Simtra Clone

Alright, brew three is on the cards and choosing a very recent addition to my favourite beers list: Kneedeep Simtra. This is a triple IPA generously hopped (and gloriously aged) with Simcoe and Citra hops.

Using this recipe i've decided to change the grain makeup to match that of Mikkeller. Lurking on the internet is an e-mail from Mikel to a homebrewer detailing the ratio of grains that he uses as the base for his single hopped beers (67% pilsner malt, 11% Cara-Crystal, 11% Munich II, 11% Flaked Oats). I've cut the ratio of pilsner malt in half and added in half maris otter as maris otter was called for in the original Simtra clone recipe i found.

So, without further ado:

HOME BREW RECIPE:
Title: Simtra Chunky

Brew Method: All Grain
Style Name: Imperial IPA
Boil Time: 66 min
Batch Size: 8 liters (fermentor volume)
Boil Size: 11.8 liters
Boil Gravity: 1.073
Efficiency: 70% (brew house)

STATS:
Original Gravity: 1.107
Final Gravity: 1.018
ABV (standard): 11.7%
IBU (tinseth): 229.9
SRM (morey): 14.76

FERMENTABLES:
1.5 kg - German - Pilsner (37.5%)
1.3 kg - United Kingdom - Maris Otter Pale (32.5%)
0.4 kg - Flaked Oats (10%)
0.4 kg - German - Carapils (10%)
0.4 kg - German - CaraMunich II (10%)

HOPS:
23.92 g - Simcoe, Type: Pellet, AA: 12.7, Use: Boil for 60 min, IBU: 78.45
23.92 g - Citra, Type: Pellet, AA: 11, Use: Boil for 60 min, IBU: 67.95
12.06 g - Simcoe, Type: Pellet, AA: 12.7, Use: Boil for 30 min, IBU: 30.4
12.06 g - Citra, Type: Pellet, AA: 11, Use: Boil for 30 min, IBU: 26.33
12.06 g - Simcoe, Type: Pellet, AA: 12.7, Use: Boil for 10 min, IBU: 14.34
12.06 g - Citra, Type: Pellet, AA: 11, Use: Boil for 10 min, IBU: 12.42
12.06 g - Simcoe, Type: Pellet, AA: 12.7, Use: Dry Hop for 0 days
12.06 g - Citra, Type: Pellet, AA: 11, Use: Dry Hop for 0 days

MASH GUIDELINES:
1) Sparge, Temp: 66 C, Time: 60 min, Amount: 9 L
Starting Mash Thickness: 3.1 L/kg

YEAST:
Fermentis / Safale - American Ale Yeast US-05
Starter: No
Form: Dry
Attenuation (avg): 81%
Flocculation: Medium
Optimum Temp: 12.22 - 25 C
Fermentation Temp: 20 C

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This brew will be all about getting our efficiency right the frack up. The intention is to lift the bag completely out of the kettle, supplant it to a colander on top of a second kettle and then sparge it until a suitable wort appears underneath. There is the prospect of upping the boil to 90 minutes if there is too much volume in the kettle once the worts are combined.

I'd be grateful for opinions on the proposed recipe!

229.9 IBU seems incredibly high even for a beer so strong. I'll be interested to hear how it turns out.

Experience suggests to me that a small amount of hops at the start of the boil and then loads in the last 15 mins or so is the best way to make very hoppy beers.

To increase your efficiency try splitting your water between the mash and a batch sparge. About 3 litres per kg for the mash and the rest at a higher temp for the sparge. You could hold some sparge water back for a colander rinse.

But full volume biab should give you a good efficiency.

Cheers guys. The recipe reckons a minimum of 8 weeks conditioning for this so the simcoe can mellow out.

Clibit, if we're aiming for about 8l worth of product what do you reckon the split between the kettle and the water for sparge? Suggested start is 12l in the kettle; should I scoop out something like 2/3l from that, mash with 9l in kettle and sparge with the scooped out 2/3l?

Ok, gearing up to go for this Brewday a week today.

At the moment we're going to aim for 9 litres getting lobbed into the FV with this one. The kettle will be filled to about 3L per kg of grain for mashing. The bill is 4.5kg, with Brewersfriend reckoning we should start with 12.8L of water in the kettle on-that-basis. Mash will be 60 minutes before proceeding to sparge.

The bag will be lifted –grain and all- out of the kettle, plopped on top of the colander on top of another pot and sparged with water at about 72oC. Going to boil up maybe 8-9l of sparge water in one of the spare FV’s, scoop that up with the jug and drizzle over the grains to bring us up. My only real question is what we should aim for a pre-boil volume and whether we should boil for 60, 90 or 120 minutes?

Any thoughts on this?

ezraburke said:

The bill is 4.5kg, with Brewersfriend reckoning we should start with 12.8L of water in the kettle on-that-basis.

...what we should aim for a pre-boil volume...

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I reckon you'll lose about 4 liters of water to your grain, if you do give it a squeeze. I don't know the size of your pan, but let's assume you have a boil-off rate of 3 liters per hour. You're also going to have a reasonable amount of trub from the grain and all those hops, so let's conservatively say you leave a liter in the pan.

With that in mind, I'd probably go for your 9 liters in the FV plus the above quantities, so + 4 + 3 + 1 = 17 litres in total.

Pre-boil volume would be 9 + 3 if it we were assuming 3L boil-off rate for a 60 min boil.

