American IPA BIAB day

[AdyG]

I've been getting into my APAs and the exciting powerful hop flavours, so when I got a copy of Brewmate with an American IPA crazy hop scheduled recipe I was intrigued. I read this thread viewtopic.php?f=35&t=55333 by john_drummer who has brewed this a couple of times and says how nice it is, so I decided to go for it!

I went for a 25L batch so scaled up the grain bill accordingly

OG - 1060 FG - 1012 (tbc)

Pale Ale malt - 5080g
Munich malt - 1016g
Caramalt - 271g
Wheat malt - 271g
Carahell - 136g

Chinook - 30g

Cascade - 20g 15mins
Centennial - 20g 15mins
Amarillo - 20g 15 mins

Cascade - 20g 5mins
Centennial - 20g 5mins
Amarillo - 20g 5 mins

Cascade - 20g 0mins
Centennial - 20g 0mins
Amarillo - 20g 0mins

Irish Moss - 3g 15mins

Safale US05 yeast

Method:

I started with 38 litres of water, boiled for 30 minutes the night before then heated back up to 66 degrees. As it was such a big grain bill I had to stick it in a FV.



I put the grain in and checked the temperature, I was aiming to keep it at 66.



Grains in.... that smells great! Never tire of that aroma!



Insulate and leave for 90 minutes to mash:



I did give it a stir and check the temperature half way through and it seemed to stay around the 66 mark:



The bag was taken out and drained. I normally tip about 3 litres of the liquid from the urn through the bag to collect in the FV below, which gets tipped back in to the urn.



Then with the temperature raised to 78 I put the grain bag back into the liquid for 30 minutes.



After the bag is drained and squeezed to get the liquid out, the 3 stages of hops are weighed out.... they smell unreal :



I use a hop sock at the moment to stop the tap getting blocked up, but might get a hop strainer soon. Then it's a rolling boil for 90 mins with the first batch of hops.



Fifteen minutes to go and it's Irish Moss, the next batch of hops and the copper wort chiller submerged in the liquid to boil for the last stage.



Then the last batch of hops are added, and the wort chiller is used. It normally takes about 30 minutes to get the temperature down to 25 degrees. Then I transfer it to the FV.



I was aiming for 25 litres, but due to the larger amount of grain and hops I think more liquid was absorbed leaving me with about 23.5 to 24 litres. I couldn't fit any more liquid of grain in the urn to start with anyway!

Check the gravity at 20 degrees and it's 1060 as planned .



Yeast was then pitched and then the FV was stuck in the utility room next to the boiler to hopefully keep it at a steady temperature.

Now the long wait... I will let you know how it tastes. If it tastes as good as it smells and looks then it will be a definite winner!

[WishboneBrewery]

Looks good to me, great photos too.... one thing though, is your car parked in the Kitchen on the same wooden floor?

[AdyG]

Looks good to me, great photos too.... one thing though, is your car parked in the Kitchen on the same wooden floor?

Cheers! Thanks for the compliment.

No it's my garage. The previous owners insulated and plasterboarded the garage and then put down a laminate floor, I think they used it a couple of times for a kiddies party. It was totally empty when we moved in, but I was determined to convert it into a proper 'man cave', like Clint Eastwood's garage in Gran Torino! I found an old kitchen and worktop which I installed, but no running water unfortunately though. I also got a nice warm parking space for my old car, which is currently SORN'd.

[WishboneBrewery]

posh garage then

[AdyG]

posh garage then

Too posh for me though!

It was immaculate when we moved in, now there's oil on the laminate floor from a 20 year old VW, and beer residue over the walls and ceiling!

[AdyG]

After a lot of bubbling and froth I have almost hit my target of FG 1012, which will be about the first time that's happened. I was going to transfer to another FV to rest for a couple of days to leave behind a lot of the old yeast. It already smells very hoppy, and tastes from the trial jar are very promising, but I'm trying to decide whether to dry hop the secondary FV for a couple of days before kegging.

The recipe doesn't say to dry hop, but a bit more hop tang in an AIPA can't be bad can it?

I would only use 25g for two days and have the choice of Chinook, Cascade, Centennial or Amarillo..... what do you all reckon?

[WishboneBrewery]

any or all of those hops should work well

[AdyG]

any or all of those hops should work well

All of them! I like that idea.....

I was swinging towards the Centennial though, due to have having an excellent Blue Monkey Centennial IPA the other day, but open to ideas.

I still have about a day to decide before dry hopping....

[AdyG]

Just a quick update to this thread to comment on the end result.... it is an amazing IPA!

Definitely my best brew to date, not only from my point of view, but a view shared by several other brewers and beer connoisseurs that have sampled it.

It's very well balanced with a good body to it, whilst still remaining light, clear and crisp. The fruity taste of the American hops finishes it off perfectly. It is quite strong at 6.3% according to the software, so probably not an appropriate session beer, but I will definitely be brewing this again, maybe with a slightly lower grain bill for summer drinking.

If you are thinking about brewing an American style IPA, then I would recommend this one!

[john_drummer]

glad you enjoyed it the original recipe came from brewmate.net, "Dirty Celebration Ale" but I had to swap the original Nugget hops as my LHBS didn't have any in stock.

I've enjoyed this brew so much I've done it twice & may well do it again as a demonstration at my LHBS in a couple of weeks!

[AdyG]

glad you enjoyed it the original recipe came from brewmate.net, "Dirty Celebration Ale" but I had to swap the original Nugget hops as my LHBS didn't have any in stock.

I've enjoyed this brew so much I've done it twice & may well do it again as a demonstration at my LHBS in a couple of weeks!

I can see myself brewing this a few more times too! We went to the Leicester BeerFest a couple of weeks ago and it was easily as good as the best AIPAs there!

I've done another IPA without the Munich and Carahell but put a bit of crystal in instead. I'm going for a Simcoe hopped one this time with Centennial and Columbus too, it's in the FV at the moment and smells very hoppy indeed. I will post a new thread on it asap!

[AdyG]

This beer was such a success I brewed the same recipe again on 19/04/2013 with a few subtle changes, all the grain bill and hops were the same with the exception of:

- a hop blocker was used in the Buffalo tap where as the previous brew used a hop sock.
- to compensate for the extra water absorbed by the hops 3 litres for boiled water cooled to 76 degrees were tipped through the grain bag into the FV while draining before the boil. The drained liquid was tipped back into the Buffalo pre boil.
- 20g Simcoe was added with the other hops at 0 mins
- it was all left to steep for 20 minutes before cooling
- 30g of the left over Simcoe and Amarillo was used for dry hopping, but this time the hops were placed between 2 sterilised sieves and placed in the middle of a secondary FV when the gravity had dropped to about 1015.

It was kegged last night and was smelling very hoppy! Looking forward to 4 weeks time for tasting!

[killer]

Damn you and John_drummer.
I was gonna brew the Goose Island IPA recipe from the IPA book next, but now I don't know what to do....
Decisions decisions (obviously I will brew both but don't have too much time to brew at the moment !)

[john_drummer]

Goose Island is nice but this one's much nicer. besides, you can get Goose Island at Waitrose

[AdyG]

Goose Island is very nice, and this recipe is quite similar in taste... but a lot cheaper!

Go for it Killer.... you won't be disappointed!