Notes/Process:
Add 500mg potassium metabisulphite to 20 gallons water to remove chlorine/chloramine (as required).
Water treated with brewing salts to: Ca=100, Mg=10, Na=16, Cl=200, SO4=100
(Higher Chloride and lower Sulphate as compared to what is normally done with most American IPAs. This helps create the silky smooth and rich mouthfeel, pushing the hop flavours to be rounded and less sharp/dry).
For complete details on how to adjust your water, refer to our step by step Water Adjustments guide.
1.25 qt/lb mash thickness.
Single infusion mash at 152F for 90 mins.
Raise to 168F mashout temperature and hold for 10 mins.
~90 min fly sparge with ~5.6-5.8 pH water. At start of sparge add First Wort Hops to the boil kettle to let them steep as the wort is collected. Collect 13.9 gallons.
Boil for 60 minutes, adding Whirlfloc and hops per schedule at 15 and 5 minutes left.
Once boil is completed, quickly chill the wort to 180F (a copper immersion chiller works well - even the cheapest 25' x 3/8" immersion chiller will only take 2-3 minutes to chill from 212F to 180F).
On the control panel, switch the BOIL PID to AUTO mode and set the temperature to 180F. This will hold the wort at 180F. Do not worry if you undershot the 180F target temperature slightly when chilling with the immersion chiller. The control panel will quickly raise the temperature back to 180F and hold.
Add the steeping hops, put on the kettle lid, and wait 30 minutes. There is no need to stir the wort during this time. The control panel will fire the heating element periodically to maintain the 180F temperature which also gently stirs the wort through convection currents.
After the 30 minute steep turn off the heating element and chill the wort quickly to 66F (I use a CFC).
Aerate well. Pure oxygen from a tank may be used at a rate of 1 litre per minute for 60 seconds.
Pitch yeast and ferment at 68F (wort temperature). I use stainless fermenting buckets in wine fridges.
Assuming you did not underpitch the yeast, after 24 hours you should be at high krausen (highest point of foaming). Add dry hops #1 directly to the fermenter.
Continue to ferment at 68F (wort temperature) until at approximately 1.020 (5 points from final gravity) and then raise the temperature to 70-72F until finished. In my case I simply turn off the fermenting fridges and allow the wort to temperature to naturally rise to room temperature. Fermentation should be complete in about 7-8 days total.
Add dry hops #2 to brite tanks (I like to use two 5 gallon glass carboys), purge with CO2 to avoid oxygen pickup, then rack in the beer on top of the hops. Do not use finings such as gelatin.
After 3 days in the brite tanks package as you would normally. I rack to CO2 purged kegs and carbonate on the low side (around 2 volumes of CO2) to minimize carbonic bite and let the fruity hop and subtle malt flavours shine through. I chill the kegs to near freezing while carbonating at the same time in a 6-keg conditioning fridge. After ~1-2 weeks the kegs will be carbonated and ready to serve. Like all hop forward beers this NEIPA is best consumed fresh and young.
