Discovery IPA

Name: Discovery IPA
Style: American India Pale Ale
Source: Original recipe for the malts. Hop schedule used everything I had on hand.

Round two        Round three         Round four   Round five

Stats

Brewed: 9/12/2012
Racked: 9/24/2012
Bottled: 10/1/2012
Opened: 10/19/2012

Original Gravity:        1.065 (according to recipe)
Final Gravity:             1.016
Hydrometer ABV:     6.4%
Color:                        6.7 SRM
IBU                            61

Recipe    (5 gallons)

2lbs 8oz  Pale 2 Row Malt
8oz         Crystal 20 Malt
8oz         Vienna Malt
4oz         Biscuit Malt
4oz         White Wheat Malt

6 lbs   Light Liquid Malt Extract (25 minutes)

.50 oz Columbus (14% AAU) – 60 minutes
.38 oz Galena [12.50 %] –  60 minutes
.38 oz Northern Brewer [9.00 %] – 30 minutes
.13 oz Willamette (5.5% AAU) – 30 minutes
.25 oz Cascade (5.5% AAU) – 15 minutes
.25 oz Columbus (14% AAU) – 0 minutes

.35 oz Cascade (5.5% AAU) – Dry hop for 7 days
.25 oz Columbus (14% AAU) – Dry hop for 7 days

Yeast:  WLP001 California Ale

Other:
1 tsp Irish Moss at 10 minutes
Pinch of yeast nutrient at 10 minutes

The rest of the story

I wanted to brew an IPA for my final brew down here in San Diego. The bitter profile of an IPA was something I never cared for previously, but I have come to appreciate the style after visiting and tasting my way through all the great San Diego craft breweries. American IPA is a very popular style right now, and the local brews have a wide variety of flavors, with some versions really pushing the envelope of hop bitterness.

After tasting many good local brews, I have come to feel that an IPA with an IBU count of between 60 and 70 is the sweet spot for me. No question that the hops are there, but at that level they don’t overwhelm the malts to become just hop juice. Of course you can increase the malt and alcohol level to balance things out (spawning the “Double IPA”), but that isn’t really what I was looking for. I set out to brew a well balanced beer with an alcohol level that didn’t prevent you from enjoying a second bottle.

After tasting some of the beers from the Brew Your Own Magazine’s 250 Classic Clone Recipes, and comparing them to the clone recipes, I began to get a small sense of how the different malts contributed to the overall flavor. The Deshutes Inversion IPA is one of my favorites, but it is more malty than I was looking for this time around, so I substituted a lighter Vienna for the suggested Munich malt, and also cut the amount in half. I also went with the lower roasted Crystal Malt that was included in other, lighter malted IPA recipes.

You don’t usually find Biscuit Malt in IPA recipes, but I added in a little to get some drier, bready/biscuity flavor to balance against the sweeter Vienna. I also added some White Wheat found in Racer 5 IPA to add to the body and head retention. I had no idea how these grains would work together, but the combination and amounts just sort of felt right in my head.

The hop schedule is another story. Since I am moving back north in a month or so, it didn’t make much sense to buy more hops and try to keep them cool during the three or four day drive. I just used what I had left over from past recipes and tried to arrange them in a way that made sense. I used the stronger Columbus and Galena hops for the main bittering addition at the start of the boil, the spicier, piney Northern Brewer and Willamette hops for the flavor addition at 30 minutes, and the more floral, citrusy Cascade for the aroma addition at 15 minutes. I added in more Columbus at the end of the boil, and paired it up with Cascade for the dry hopping.

I had no idea how they would all work together. With this number of varieties from different regions, it was possible to either produce a well rounded profile, or end up with a completely muddy flavor with no one character standing out. I just hoped that they would play well together.

Brew day went pretty well, hitting the marks on temperatures and timing. I made a 1.5 quart yeast starter again, and it had been going for about 12 hours when I added it into the wort. I did a larger 4.5 gallon boil, but left more of the settled trub and cold break material in the pot this time, so I added at least a gallon of water to bring the carboy up to 5 gallons. Unfortunately, I repeated the mistake of not mixing the wort well enough before taking a gravity sample. The sample read 1.034, which is so far off target as to be meaningless. Still learning.

I was more aggressive with the ice packs in managing the fermentation temperature after cooking the Gluten Free batches. I had my work cut out for me since we had a spell of days where we cracked 100 degrees. I did pretty well keeping it cool, and fortunately the California yeast tolerates a higher temperature than the British yeast of the last batch.

When the yeast ferment the sugars into alcohol and CO2, a nice foamy head (krausen) develops in the carboy. This usually puffs up to an inch or two thick, and then settles out after things slow down on day three. This time around, the krausen was really thick and gummy, and it just kept growing like some goo in a 50’s horror film. At one point I stuck in a sanitized turkey baster to break through it, and the venting helped a bit, but it just sealed up the hole and kept coming. I tried again the next day, but it would not be held back.

The foam eventually made it into the airlock. Fortunately, I had just switched to having vodka rather than water in the airlock, so I don’t think there was any infection concern. I swapped it out for a blow off tube since it didn’t seem to be slowing down. Usually, a blow over only happens in the first couple of days when the yeast are the most active, but it was still advancing on day seven. To the internet I went.

Most all of the advice fell into the Relax, don’t worry, have a homebrew camp, but it sounds like recipes with wheat in them not only provide good body and head in the finished beer, but also in the fermenting wort. It was recommended that you gently spin and rock the carboy back and forth to break up the krausen and loosen its grip on the glass. I did this a several times over the next few days, and it eventually calmed down, though it never went away or settled out entirely.

I left it in the primary for a longer than my typical seven days, partly because of the gummy foam, but also because I wanted to give it plenty of time on the yeast cake to ferment out. The Paradise Summer Ale ended up being over-carbonated, and it is possible that it was because the beer wasn’t completely done fermenting before I moved it to the bottles. Heat may have also been an issue, but this was another big beer with lots of healthy yeast from the starter, so I wanted to give it more time.

I racked to the secondary on day 12, and added the dry hops. Normally, you would add a bit more than I did, but that was all I had left in the house. I left the beer in the secondary for another week and bottled on October 1st. The final gravity was within a point of the recipe target, so hopefully the carbonation will be better this time around. After I finished bottling, I took a taste of the chilled sample. It didn’t have much of a hop aroma, but they are definitely in evidence when you taste it. Tastes pretty well balanced at this point, but definitely has an IPA bite. So far so good.

—

I opened up one of the bottles at the two week mark. I typically wait at least three weeks before passing judgement (and letting others taste it), but I am still curious how the beers develop over time. Generally at two weeks, the sweet, homebrew flavor is more prominent, but begins to fade after another week or two of bottle conditioning.

The IPA seemed farther along at the two week mark than any of my previous brews. The extra time in the carboys may have given it a head start on the cleaning up and conditioning process (who knows). The IPA was pretty smooth and well-balanced. It wasn’t quite as bitter as I had expected, and the small amount of dry hops did not give it much aroma, but over all it tasted like a fine beer. Looking forward to seeing what happens after another week or two.

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The IPA had not changed significantly at week three. It was a bit more carbonated, but most everything else seemed about the same. As I mentioned, it did not seemed as strongly hopped as I expected. It feels a bit like it is caught between a pale ale and an IPA, but overall it is a clean, satisfying beer. Definitely worth a rebrew.

For next time – Though the grain bill was not particularly malty, it seems substantial enough to balance some of the hop flavor. Next time I brew this one, I will bump up the IBU’s to around 70, and will focus in on one or two hops, rather than the kitchen sink approach of this one.