Brewed 11/24/13. Hit about 150F on the strike. I clogged the false bottom on accident so I had to dump it into the boil kettle and then dump it back into the mash. I then had to top off about a half gallon to get it up to about 150F. pH was 5.2 which is a bit lower than the predicted one. Used the pump for the first time to recirculate and to pump sparge. Prolly have to adjust the pump hose length on the sparge one. Boil kettle efficiency is at 79%. Boil was very vigorous and I think that it boiled off a lot. Also, the large amount of whole hops absorbed a lot of wort. I got 5.25 gal of wort and topped off with a half gallon of water. Made the efficiency suffer. I also mashed a bit lower than I expected. Chilled down to about 68F. Might add some corn sugar to kick up the gravity a bit. 11/25/13 added half pound of corn sugar just to kick the gravity up a bit. Temp was about 60/62F in the morning. Evening time it had risen up to about 65F so I cooled it down again with a couple of ice packs. 11/26/2013 temp has risen to 67F so I cooled it down to about 64F. By night it had drifted back up to 67F so I cooled it down to 65F. 12/16/13 took a gravity reading which puts the brew at 1.014. Dry hopped 12/18/2013. Racked into a keg 12/30/2013. Used 2 tbs of biofine but is still seemed a bit cloudy. There was also some pellet dry hops that made it into the keg. Tasted on 1/2/2014 and it's pretty good. Has somewhat of a harsh bitterness and is a little tannic but that might mellow. It's also a bit less hop forward than I was expecting. Still tasty though. This brew took 3rd place in IPA at the BAM World Cup of Beer 2014.
Award Winning Recipe