Birthday IPA

Based on Vinnie Cilurzo's Double IPA recipe. Had to scale it to 4 gallons to get it to fit in my system.

Recipe

Batch size: 4 gallons

Grain bill:

  • 4.8 kg Marris Otter
  • 180 g Crystal 60
  • 600 g honey from Dr Leonard Foster's lab (ah, the advantages of working w/bee researchers...)

Hops:

  • 130 g Falcon's Flight @ 90
  • 60 g Cascade (5.9%) @ 30
  • 90 g Falcon's Flight @ flameout
  • 30 g Cascade (5.9%) @ 30

First dryhop:

  • 60 g Falcon's Flight
  • 60 g Cascade (5.9%)

Second dryhop:

  • 30 g Falcon's Flight

Yeast: Safale US-05; about 0.5 cup slurry from last batch + new packet

Brew Day

December 30, 2011: Mashed in in with 8 gallons of water; dropped from 71C to 67C (152F), which is just right. The cooler is very, very full...I don't think I could get away w/a 5 gallon batch.

December 31, 2011: 6.75 gal yield, 1.047 (or so; measured at 40C) gravity. I panicked when I saw this, because I'd lost my recipe book and had forgotten about the honey, thought it should have been six gallons, and basically forgot everything about it. I adjusted the hop additions on the fly to account for the 10% or so AA of FF, instead of the 13-14% on average in the article; I'd forgotten to do this before. I know, RDWHAHB, but I'd forgotten that too.

I boiled for an extra half hour before adding the hops, which in the end turned out to be the right thing to do. For the record, I was losing a gallon per hour in volume.

I forgot about keeping the chiller in for the full boil, so I added it at the ten minute mark. I need to get a checklist going.

OG was 1.074 -- PERFECT. Got four gallons into the fermenter only by putting in a lot of hop gunk and hoping for the best; I didn't really have a good way to strain it. Pitched everything at about 26 C, around 9am; by 2pm it was bubbling.

Fermenting

Wow, this thing took off like gangbusters -- 6 hours and it was bubbling away.

January 6, 2012: First dryhop added.

January 12, 2012: Second dryhop added.

Bottling

January 14, 2011: 9% ABV! Only 3 gallons left; coulda got another half, maybe, but I made the mistake of swirling while I was bottling. Man, that's a lot of hop gunk.

Tasting

January 18, 2011: Couldn't wait. Not carbed at all, but it tastes good.

February 2011: After a few weeks, this is changing (duh!). It's carbed, which is good; it's noticeably less sweet, which is not what I'm after; and unfortunately, it turns out that hop gunk is amazingly floaty. I think I'm going to have to pour this through a tea strainer or something.