Triumph Street IPA

A simple American-style IPA with a buttload of home-grown Cascade hops.

Recipe

Batch size: 5 gallons

Grain bill:

• 8 lbs pale malt (new bag o' 2-row from Prairie Malting)
• 1 lb organic wheat malt
• 8 oz Crystal 120

Hops:

• 55 g Cascade @ 60
• 155 g Cascade @ 20

Yeast: Yeast: Wyeast 1056

Prep

August 31, 2010: Starter for the yeast. 200g DME + 2 litres of water. Thought the smack pack had already been broken, but nope.

Brew Day

September 3, 2010: Mashed overnight. Brought 7 gallons water to 170 F and got down to 158 F...then borked it by adding 2 quarts tap water. Don't know what I was thinking. Temp down to 148F. Added 1 l boiling water and temp rose to 150 F. That's not worth it.

September 4, 2010: Brew day! Collected 6 1/3 gallons. Had to vorlauf since some of the grain escaped the bag. 130 F overnight. Decided to modify the hop sched to the above based on an article from Zymurgy about late-hopping. Gravity was 1.045 at mashout, and 1.044 at pitching. Huh. 5 gallons yield.

Bottling

September 26, 2010: 15.7 litres yield. 1.006, so 5% ABV -- good. 80 g dextrose. Set aside 1.5 litre Grolsch bottle for archival purposes.

Hydro sample: lovely golden orange colour. Fairly crisp, as you'd expect. Bitter, but not amazingly so. Bready aroma (really?).

Tasting

October 2, 2010: First tasting, and wow! Not carbed enough yet but nice hop bitterness and prominent flavour from the Cascades. Crisp mouthfeel. Lovely colour...could be a touch lighter, but still pretty. My wife says this is nice and bitter off the bat, but it has the floral flavour she likes too. Not yeasty or green at all.

October 18, 2010: Second capped bottle (as opposed to swingtop) in a row where it has not been carbed very much. Did I cap these badly? Still tasty. Very happy with the flavour, and I think this recipe/approach is a keeper.