Famous Penultimate Words IIPA

[Richard]

A re-spin on the Famous Last Words IIPA.

Attempting to go all-malt on this one; we'll see how that goes...

20.00 lb 2-row
01.00 lb Wheat
01.00 lb Crystal 110
01.00 lb Crystal 150
3oz Roasted Barley

6 Gallon Batch.

Estimated OG: 1.085 (60% efficiency)
Estimated FG: 1.021
Estimated ABV: 8.5%

2.00 oz Magnum [17%] (60 mins)
2.00 oz Northern Brewer [9.9%] (40 mins)
2.00 oz Hallertauer [7%] (20 mins)
Dry hop:
2.00oz Fuggles (for 10 days, after primary)

90 min mash w/6 gallons @ 149F
sparge 3 gallons @ 170F

Pitched on a shitload of S-05 slurry from prior IPA. Ferment at 19-21C.

[Thomas]

well, I found my next recipe to brew.

[Gil Breau]

Holy moley

I've got a question Richard, if i was looking for an IPA to try, whats a good one to start out with?

I've tried the dark IPA big tide brews on site, but that's about it, and I haven;t been sold on liking the hoppiness yet. :/

[Richard]

Kyle isn't as much of a hop-freak as me, and he makes a damn tasty IPA. Check out these:

Kyle's IPA
Kyle's IIPA

I'd suggest starting with the former.

[Gil Breau]

what about craft beer? I just wanna try something to make sure i'll drink it first

Garrisons? Picaroons?

[Richard]

I'd steer clear of Garrisons IIPA just now... pretty much a hop-bomb (but still my favourite, personally). Otherwise you're looking at a choice between the Picaroons Yipee IPA (roasty, good balance of hops), the Propeller IPA (Excellent, slightly hoppier) or the Garrisons Hop-Yard (which claims to be a normal pale ale but tastes more like an IPA on the lower end of the IBU scale).

Given what you said about hoppiness, I'd go with the Hop Yard first, then the Picaroons and Propeller; then onto the Garrisons if you acquire a taste for the bitterness.

[Thomas]

Few questions:

Wheat malt for head retention instead of CaraPils?
Crystal 110 = Crystal 60L?
Crystal 150 = Crystal 120L?
Did you add dextrose to this one after initial fermentation?

I crunched the numbers with Beertools and came our at 157 IBU! Thats a hell of a beer. Why the huge hop addition at 60min, instead of spacing them out for more aroma, or is that where the fuggles come in. Anyway, i'll be trying this next week when I get back from the island. I usually get 75-80% efficiency so I will have to lower the 2-row slightly, otherwise Ill end up with a OG 1.102 beer.

[Dean]

hey Gil, I'm just starting to develop a taste for IPA as well and I tried the Garrison Imperial IPA the other day on Richard's suggestion. I was pleasantly surprised that I actually liked it

this one:

 http://www.garrisonbrewing.com/images/b ... le-500.png

[Gil Breau]

110=40L 150=60L Carapils is just the lightest crystal. Less color etc. I think.

Wheat gives head retention and mouthfeel. I know I use about half to a full pound in many of my beers now though, just because of the nice smoothness it gives.

[Richard]

Few questions:

Wheat malt for head retention instead of CaraPils?

Crystal 110 = Crystal 60L?

Crystal 150 = Crystal 120L?

Did you add dextrose to this one after initial fermentation?

• Yep, instead of cara-munich.
• Crystal 110 (EBC) = Crystal 40L.
• Crystal 150 (EBC) = Crystal 60L.
• No dextrose (to be) added, except for bottle-priming later.

I crunched the numbers with Beertools and came our at 157 IBU!

I've pretty much given up on IBU calculators at this point. The last one of these I made was very close in terms of calculated IBUs (120-ish iirc), but I wasn't massively impressed with the malt/bitterness balance after 6 weeks or so. I'm just jacking up the numbers to see what happens. Perception is more important to me than some predicted value.

I find anything after 15 minutes gets mostly knackered by primary fermentation, so I add flavour hops at between 30 and 20 mins and dry-hop anything I'd use for aroma.

And an additional knock against calculating IBUs: I made it 115 (Tinseth, 6-gallon boil)

[Richard]

Ended up bumping the northern brewer addition down to 40 mins.

[Richard]

Tasted the wort and it seems to be roughly what I was after. Virtually zero hop aroma (will be added later), but significant hallertau flavour and epic bitterness. Hit my numbers except was .5 gallons short due to the amount soaked up by hops (leaf).

Thomas: If you normally hit 80-85% I need to talk to you about how you go about mashing

But more seriously I usually hit 70% on my non-epic beers, and I figure you'd need to step up the water/grain ratio even higher than I did here to get above that.

[Thomas]

My mash is the typical 1.25qt:1lb ratio with a 1 hr mash and 15 minute sparge. However after the sparge, while the wort is being brought up to a boil I continue to collect EVERY. LAST DROP. of wort possible from the mash tun. This involves tilting the tun up on an angle and letting the grain settle, collect some wort, settle, collect some wort, over and over until almost reaching a full boil. A lot of work goes into growing, malting and milling the grain, so I believe in getting every possible molecule of maltose out of that grain! Its a little extra work that (I tell myself) improves the beer.

Your efficiency might also improve from using a higher liquor:grist ratio. If you use 6 gallons of strike to 23lb grist, your hitting a ratio of 1.04:1. I always use 1.25:1 for my beers, and usually hit the 75-80% mark. Although I have never tried with 23lb of grain before, so I might be in the same boat when I brew this beer!

[Richard]

Yeah I think in future I'm going for a hard liquor/grist ratio; will adjust the profile by adjusting mashing temp.

Man this thing is going off like a rocket... think it might blow the blow-off tube off if it doesn't calm down O_o

[Shawn]

Richard: The two best things you could probably do at this point to improve your efficiency are tighten your crush, and increase your sparge temp. I see you're sparging at 170 F... what was the resulting temp after you added the 170 F water to your mash?

I know some sources say to keep the sparge water at 170 F max, but it seems that many agree now that it's the RESULTING temp that should be no higher than 170 F (leading to tannin extraction), so your sparge water could be around 180 F or so. You'd definitely get more sugars that way.