AG #5 'One More' NZ Session IPA

Hello all, brewed this one up on Friday.

Here's the recipe:



Brewday started off badly...

I'd modified my mash tun slightly, I moved the tap lower down to reduce the amount of dead-space. I thought I'd sealed it properly but after dumping the strike-water in I soon sprang a leak! Cue me quickly emptying the water and quickly resealing as best I could.

All seemed to hold out and the mash went well. Over my previous 4 brews I'd calculating my efficiency to about 66%. Not great but I have serious limitations in equipment and ability - that said, this brew was the first one where I felt I was starting to properly get to grips with the whole process.

Mashed in at 67, lost 2 degrees over the hour so fairly happy with that.





I ended up hitting my volumes perfectly and was .002 over target - 1.038/40 pre-boil as far as I can see.



Boil went fine, using 2 burners on the stove top seems to work pretty well. Ended up with 20 litres in the fermenter at 1.044. 70% efficiency calculated.

Still have no chiller (next on the shopping list) so cooled in the bath with the flameout hops to about 50 degrees then out into the fermenter.

My main problem was that I had to go out and it wasn't cool enough to pitch the yeast. I ended up not doing it until the next day. Will this be ok? Used good old US-05 (rehydrated) and it took off fairly rapidly and is bubbling away as we speak.

Updates to follow, apologies for the essay!

Good post. I don't see a problem with not pitching until the next day if it was all sealed up etc

Jolly good! It was all sterilised and sealed so I'm fairly confident it'll be fine.

Checked this one tonight, it's down to 1.012. Gonna rack it into secondary tomorrow if it's the same. Another week or so then I'll bosh the dry hops in.

Right, dry hopped this one today - still at 1.012 so it's definitely done. This leaves it at 4.2%. Pretty much bang on what I was after. I'll be bottling it on Tuesday.

I used:
40g Wai-iti (4.00% AA)
40g Motueka (10.50% AA)

Here's some pics, really happy with how clear this one is!





I did my usual trick of blasting my sample in the soda stream to taste - not really an accurate way of predicting the final taste but hey.

The bitterness is definitely there but there's virtually zero hop aroma/flavour. I like to think I'm sort of experienced enough not to worry and these elements will surface after conditioning. I'm sure the bucket load of dry hops will help as well...

Looks great, nice work with the clarity. :thumb:

The trouble with New Zealand hops is that if the read them out in a list it sounds just like a Rugby Haka - very aggresive.
The flavour is just the opposite, some of my favourite hops used here!!

Bottled this today. Hoppy is an understatement. I'm very happy with how big it tastes considering the ABV. Might actually have ended up producing exactly what I wanted! I'll crack one open on 2 weeks and see how it is.

So the hop flavour/aroma re-emerged?

And some! I checked it on Monday, still not much going on after 4 days dry hopping. I noticed a lot of the dry hops were still, well, dry...
Gave it a good mix up being careful not to splash/aerate.

It smells mental, herbal, fruity, juicy. Really excited about this.