AG Brewday #2 American IPA '2.0'

Ok here goes! I've not posted on here much since my first brewday/introductory post and since then I've been progressing quite nicely. My first beer - see thread here: Click me!

It came out pretty well, especially considering it was my first ever brew. But I'm my own worst critic and knew I could do better. Other people seemed to really like it and it actually won 3rd prize out of 25 entrants at a local homebrew competitions o I really should have no complaints... I think it fermented a bit warm and as such had a few funky flavours going on, but really wasn't too far off at all.

Having well and truly caught the bug, I brewed this one back in July and I'm just able to start enjoying it. Here it is:

Recipe: 2.0
Brewer: Robbie
Style: American IPA
Type: All Grain

Recipe Specifications
--------------------------
Estimated OG: 1.063 SG
Estimated FG: 1.014 SG
Estimated Color: 9.6 EBC
Estimated IBU: 65.2 IBUs
Estimated ABV: 6.5%
Boil Time: 60 Minutes

Fermentables!
5.50 kg Pale Malt, Maris Otter (5.9 EBC) Grain 1 95.7 %
0.25 kg Cara-Pils/Dextrine (5.0 EBC) Grain 2 4.3 %
Mash @ 66.7C for 60 minutes

Hops!
28.00 g Chinook [12.70 %] - Boil 60.0 min Hop 3 30.7 IBUs
14.00 g Cascade [9.00 %] - Boil 20.0 min Hop 4 6.6 IBUs
7.00 g Chinook [12.70 %] - Boil 20.0 min Hop 5 4.6 IBUs
14.00 g Cascade [9.00 %] - Boil 15.0 min Hop 6 5.4 IBUs
7.00 g Chinook [12.70 %] - Boil 15.0 min Hop 7 3.8 IBUs
14.00 g Cascade [9.00 %] - Boil 10.0 min Hop 8 3.9 IBUs
7.00 g Chinook [12.70 %] - Boil 10.0 min Hop 9 2.8 IBUs
14.00 g Cascade [9.00 %] - Boil 5.0 min Hop 10 2.2 IBUs
7.00 g Chinook [12.70 %] - Boil 5.0 min Hop 11 1.5 IBUs
28.00 g Cascade [9.00 %] - Steep/Whirlpool 5.0 min Hop 12 2.2 IBUs
14.00 g Chinook [12.70 %] - Steep/Whirlpool 5.0 min Hop 13 1.5 IBUs

Yeast!
Safale American US-05

Dry Hops!
80.00 g Amarillo [8.80 %] - Dry Hop 7.0 Days Hop 15 0.0 IBUs
20.00 g Chinook [12.70 %] - Dry Hop 7.0 Days Hop 16 0.0 IBUs
16.00 g Cascade [9.00 %] - Dry Hop 7.0 Days Hop 17 0.0 IBUs

I like my beers big and hoppy so put this recipe together - critiques are welcome, nay, encouraged!

I'm still very much at the stage where I'm still learning the pros and cons of my set-up and refining the techniques. But this brew definitely went smoother than the first.

Mash was fine, my cooler tun seems to do the job, I only lost 1 degree across the entire hour.

As for the boil, in my first brew I really struggled to get this quantity really rolling on the hob, but I managed to get my pot to straddle two burners which improved things a lot. I'm still planning to convert my pot to electric in the future to sort this - should speed the whole process up a lot too.

Everything else went pretty good despite Thornbridge's best efforts to derail me:


I came up a little short, but hit my OG bang on. I think I still need to look at volumes/calcs on BeerSmith - this is something I'm still working on. Here's some pics:



US-05 did its job, went down to 1.012 so ended up at approx 6.7%. Brewing has really improved my patience, and after 3 weeks in the bottle I chilled a few and cracked one open - my word! Really happy with this! It's got that lip-smacking, tongue-coating bitterness that I absolutely love and goes down so nicely. Despite being a fairly punchy beer, it hasn't got that overbearing alcoholic feeling to it like my first brew; I think that's because I controlled the fermentation temps a lot better this time around. Brew fridge will happen one day!

Here's a pic of the finished article.


Anyway, this essay is over, I've another update to come on brewday #3!

Looks good to me!!

wow that is a lot of hops!

I have just completed my first two AG beers this weekend using the Brew in a Bag method in an electric Buffalo boiler. The second was a SMaSH recipe using only Maris Otter and Goldings but I used too much grain 5.5 instead of 4.5 and underestimated the liquor I needed so ended up with 18l instead of 23 and an OG of 1052. I hope it works out ok!

Lesinge said:

wow that is a lot of hops!

I have just completed my first two AG beers this weekend using the Brew in a Bag method in an electric Buffalo boiler. The second was a SMaSH recipe using only Maris Otter and Goldings but I used too much grain 5.5 instead of 4.5 and underestimated the liquor I needed so ended up with 18l instead of 23 and an OG of 1052. I hope it works out ok!

Click to expand...

You can dilute it down still if you want to using this dilution calc

http://www.brewersfriend.com/dilution-and-boiloff-gravity-calculator/

MyQul said:

You can dilute it down still if you want to using this dilution calc

http://www.brewersfriend.com/dilution-and-boiloff-gravity-calculator/

Click to expand...

Thanks, however I pitched last night so I will have to live with the consequences. :drink:

You can still dilute, after fermentation.

Lesinge said:

Thanks, however I pitched last night so I will have to live with the consequences. :drink:

Click to expand...

As clibit has has said, that's what I meant by "still" you can dilute any time even as late as after bottling/kegging :thumb:

Entering this one in a local competition tonight, I'll let you all know how it gets on!