Regarding the percentage of sparge water to hold back from that 17L, I decided it was probably most efficient to split the mash and sparge water 50/50. I'm sure there must be other opinions on this. However, as the mash will "steal" around 4L in absorption, I would give the mash 4L more, so of the 17L: 10.5L mash followed by 6.5L sparge.

I'd consider bagging those pellet hops in muslin before adding, making sure there is room to expand. It could get very sludgy.

Your original grain bill sounds about the right size to get the correct OG. I bet this will turn out brilliantly. Mikkeller stuff is fantastic. I wouldn't be concerned about the high IBU rating. Their 1000 IBUs barley wine was incredible.

rodabod said:

Your original grain bill sounds about the right size to get the correct OG. I bet this will turn out brilliantly. Mikkeller stuff is fantastic. I wouldn't be concerned about the high IBU rating. Their 1000 IBUs barley wine was incredible.

Click to expand...

Rod, i want to like this a thousand times over! Our pan size is 19L.

So, you reckon mash with 10.5L + the 4.5kg of grain then sparge the grains with 6.5L afterwards aiming for a pre-boil volume of 12L (correct me if i'm wrong!)?

We'll put the pellets in muslin bags and fire away!

ezraburke said:

Rod, i want to like this a thousand times over! Our pan size is 19L.

So, you reckon mash with 10.5L + the 4.5kg of grain then sparge the grains with 6.5L afterwards aiming for a pre-boil volume of 12L (correct me if i'm wrong!)?

We'll put the pellets in muslin bags and fire away!

Click to expand...

Lets get our brew on. :

ezraburke said:

So, you reckon mash with 10.5L + the 4.5kg of grain then sparge the grains with 6.5L afterwards aiming for a pre-boil volume of 12L (correct me if i'm wrong!)?

Click to expand...

Yes, that's what I'd do anyway. You could always look up sparge water ratios and see what others think. At the end of the day, you want to get as much sugar out of the grain as possible, including washing off the sugary mash liquor from the first stage. When I've done it, I've just dunk sparged in water at mash-out temperature.

Pan should be a good size.

Watch out for all the protein from the hot break as there will be a lot since this is a "big" beer. When I did my black IPA a while back, it made it difficult to siphon the wort out of my pan as I was using a hop bag for a filter and it just repeatedly blocked. Ended up using by grain back to filter the entire wort again!

Oh, and I'd write yourself down a brewing plan with each step and quantity, leaving space to note modifications (eg. "Added extra 500ml boiling water to raise mash temp) so you can keep track of what's going on.

I've just run this through my excel spreadsheet, based on my old equipment (no sparge) so won't be spot on for you.

Based on 1hr boil, 2.5 l/hr boil off rate and 9l into fermenter. Your pre-boil is 12.5l and you need 17.45l strike water in total.

Strike water temp is coming up at 71.7 (Although I'd check this as my calcs on this don't seem to be too good).

For beers with a high grist/strike water ratio, I found that that I ended up having to add quite a bit of boiling water as I shot far too low, despite having calculated what I thought was a good figure.

17.45L isn't far off the 17L suggested above, so I reckon both are in the right ballpark.

Regarding yeast, I'd put a whole 11.5g sachet of US-05 in there, certainly not any less.

Cheers guys. As always we'll document as we go, let you see how the brew evening turns out.

Guys, I managed to buy two 100g packs of Citra instead of one.

Thinking of mash-hopping with half a packet of Citra then continuing with hop schedule as before - looking to add helluva aroma to this beer, thoughts?

Is mash hopping similar to first wort hopping?

It's hopping in the actual mash. As mash temps are below isomerisation temps, no bitterness is extracted but flavour and aroma are (not sure how much of this is boiled away). It's usually used for sour beers as it extracts the preservative qualities of the hops, but not the acids which can inhibit lactobacillus growth.

This is the idea, yes. Hoping to impart a great amount of flavour and aroma, but very little bitterness - the hop schedule as it stands is something like 200ibu...

I guess a lot of the hop aroma would be lost during the boil, but you would grab flavour. Other alternative would be to add these hops when you are chilling, aka whirlpool additions. These add a little bitterness according to start temperature and duration, but will maintain aroma.

This thing is likely to be bursting with aroma and flavour, mostly due to the flameout additions and dry hopping. Can't hurt, right?

In future thinking of using a hopback device, but a little too late to start building one now!

ezraburke said:

This thing is likely to be bursting with aroma and flavour, mostly due to the flameout additions and dry hopping. Can't hurt, right?

Click to expand...

I'm not sure. I've certainly had beers that have been over-hopped in the past, to the point where they begin to taste like shower gel. But, this is a triple-IPA, so I'm guessing the hop levels will be pretty mental.

Are you still adding the Simcoe? I think it will be an important part of the flavour. The pine-y flavour helps to mask the booziness, a bit like juniper berries in gin.

Yeah, still adding the Simcoe - it was the fact i ordered two packets of Citra by accident so i have some to spare! We're both pretty keen on hop-heavy beers so i don't think it will be the problem. Our last two brews have had less hop aroma and flavour, all the bitterness and astringency though. Hopefully the amount of sweetness from the grain will balance bitterness and the flavour from the mash hopping (and aroma from the dry hopping) will drive this through the roof.

Recommended ageing is 8 weeks in the FV (may or may not rack to secondary, undecided) before bottling.