

I'm going to finally brew this beer tomorrow....I've got my Citra Pale Ale from last week fermented down to 1.009, so that's ready to get kegged and I'll have a lovely fresh cake of US05 to pitch onto.

I've also had a bit of a rethink about the grist and want it to be more towards a proper US style IIPA so I can compare and contrast the two beers. I want it to be dry and not at all cloying or too sweet, so I've avoided standard crystal malts completely.

Here's what I'm thinking. It ticks all the "Style" boxes for IIPA in Beer Alchemy (and uses up some malt I have in)

UK Lager Malt (substitute for US 2 row) 5Kg
Munich Malt 1Kg
UK Caramalt 0.5Kg for a bit of body without too much sweetness
Plain White Sugar 0.5Kg to boost the ABV and keep it dry
Carafa Special III 75g just to darken it a little
Flaked Maize 0.5Kg
This lot should give 23L at about 1.075 or so.

I'm still hemming and hawing about the sugar and maize. Whether to use more maize instead of sugar, to use a bit of both, or just to use sugar and no maize....

Any thoughts for improvement ?

Hop schedule still a bit in the air - whether or not to use plain Citra (probably) or a mix of that and Amarillo. In any case, it'll be around 90-100 BU or so...

[WishboneBrewery]

Personal thought as to Maize... leave it out, sub with sugar. You could always cook up a bit of Candy sugar.
I suppose you could always mash high and leave out the caramalt altogether.... just ideas, ignore me

Got any good alpha Lager hops for bittering???

[leedsbrew]

Sounds good. Some comments on the NikoBrew website say to use Citra judiciously because it is quite intense, it might be worth using it sparingly for the first time?

I'm sorry! Who are you and what have you done with the real mysterio!

[adm]

Personal thought as to Maize... leave it out, sub with sugar. You could always cook up a bit of Candy sugar.
I suppose you could always mash high and leave out the caramalt altogether.... just ideas, ignore me

Got any good alpha Lager hops for bittering???

Hmm.....I've got some New Zealand ones - Pac Gem, Green Bullet, Southern Cross (15.9%). But then the Citra are 13.4 themselves. I've also got some Chinook at 12.7%, so that might work well for bittering with Citra and Amarillo for late hops....

[adm]

The Citra Pale is now down to 1.008 - so it's obviously still going - and there's still a thin layer of gooey US05 on the top. I've left it to chill overnight and I'm going to keg it and pitch onto the yeast anyway. I probably don't need all the yeast, so I'll tip it out, give the FV a good clean and then add about a half pint of slurry. It should go off like a rocket....

[mysterio]

Sounds good. Some comments on the NikoBrew website say to use Citra judiciously because it is quite intense, it might be worth using it sparingly for the first time?

I'm sorry! Who are you and what have you done with the real mysterio!

I don't know what came over me. "judiciously" I'm not even sure what that word means.

[lupulin]

Personal thought as to Maize... leave it out, sub with sugar. You could always cook up a bit of Candy sugar.
I suppose you could always mash high and leave out the caramalt altogether.... just ideas, ignore me

I would second that. I like maize, but with an OG of 1.075and caramalt you'll have lots else going on that the maize will probably be lost. I'd replace it with 2-row or sugar (actually, more sugar may be overkill now that I think about it).

[Barley Water]

I also like the taste of corn in beer, it adds just a bit of grainy sweetness. I generally add it by doing a ceral mash on corn grits (easy to find in the Southern United States in the grocery store). It is traditionally used over here when using American 6 row malt, which I suspect you don't ever see on your side of the pond. American 6 row is the poor cousin of American 2 two and of course, both of those are inferrior to good quality British ale malt. Anyway, corn is a nitrogen dilulent which is useful when using 6 row malt. Convientely, 6 row malt is very diastalic so it will convert a high percentage of adjunct in the mash. Of course, it tends to lighten up the beer which in time lead to BMC plus all those Mexican lagers.

I have had very good success adding corn in CAP's and a Ballentine pale ale recreation (historical American hoppy ale, the grandfather of SNPA which you can't buy anymore). I also added grits to a Vienna lager and it worked perfectly although it made the beer too boring for my taste. Ballentine also made an IPA back in the day which was supposed to be great. If I remember right, the stuff has an O.G. of around 1.070 and was way up there hop wise and used a very high percentage of corn in the grist. Beers like these were designed to be hop delivery vehicles back when flavor mattered to some people. The addition of corn will tend to lighten the beer up which will, everything else being equal, make the beer more drinkable, especially during the summer. I guess all this is my long winded way of saying that if you want to lighten up a beer without adding a bunch of white sugar, corn works well (either grits of flakes).

[Deebee]

I think those guys originally brewed mead (is not Valhalla really just a mead hall for Vikings killed in action?). Perhaps that would suggest adding honey rather than sugar?

Valhalla literally means Hall of the Slain and Norron mythology suggests that it is in Valhalla that the dead met other Einherja (lone fighters) who had also died in combat:)

The beserkers were rather feared as they generally went to war in bear skins. they were also known to use the head/teeth of the bear as a weapon in battle as the teeth would do rather a lot of damage...

It is also important to know that the vikings were basically from all nordic countires, and those of you living in the shetlands and Scotland are likely related to them somewhere along the line:)

As for Danish beer, well like the norwegian stuff it generally sucks so if someone wants to create a style and fancies a shot at selling it here. i'm your first customer. the stuff here tastes like fizzy p***. ( not that i have tasted that but......... )

[Trefoyl]

I recently made an APA (~5% abv) inspired by the Danish grist I vaguely remembered reading about on this forum. I didn't remember that it was Mikeller, they are distributed here so I might be able to find the real thing. I used UK base malt and 60 lovibond crystal so that might account for the slight sweetness. I added 12 oz of steel cut oats, 4 oz. flaked barley and 3 oz. of bulghur wheat. Nottingham yeast. Hops were equal amounts of cascade and amarillo - bittering, flavor and dry hop, 39 ibu. It has a slight fruity undertone along with the citrus, black currant maybe? I wonder if that's the amarillo or an effect of the unusual grains. It's quite nice.
I like the idea of US 2 row to make it drier. I used the same hop schedule and yeast with US spray malt extract and 60 lovibond crystal. The result was drier with no black currant, just pine and citrus. I slightly preferred the extract version to the all grain in this case, it had a more traditional APA flavor, but I want to try the oats again.
After reading about all the people using drill-driven paddles I think I would like to try this wine degasser for aeration (I use carboys so it will have to fit through the neck)