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7/14/2020:
just adjusted the water profile in the calculator for 8.5 total gallons treated water and the numbers came out a little better. however a little concerned because the calculator says mash pH will be 5.6 but this recipe says 5.45. i suppose either is fine but the inconsistency is making me nervous that im screwing something up.
going forward i think it will be simpler to use RO and build from there, or try to see if there are basic / minor adjustments i can make to my water to get where i want to go (e.g. just a simple gypsum addition andor campden tab)
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7/13/2020:
adjusting the hop bill based on what i have. increasing ibu from last time (this time using cryo warrior!) decided to try to use all 8oz of centennial i have from a particular Washington state farm via hop of the month. will have increased dry hop.
even though im planning to use hothead (quick turnaround) i noticed in the last brew the beer tasted great initially, then diminished, then peaked later. as such maybe try to ferment for 7 days, dry hop 3 or 4 days in, remove dry hop and cold crash for 7 days before kegging...?
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6/21/2020:
for this 4th attempt at west coast this year, i will be experimenting getting to some target water profile good for west coast ipas.
for now i am going to use the light & hoppy profile built into brewers friend. the chloride cl- is high for the profile (but normal overall) but i think the only way to reduce that is to use RO water so i will just leave it. going to use gypsum (to add calcium) and phosphoric acid to reduce mash pH. we'll see
here is another reference :
https://shop.theelectricbrewery.com/pages/green-flash-west-coast-ipa
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6/21/2020:
this still came out 1.010 but not dry or crisp but rather sweetish. going to take a look at water chemistry next time. (this beer was just brewed using untreated henrico va tap water)
the beer also came out hazy, orangeish. and possibly oxygenated probably because it got roughed up during dry hop / packaging stages as it was my first time dealing with the conical fermentor and spunding valve.
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5/31/2020:
changing grain bill to bump sugar up from 0.5 to 1lb to try to get more dryness. ive read you can do up to 10% sugar. (they say dexrose but im just using table sugar)
also changing hop sched based on the hops i have. i was planning to use some crystal wet hops for this batch but id prefer to use them all at once 2.2 lbs which i think is going to take up a lot of loss, also i am brewing this for the first time on digiboil which may have boiling limitations so im going to fall back and just use some centennial from my hop of the month club. id prefer to use all of one so i can see if i can get the different flavor profiles....
(should i do smaller batches so i can do side by side-ish? if that, ferment in a keg with spunding valve?).
will plan to use the nugget for bittering instead of warrior.....well see.
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5/7/2020:
recipe cloned from "i aint mad atcha". changing recipe in prep to rebrew. simplifying hop varieties. lowering abv a little, removing 15L. aiming for 80 some ibu again. going to mash a little lower? 150. using hothead yeast.
4/7/2020 :
brew day. swapping out the 0.9 magnum 14aa 60 min for 0.5 warrior unknown AA and 0.5 nugget 13.4AA both for 60 mins. this adds up to more IBU than it was with the magnum, but the byo article has it at 77IBU. also i am using some 2 oz 11.4AA 2018 whole hop centennial for the 15 min addition. these hops were leftover from something else, hopefully not oxidized or anything. this way i can add 2 more oz to the dry hop for more flaves. inputting the whole hop AA brought the recipe up to 77IBU. ALSO on a whim i decided to drop a pound of 2row and add .5lb cane sugar to dry it out a little bit. still doing the .5lb 15L (original byo recipe had a pound but last rendition was too sweet). if this all works according to plan i think it will be a nice beer. not sure if i am going to get close to stone. i had a stone ipa the other night. it was too dry and bitter compared to mine. looking for something in between theirs and mine.
3/31/2020:
today i am bumping the magnum and base malt amounts to increase the target IBU and OG to match the BYO article. i am blindly changing the attenuation to match the BYO FG.
this beer was weird. right now it is clear, faint bitterness, decent hop flavor, overall seems close. it is a little too sweet.
this was fermenting at a bit low temperature last month. it was in the fermentation chamber while we were away on vacay but it wasnt plugged in. when i returned it was around 50 or 55. i did cold crash it and kegged it, first week or two it was super hazy and sweet it threw me way off, i thought id confused it with mango maya base beer. it cleared up, hops began to shine more. over time
i had a recipe snafu. unsure the OG. FG is about 1.014. based on 12.5lb 2 row and adjusting attenuation for the FG i got about 6.48 abv on batch 1 (march2020)
8/26/2019 :
adapted from brew your own clone recipe. unclear when this appeared in print. https://byo.com/recipe/stone-ipa-clone/
they boil for 90 minutes (probably to get more bitterness out of less hops, those smarties) they also use perle + magnum but i will just use enough magnum for 60 mins to get up to IBU. the recipe calls for whole hops for dry hop but that will depend on availability / convenience...
