IPA

12/7/14: Our first traditional IPA recipe... finally. Though we were originally planning on making our herbal, spiced Spring barleywine-esque beer on this brew day, we haven't collected any of the extra ingredients nor have we devised a yeast culture proper for fermenting a 10% lighter colored beer. So, here's this. Originally, I had it with very few hop additions (like 4 additions total; yikes), but research points to IPAs getting much more complex and enjoyable if you add a lot more late hops and stagger the additions. So, that's what we're doing here.

11 ounces of hops will be added in total, divided between several early additions and an increasing quantity of late additions (all the way up to an intense quarter-pound added at flame-out), as well as two separate 1-week dry hops, to hopefully provide us with 5 or so gallons of American single IPA rife with crisp bitterness, fruity, tropical, citric and herbal notes without being too, too sweet. On that note, we are doing a longer boil (75 min w/ no hops until 30 minutes in) and I've kept the crystal malt to a minimum to reduce the potential for this to develop caramel-like flavors. Like I mentioned, we're going for a dry and crisp flavor; low potential for stickiness or malt presence. Hops are what's important here, of course. Cheers!

12/12/14: Pat put the first dry-hop addition in the primary fermenter today. It's a slight change from the original way I had it written here and I've changed the recipe to reflect that. It features two kinds of whole leaf-hops (Cascade and Mosaic) and was left in for close to 9 days.

12/21/14: Just transferred to secondary today. Put second dry-hop bag in after siphoning. It contains the Falconer's Flight (1 oz) and Motueka (0.5 oz) pellets, which will stay in the fermenter for a week. Took a gravity sample to make sure fermentation was done. To our surprise, the beer fermented a little lower than expected, to about 1.013. That makes the beer about 7.75% instead of the assumed 7.16%. More updates as they come.

12/28/14: Just bottled our first-ever IPA! We ended up with an insanely long dry-hop (two different stages; first for 9 days, second for 7 after transferring to secondary) that made the finished beer very aromatic with mango, orange and pine notes coming through on top of a cereal-like, very slightly sweet base. Decided to split a bottle siphoned straight into a bottle we couldn't cap (note to self: don't try bottling into royal pint/16.9 oz bottles; the lip is weird and doesn't work with regular crown caps). The flavor is dominated by drying waves of tropical fruitiness, pine notes and fairly chewy malt. We will leave the bottles conditioning with priming sugar for approximately a week before cracking any more.

We ended up with a lot less beer than we thought, however... about 3.5 gallons instead of the 5 we assumed. Our assumption is that the duration of the dry-hopping, as well as the fact that we dry-hopped twice thus introducing more potential for beer loss due to absorption must be mostly to blame. Next time we do this one, we will probably change how we dry-hop. Psyched to see how it comes out in a week!

1/11/15: Well, here we are in the new year and it's been about two weeks since I last updated. The reason behind the delay is, quite simply, that it took a bit longer for the beer to carbonate and condition. However, our patience has been rewarded with a truly extraordinary first IPA, if I do say so myself. As a huge critic of our own beer, I have to say that, once carbonated, this came out almost exactly as expected. As I posted on Facebook about this one:

"[It] presents with juicy pineapple, grapefruit and citrus peel in the nose and a nice, slick and oily palate with notes of candied orange and pine. Really drinkable for ~7.5% (finished slightly higher strength/lower gravity than we thought it would). Proud of this one. We will continue working on the hopping schedule to zone in on the perfect IPA flavor and brew this several times a year."

Very excited about how it came out. My worries about it not conditioning correctly have been allayed and we are now working on an imperial stout to be transferred to a bourbon barrel some time in the next month. Until next time!

3/22/15: Been about a month and a half since an update here, so here's the deal. After a couple more months of criticism about our own process, changes in how we brew and the fact that this IPA actually eventually underwent a bottle refermentation leading to it practically exploding (luckily nonviolently!) with carbonation, I am finally committing some changes to the recipe.

