Leftover IIPA

[ezraburke]

To round off the year we're putting together an IIPA with the leftovers from our batch. Next year we'll start with a Rye IPA and a fresh set of ideas. Going for a high mash temp (68oC) and 65min mash with this lot. Expecting this to be a big, piney and dank mess.

Oh, and we'll probably have a mashtun to use for this as well - no need for BIAB any more! (pics as the day happens).

Welcoming any comments on subtractions from this recipe.
______________________________________________________

Title: Leftovers

Brew Method: BIAB
Style Name: Imperial IPA
Boil Time: 60 min
Batch Size: 10 liters (ending kettle volume)
Boil Size: 14 liters
Boil Gravity: 1.080
Efficiency: 70% (ending kettle)

STATS:
Original Gravity: 1.113
Final Gravity: 1.022
ABV (standard): 11.84%
IBU (tinseth): 102.12
SRM (morey): 17.61

FERMENTABLES:
3.5 kg - United Kingdom - Maris Otter Pale (69%)
424 g - Flaked Wheat (8.4%)
250 g - German - CaraHell (4.9%)
250 g - United Kingdom - Crystal 60L (4.9%)
250 g - United Kingdom - Malted Naked Oats (4.9%)
100 g - German - Carapils (2%)
100 g - Belgian - Special B (2%)
200 g - Corn Sugar - Dextrose (3.9%)

HOPS:
52.38 g - Citra, Type: Pellet, AA: 11, Use: Boil for 45 min, IBU: 102.12
20 g - Cascade, Type: Pellet, AA: 7, Use: Boil for 0 min
80 g - Columbus, Type: Pellet, AA: 15, Use: Dry Hop for 2 days
86 g - Chinook, Type: Pellet, AA: 13, Use: Dry Hop for 4 days
139.88 g - Simcoe, Type: Leaf/Whole, AA: 12.7, Use: Dry Hop for 10 days

MASH GUIDELINES:
1) Fly Sparge, Temp: 68 C, Time: 65 min, Amount: 8.3 L

YEAST:
Fermentis / Safale - American Ale Yeast US-05

 

[rodabod]

Looks fun.

I've not brewed a DIPA myself, but Mitch Steele reckons that if you want to brew it "to style" then it shouldn't have a lot of malt to obstruct the hops coming through. However, I've tried examples that fit that bill (Brewdog Hardcore IPA for example) and I'm not a massive fan. I like how yours is more of a double-everything IPA.

I also like how you've added the flaked wheat to add body. Again, a lot of DIPAs seem to be aiming to having less body and just intense hops, but I think that sounds good.

You've got quite a lot of caramel malts going on there, so make sure you pitch plenty of healthy yeast so that it attenuates as well as possible, or you'll end up with sweet syrup. You might not even need to mash that high.

 

[ezraburke]

Cheers Rod, Hardcore IPA is a good example of the kind of DIPA I enjoy (although, that said it's not the be all and end all). We'll get a starter going i think. The mashtun is under construction tonight so I'll get a good look at it's heat retention capability, we may end up not mashing that high.

My understanding is the higher mash temp will give us more body - i really want that chunky mouthfeel for this one, hence the wheat.

 

[Covrich]

Goodluck

11.8%!? You do love your ultra strenght beers don't you? :lol:

Not desirable to me.. I prefer around the 5% mark give or take a % so I can enjoy a few in an evening..

 

[rodabod]

I guess it's worth remembering that for example, this is still weaker than most wines, and I can quite easily polish off a few glasses of wine in a night. With beer, I tend to stick to lighter stuff and then later on go for something intense which is often a lot stronger.

 

[ezraburke]

I'm actually the opposite - i start with one big beer then go lighter. The big one is usually full of flavours i want to be able to taste and enjoy, then something lighter and less bold.

 

[clibit]

I think you can have intense at lower ABVs. I've never gone over 8% myself with any I've brewed.

 

[ezraburke]

Brewday was uneventful, although we learned a valuable lesson in multi-tasking as we decided to bottle up our last brew at the same time. Top tip: don't do more than one thing at once, it gets confusing.

Paul helpfully prepped all the ingredients (fermentables and hops) and we fired water up to about 76oC for strike. Usually it would be 72oC for strike but the new mashtun absorbs heat rather well (keeps it in too) so higher strike to hit the 68oC mash temp.

Mash was completely ordinary, the tun held heat well. Fired up about 5L of sparge water to a higher temp to wash the grains out. Mash time up at an hour and then onto sparging/lautering. We discovered that the filter didn't exactly... filter. Filter came out and we allowed grain and wort to flow freely out of the tun into an empty FV. Used the voile BIAB bag over our seive to catch the grains and filter them out - definitely a stroke of genius on our part.

The whole sparge/lauter process took about half an hour and then we cracked on with the boil. Again, completely uneventful with hop additions going well. Finished up with whirlpool and cooldown.

Added whirlfloc tablet a little late but hopefully it will still do its job.

To dispose of trub as best as possible we poured the kettle over the voile BIAB bag and seive combo into the empty FV before pitching the yeast.

OG came in at 1.061, considerably under our target OG and showing considerable brewhouse inefficiency. In hindsight we should not have added all of the strike water to the mashtun as the additional water we then used to wash the grain clearly thinned the wort out. Again, like our last water mistake (which, as we bottled i tasted and it tastes fantastic) we could have boiled this down but we felt that the cons outweighed the pros.

These are lessons learned and in the grand scheme of things it was a good brewday.

We have tentatively titled this brew:

HODOR.

Labels to follow!

 

[clibit]

I suspect to get a brew that's 11% you need to either use purely the first runnings or add malt extract in the FV. Or boil for hours!

You could add dried malt extract now if you wanted. I've found partial mash beers where DME is combined with an all grain wort to be pretty indistinguishable from AG brews - especially where loads of hops are used.

 

[rodabod]

I always purge a litre or so of boiling water in my mash tun before filling it. This warms the walls and the insulation. I also leave a k-type thermocouple dangling in the mash so I can monitor temperature in the centre. The cable fits underneath the mash tun lid. Stirring half-way helps efficiency too, I find.

Definitely possible to hit an 11% brew, even with sparging to help efficiency, but agree that adding DME would make things easier and allow for better efficiency by sparging further.

 

[Covrich]

Yeah, you're getting 30% odd efficiency.. I think you're being too ambitious.. I would agree on the dme though. I did a partial mash which was blonde earlier this year 50/50 on malt and dme and it was fanstatic, maybe that is your best solution if you're going to only make very high strength stuff. you could hit your gravity with less malt and a higher efficiency then top it up with dme.

 

[rodabod]

This is the sort of thing I'd recommend for your mash, if you don't have something similar already:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/K-Type-th...931769?hash=item25990379b9:g:t0UAAOSwl8NVZr2~

 

[ezraburke]

Cheers guys. The thing is we've hit good efficiency before but we change our techniques pretty much every brew so it's all a learning curve.

Next year we're hoping to repeat the Pliny Clone (which turned out fantastic!) as well as the Black IPA so we'll get these down pat.

 

[clibit]

To use that much grain to get 10 litres of beer at 1061 is absurd tbh. You could get 1061 with half the amount of grain. Then add DME.

Or, make two beers. The grain you used had a load of sugars left behind in it - you could have sparged again and made another beer, probably similar strength.

 

[rodabod]

You could get 1061 with half the amount of grain. Then add DME.

Makes me think it's likely there was a temperature issue. I'm not sure how you could get efficiency that low otherwise. I've pushed water/grist ratio about as far as you can go (barely stirrable), and you still get decent efficiency.