Brauerei Hermanski: British IPA

Brewing

Sat. 15 June 2013

It’s summer, I needed an IPA in my rotation and we had a free weekend. Alita went out with her friends to the Farmer’s market and I had the house and kitchen to myself.

I went with Jamil’s recipe from Brewing Classic Styles:

OG: 1.062 (15.2 op)

FG: 1.015 (4.0 op)

ADF: 74%

lBU: 50

Color: 11 SRM (22 EBC)

Alcohol: 6.2% ABV (4.8% ABW)

Boil: 60 minutes

Pre-Boil Volume: 7 gallons (26.5L)

Pre-Boil Gravity: 1.053 (13.0 op)

Ex:tract

English Pale Ale LME 8.7 lb

Wheat LME 0.5 lb

Steeping Grains

Biscuit 0.5 lb

Crystal(40 L) 0.5 lb

Crystal (120 °L) 0.5 lb

Hops

Chalenger 8.2% AA, 60 min.

Goldings 5.5% AA, 10 min.

Goldings 5.5% AA, 0 min.

Danstar Dry Yeast

The 10 min hops were supposed to be Fuggles, but the homebrew store did not have any. I also used John Palmers technique of splitting the malt extract into two pots. I only boiled the 2^nd pot for 20 minutes. I put the 10-minute and flameout hops in the 2^nd pot. According to my refractometer I overshot the starting gravity with a 1.073. I also put in the extra 0.5 oz of Challenger at 35 minutes because what I am going to do with a half-ounce of opened hops?

For yeast I went with a dry yeast because I did not have time to make a starter. The yeast was going in about six hours.

Bottling

 Sun. 28 July 2013

As part of this bottling session I cleaned the labels off a series of bottles. Odels and Deschutes emerged as my favorite bottles – the labels come off easily and the bottles are normal sized. Runners-up for me were New Belgium and Sam Adams – the labels came off easy - but the bottles are less ideal.

I got 44 bottles total. The beer finished at 1.017 for a final ABV of 7.7%.

Results

This came out malty with most of the hop flavor in the background. I think the 120 L crystal malt adds a nice complexity. It’s definitely more British than American. It might also show some temperature swings that resulted in my wife taking over the chest freezer that I used for fermentation temperature control.  Overall I'm going to be rather enjoying this one.