Beyond the Stars NE IPA

From distilled water:
CaCl2 (Calcium Chloride) - 7 grams (1.6 tsp)
CaSO4 (Gypsum) - .5 grams - (.1 tsp)
Epsom Salt - 4 grams (.9 tsp)

Fermentation Notes:
Will start at 68F for first 3 days then will dry hop round 1 and let rise to 70-71F for remainder of fermentation dry hopping rd 2 on day 7 and sampling / checking gravity. Will likely use hop bags due to lots of hop trub. Will also cold crash this batch.

Fail #1 - I forgot to pull the yeast smackpack out of the fridge in advance, so at brew start I put upstairs (where it's generally 80) and let it inflate for 4-5 hours.

1. Used distilled water and added salts as described, mash went well and temps stayed right around 152 in the water, around 156 if I put the thermometer in the grain near the bottom. Stirred every 15 mins and checked temps until mash ended. Pulled bag and let drip before squeezing and moving into a pot. Let drain longer and poured that wort while I heated to boil.
   
   
2. Started boil and hopped as listed. Finished boil and cooled with an immersion chiller to 160. I targeted 170 but it cools fast so I went with 160 to Hop Stand using a hop bag for 30 mins.
   
   
3. I continued cooling to 80 which is about as low as it'll go and transferred via ball valve and tube into my fermenter. I pulled a sample and took a gravity reading which was right on 1.066.
   
   Fail #2 - I forgot to insert the pickup tube in my ss brewtech mini so that sucked but didn't feel like risking oxidization by messing with it. I'll filter it on the way out...
   
   
4. I placed my fermenter in my chamber and cooled to about 67 then pitched my inflated smack pack that sat out for about 5 hours before pitching.
   
   Fail #3 - I made another process error and didn't shake the fermenter to aerate. What can I say, it was 1:30am. I realized this the next morning and shook.
   
   
5. I left town overnight and came back, fermentation is going and blow off tube in sani water jug is bubbling away. Dry hop 1 will happen tomorrow night 3 days in.
   
   
6. Dry Hop 1 went will using a hop bag and stainless spoon to push bag through krausen layer to try and sink it. I raised the ferm temp to 70-71 for remaining ferm.
   
   
7. At 7 days I dropped Dry Hop 2 via sani'd bag, and took a sample gravity reading which read 1.014, which was about 5 points lower than brewer's friend had expected. At this point I dropped the temp to 41 to cold crash and left for 2 days.
   
   
8. After cleaning, sanitizing, and co2 purging the keg, I transferred from the SS mini using spigot + tubing and filtered through a sanitized muslin bag to catch any hop debris. I clogged the keg last time so was not going to do that again. I also put a screen on the dip tube in the keg to prevent clogging.
   
   
9. After a very easy transfer, as all hop trub clumped at bottom, I put pressurized and purged the keg again to seal the lid and set at 2.3 CO2 vols for set and forget method. I pulled a sample and did another reading, and as expected, it was 1.014 meaning it was complete.
   
   Upon initial sample, it was pretty aromatic although not as much as I expected. It has very low bitterness and is very smooth. I'll be excited to try once fully carbonated to see if this came out as Juicy as expected. I really don't like dry hopping in bags, but since last time I lost so much beer/wort to hop trub and also had keg clogging issues, I decided to try it this time. One additional thing it may have helped with is reducing bitterness from the wort/beer not sitting on hop trub for so long. The last batch had a huge amount of trub that was transferred into the keg which I believe increased aroma, but impacted overall bitterness and taste.
   
   Tasting Updates: Beer is smooth but has a bit of a yeasty / alcoholic taste. My belief is that this came from forgetting the yeast aeration step as well as only fermenting for a week before cold crashing. Other than that beer is decent and has notes of grapefruit, faint banana, light citrus. For the aeration issue, I bought an aeration pump kit.