New Brunswick Craft Brewers Association

Beer Recipes and Food => All Grain => 14 - India Pale Ale (IPA) => Topic started by: Richard on April 01, 2011, 08:25:47 PM

Title: Famous Last Words IIPA
Post by: Richard on April 01, 2011, 08:25:47 PM
To be brewed once various ingredients materialise from NG. Somewhat inspired by http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f69/tits-up ... ver-92914/ (http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f69/tits-up-imperial-ipa-3-time-medalist-2-golds-1-silver-92914/)

OG is about 1.085, FG will be more clear once I've tested the yeast on a small sample of similar gravity wort.

18.00 lb 2-row
01.00 lb cara-munich
01.00 lb 60L Crystal
01.50 lb inverted sucrose (i.e. glucose + fructose mix)

2.00 oz Northern Brewer [9.9%] (60 mins)
2.00 oz Zeus [15.5%] (60 mins)
3.00 oz Cascade [7.0%] (10 mins)
Dry hop:
2.00oz Cascade (for 10 days, after primary)

Yeast cultured from Garrisons IIPA (will force-test for attenuation at likely OG once harvested).
Title: Re: Famous Last Words IIPA
Post by: Hawoh on April 01, 2011, 09:12:25 PM
I'd be cautious of harvesting yeast from a high OG beer. The health/quality of that yeast would not likely be something you would want to propagate for reuse.
Title: Re: Famous Last Words IIPA
Post by: Richard on April 01, 2011, 09:41:29 PM
hawoh: I already managed to harvest Chimay yeast from 9.0%ABV... You just have to pay more attention to increasing the health of the yeast, as opposed to just growth, when stepping it up from the sample. De-stressing, essentially :P
Title: Re: Famous Last Words IIPA
Post by: Richard on April 01, 2011, 09:51:06 PM
I probably should differentiate a little between harvesting (re-using) and culturing (re-growing). The latter can turn unhealthy, stressed yeast into a healthy culture ready for re-use. The former is iffy at high OG because the culture is likely stressed/unhealthy.
Title: Re: Famous Last Words IIPA
Post by: Kyle on April 12, 2011, 09:10:09 PM
how about a Cascade addition at 1 min.
Title: Re: Famous Last Words IIPA
Post by: Richard on April 12, 2011, 09:34:49 PM
I figured last-minute would be drowned out by any dry-hopping.
Title: Re: Famous Last Words IIPA
Post by: Richard on April 14, 2011, 07:04:30 PM
Milling 20lbs by hand = half an hour's work. This better be worth the hassle :P
Title: Re: Famous Last Words IIPA
Post by: Richard on April 14, 2011, 07:06:08 PM
didn't have time to harvest the yeast, so I'm just gonna be using two packs of S-05 rehydrated.
Title: Re: Famous Last Words IIPA
Post by: Richard on April 14, 2011, 08:30:22 PM
Bah. Using a new mash tun + completely overshot my target temperature (ended up at 158F at the start, down to about 156 after an hour). Going for longer mashing time (2 hours) in the hope that there's still some beta-amylase left to cut up those sugars...
 :oops:
Title: Re: Famous Last Words IIPA
Post by: Richard on April 14, 2011, 08:32:07 PM
For those who haven't seen it, this is an awesome resource on single-infusion mashing:

http://braukaiser.com/wiki/index.php?ti ... on_mashing (http://braukaiser.com/wiki/index.php?title=Effects_of_mash_parameters_on_fermentability_and_efficiency_in_single_infusion_mashing)
Title: Re: Famous Last Words IIPA
Post by: Richard on April 14, 2011, 09:52:10 PM
My ghetto mash-tun ended in a stuck sparge, so I had to resort to my old method of pouring through a very large straining bag rather than just turning a tap. Probably picked up some HSA, but it's not affected the result too badly prior to now: I'm going to make this work one way or another!
Title: Re: Famous Last Words IIPA
Post by: Richard on April 14, 2011, 11:43:45 PM
Boiling away for 1 hour to bring down to a workable volume; 20 minutes into the additions boil. Adjusted the hops a little higher for bittering to cope with probable caramelisation (and finally admitted to myself that I'm a Cascade whore). Going to add the plain sugars once the fermentation slows (1-2 days probably).

This has so far been a bit of a learning exercise -- dealing with potentially fatal errors. This is my first high gravity AG beer, so I should probably just be thankful that I'm not cleaning up eight gallons of wort and tears from my kitchen floor.
Title: Re: Famous Last Words IIPA
Post by: Kyle on April 15, 2011, 10:35:33 AM
yeah, imperials are hard to do in any case, but if your stove lacks power, it takes forever. My recent IIPA took 2.5 hours to boil from 8.5 gallons to 5.5 gal. Its only a 7.5 gal pot, so I added fresh wort as room become available.

Thomas had success insulating his pot for a better boil, but I'm planning to use mine with gas over the summer, and need it to fit properly on the stand.
Title: Re: Famous Last Words IIPA
Post by: Richard on April 15, 2011, 10:48:00 AM
Yeah, my mash efficiency turned out to be about 60% - pretty bad. Next time I'll need to use a higher water-to-grist ratio to have any hope of increasing that efficiency, but the original inspiration (See first post) only planned for and achieved a 64% efficiency, so...

... anyways it's starting to bubble now, now comes the waiting game :D
Title: Re: Famous Last Words IIPA
Post by: Richard on April 16, 2011, 03:01:35 PM
This badboy smells amazing -- filling the whole kitchen with hop aroma. Pity that means it's escaping the actual beer, but I'll be jamming the aroma back in with some dry hopping in about 10 days.
Title: Re: Famous Last Words IIPA
Post by: Richard on April 19, 2011, 11:06:14 AM
In yet another twist on this one, when I added the simple sugars (1.5lbs dextrose) at the 3 day mark, things were quiet for about 12 hours then it blew the airlock off with krausen (using S05). Definitely got some fight in this one.
Title: Re: Famous Last Words IIPA
Post by: Kyle on April 19, 2011, 10:34:39 PM
I find generally anything above about 1075 OG needs a blowoff hose.
Title: Re: Famous Last Words IIPA
Post by: Gil Breau on April 20, 2011, 09:12:01 AM
Anything that I add simple sugars to seem to react wayyy more vigorously.
Title: Re: Famous Last Words IIPA
Post by: Richard on April 20, 2011, 11:02:19 AM
Yeah I think if I make this again I'll just add the simple sugars at the start and use a blowoff for the primary.
Title: Re: Famous Last Words IIPA
Post by: Richard on May 01, 2011, 08:52:21 PM
Just bottled this... drank a couple of glasses (flat pre-bottling-sugar) and was very happy with how it tasted at that point. Give it a couple of weeks (next meeting!) and I'm sure it'll be ready for sampling ;)

Kyle: Keep a bottle of your IIPA so we can do a side-by-side?