To do this, I'm taking some things into account, including but not limited to: new equipment translating to higher efficiency obtained from the mash, originally-unrecognized liquid volume loss from hop absorption (due to quantity and time spent on hops, both) and, finally, alteration of focus in terms of hop load. I've lowered the quantity of distinct hop varietals in order to hone in more on the qualities we want. I'm also adding an appreciable 1 lb. of oats to the recipe to improve mouthfeel, head retention and body. -AP

4/2/15: Alright, committing a few more changes. Oats have been increased to 1.5 lbs (because oats rule in IPAs) and have set up some basic whirlpool additions (Motueka/Amarillo for the citrus and tropical fruit aromatic qualities we're going for) that require holding the wort at just under boiling (200° F to be exact) for 20 or so minutes. Should be brewing this on 4/4, so updates will be provided as needed. This is easily the most dedicated we've been to a single recipe, and it makes sense as IPAs are a huge thing and will be for quite a while... and we're not content just making one according to any kind of premade recipe. -AP

4/4/15: Heating up strike water for this one now. Had to make some last-minute changes to the hop bill due to our LHBS having less FF than we wanted... subbed in a high-alpha, locally-grown Cascade (Four Star Farms) and changed some other hops minorly in order to get more rounded numbers and keep costs down (while still hopefully achieving similar profiles and IBUs, of course).. -AP

4/8/15: Dry hop addition added.

4/15/15: Noting that OG was higher than planned. This seems to be the opposite from the trend we've been seeing on the new gear. Hopefully this means we're getting better, but what I think it means is we boiled too long. Sparge was hefty and we collected about 7 gallons, 1.040ish, boiled down to 5 gal in the fermenter left us with the OG of 1.075. This is gonna be closer to a double IPA like the first time we brewed it. Beer has been sitting in the swamp heater at 71 (so roughly 69 internal temp).

4/26/15: Bottling this one now. Noting that FG was 1.021 (71% apparent attenuation from the approximate 1.075 we got from the original recipe). Ended up with a decent amount of loss from the dry-hop, yet again. We also did boil a bit longer than intended, as we didn't quite hit pre-boil gravity. Didn't lose much, if anything, to the dry-hop as it was shorter, done in one stage, and was a rather small (2 ounce, in pellets to boot) amount compared to before. As such, we've had to compensate some numbers here, but it should be about accurate. Sample looked, smelled and tasted pretty great.

7/11/15: Alright, been 2 and a half months since the last update on this. Honestly, we've been fairly confused by the progress of it in terms of smell and flavor. It carbonated well, looks great and has an absolutely perfect feel for the style, but the flavor felt too... green. Which is weird because IPAs probably can't be "too fresh"... or can they? According to an employee at Trillium, you should wait about a week or two after bottling to enjoy something like their Congress Street or Fort Point ales, as the fresh hop flavor is just raw and unrefined. We tested this theory and it has held up to be pretty much true. My personal experiences with Trillium's hoppy ales have been "meh" at best when ultra-fresh (day or two from bottling date), but much better after some time has passed. So, what does that have to do with this IPA? Well, it kinda didn't taste great when we first bottled this version. The previous version was fantastic after a week, but this clearly needed some time. Fresh, it was rife with plastic-y notes and, though we constantly joke about off-flavors or weird notes "conditioning out", we didn't know how truly correct that would be with this. I mean, here I am like 3 months later drinking half a bottle, and I'm amazed at what it's gone through. Gone are the strange and awkward quirks, and we now have an IPA that's come into its own. The nose is pine-forward with some bright fruitiness and light citrus. There's some strawberry, lime and orange notes, but on the tongue, I get a decent hit of carbonation before a one-two punch of citrus (lime, orange, grapefruit) and cereal grains providing a strong counterpoint. Bitterness is prominent, as it should be, but gone are the plastic flavors and in their stead are tropical notes (pineapple, guava and even coconut are popping out here and there) and excellent pine-y dryness. This has opened up a whole hell of a lot, to be honest. I might eventually change the recipe to have a more dense dry-hop again, though, and we'll just prepare for immense loss. Sacrificing to the hop gods is a fairly worthy cause, after all. Until next time.

9/4/15: Just cracked another bomber of this to test how it's developing and if it's still good. The answer is yes, it's quite great! Nose is still lemon, lime, pine and strawberry. Palate is rife with bright fruit, drying pine and a crackery malt backbone. Still very bitter; it's all holding up really well. Surprised it didn't gush either, though this was poured from a bomber, not a 12 ounce bottle.