Made a starter the NEW way. 4500ml of filtered water with 1# DME and it made a good amount of yeast. Only had a couple days for this one so we crashed it early and poured it off the day of the brew.
NO WATER TREATMENT!
First time with the new false bottom and so no underlayment present. Used the Brewers Friend calculator which said 166 for strike temp for a 153 rest - seemed to work pretty well.
Sparged well. First Runnings were 1.085 final were 1.010. Preboil gravity 1.057. Used about all of the 10g. sparge water this time.
Boiled 90 minutes w/ hop additions as shown. Chilled using an ice bath in the decoction boiler before the wort chiller. Was to save water, but I'm not sure it did. We heated a gallon of water in the HLT to push all the beer through the elongated path. This was OK, but then we couldn't collect the first 10g. of hose water in the HLT like usual. And the ice costs money, and we could have used two bags, etc. Maybe next time we just collect the chiller water in the big blue tub!
Pitched the yeast at 68°. Original gravity was around 1.065 so we boiled ~3 qts. of filtered water and let it cool to add to it. Added about 8 hours later. According to BF calculator this should bring it to 1.060. Good activity 8 hours later. Fermented out to about 1.012 in around 5 days - cold crashed for another 4 and then kegged with dry hops. Purged w/CO2 and bubbled up once it was sealed to 30#.
Pulled the dryhops after 5 days and tasted the drippings - very excited for this one! Excellent IPA - we are both Very happy. Hop nose is maybe our best. 7 out of 10 (Drakes) on a commercial scale maybe. Hop flavor is delicious and it is well balanced. May be our best IPA, although Mark still loves him some Texas Tea!