Hoppy Brewing

Well, I had to run out to Lowes one more time this morning (for a running count of four trips to finish the mash tun). I picked up a gasket and some parts for my hopback. I still got the wrong stuff for the hopback…But I did get the mash tun up and running. The grain I got a week ago now was getting old (I milled it then) so today had to be a brew day. So I took my IPA sketch from a couple of posts back and put it to use, changed a bit from the original recipe using ideas from Designing Great Beers (Ray Daniels). Here we go!

Ingredients:

6.5 lbs. Pale Malt Extract
2 lbs Pale Malt
1.5 lb White Wheat
1.5 lb Crystal (1 lb 30°L and .5 lb 60°L)(I was going for 40°L)
.75 lb light Munich
1.5 oz Columbus
2 oz Cascade

Hop Schedule:

Method:

So I busted out the mash tun and poured in my 5.5 lbs. of grain. The target temp was 156°, so I heated water to 14° above that (170°) and added 5.5quarts of water at 170° (1 quart per lb. of grain). I put the lid on and let that sit for 1 hr. At 1 hr, I sparged with approximately 2 gallons of water again at 170°. The process worked perfectly and I had no issues with the mashing process. This gave me approximately 2.5 gallons of wort. I had to boil in 3 pots (I really wish I could get that burner). I added the malt extract and brought all three pots to a boil. The boil was 60 minutes. I used whole hops this time, so I strained them through a strainer into the primary that had 3 gallons of filtered water in it. Toal volume was right around 5 gallons. I stuck in the wort chiller and cooled it to 68°. I pitched Safale US-05 Dry Ale Yeast simply by sprinkling it over the cooled wort.

OG: 1.065 (close to my wanted 1.07).

I am very pleased with the mash tun, it worked very well for me!

01/30

racked to secondary. SG: 1.015
I also dry hopped with .5 oz cascade pellets. I’ll let it all simmer for a week before bottling.

02/06

Bottled. Primed with 3/4 cup priming sugar. FG came in at 1.014. I bottled using one Tap-A-Draft 6 liter blue bottle, one 3 liter bottle, and the rest in 12 and 16 oz bottles.

So the ABV rings in at 7.9%. That’s a healthy beer   From what I tasted of it, it isn’t a bitter IPA by any means. But it’s a nice mild IPA for sure with good aroma hops. Maybe the carbonation and cold will kick the bitter up a bit. We’ll see!