Brewed: Dogfish Head 60-ish Minute IPA

Continuing my kick of brewing IPAs that can’t be bought locally, I brewed up a batch of Dogfish Head 60 minute IPA this weekend. There’s a massive thread on homebrewtalk.com started by Yooper documenting a homebrew recipe for this beer, and while it’s a bit strong, there should be enough malt in this beer to back up the hop charge. Dogfish lists this at 6.0% ABV, whereas the clone recipe clocks in around 6.8%. Though my beers tend to attenuate really well,  I’m hoping I don’t see over 7%.

Let’s start with the grist for this beer:

• 13# US two-row
• 6oz Thomas Fawcett Amber malt

Very simple grist, but do not sub any medium crystal for this amber malt and expect the same results. I special ordered a few pounds because Northern Brewer doesn’t carry it, and this malt is very distinct.

The hops are nothing unusual for an IPA, but instead of a more conventional 60 minute bittering, 20 minute flavor, 10/5/0 minute aroma additions, all of the hop additions are added continuously throughout the 60 minute boil. I chose to add half the bittering addition at 60, and added the remainder up to 35 minutes. I then mixed the Amarillo and Simcoe and added those continuously from 35 minutes until flameout. It was a looong time to stand there and idly pitch in a couple hop pellets per minute, so I’m excited to see what the end result will be.

I don’t brew beers this big very often, so I tend to forget my efficiency drops off a bit and missed my pre-boil gravity by 6 points. That was easily corrected by boiling for 15 minutes before I started pitching hops, technically making this a 75-minute IPA if we’re splitting hairs. At the end of the day, I ran off about 5.1 gallons at 1.069, which was right on the money. I hit it with 45 seconds of oxygen and tucked it away in the fermentation fridge.

DFH 60-ish Minute IPA

Notes

• 2014.05.09 : Made a 1000mL starter with wort pulled from a fresh batch of Tale of a Blonde
• 2014.05.10 : Crashed starter in fridge
• 2014.05.17 : Brewed early afternoon. first warm, dry day in weeks. Chilled just shy of 5.25 gallons to 68, oxygenated, pitched decanted starter of 1056 and set fridge to 66°F
• 2014.05.22: Dry hopped with 1oz Amarillo, .5oz Simcoe
• 2014.05.29: Gravity stable at 1.012, which puts this batch at 7.48% ABV. Yeast dropped out like a billion tiny rocks 3 days ago. Kegged up, and now we wait.

Brewed: Stone IPA Clone

Looking over my brew log, it’s evident that I’ve brewed and drank more batches of Bells Two Hearted clones in the last year than I care to admit, so I’m making a solid effort this year to have an IPA on tap at all times that I can’t source locally. For the first round, I found Edwort’s Stone IPA clone on homebrewtalk and adjusted the percentages for a 6 gallon batch.

As a side note, being a craft beer guy in North Dakota is not much fun. Amazingly, a liquor store just across the river stocks Surly, but in small quantities, and forget about special releases unless you can leave work at odd hours and stand in line. You can basically forget about anything interesting from either of the coasts. I have to drive 225 miles before I find a store that carries Stone. The last time I was in Minneapolis, I bought a few bottles each of their Pale Ale, IPA, Ruination, and Arrogant Bastard, all of which I enjoyed, so it seemed like a good starting point.

Beautiful cold break with the 50 degree ground water we’re still enjoying. I named this batch Iron Ranger because the color reminded me of the red hills in northern Minnesota.

Iron Ranger

Notes

• 2013.04.13 : made a 1.25L starter and put on the stirplate
• 2014.04.14 : Brewed by myself. Lower than expected lauter efficiency, so I upped the boil time to get up to the expected SG. Collected 5.5 gallons of 1.065 wort into the fermenter. Oxygenated for 60 seconds and left in the fermentation chamber at 65°
• 2013.04.18 : Fermentation slowing down. Temp bumped to 68°
• 2013.04.21 : Krausen settled out nearly completely. Added dry hops. Gravity down to 1.010.

Brewed – Dead Ringer

As far as IPA recipes go, Northern Brewer’s Dead Ringer kit is as straightforward as they come. NB has been sold out of Centennial hops for some time now, so I was sent 5 ounces of “Centennial-Type” hops from Hop Union. There’s a brief writeup found on the NB blog explaining that these are 70% Cascade, 30% Columbus. Substitutions notwithstanding, this was a pretty relaxed brewday for me.

With groundwater temps in the low 70s, I was again forced to knock out around 85° and throw the sealed fermenter in the fridge to cool before pitching. Actually, it’s still in the fridge on it’s way to 64°; I’ll most likely pitch in the morning, so I’m calling this Two-Parted on account of my brewday and pitch being non-contiguous.

The grist for this batch is 11# two-row, 1# crystal 40L. I love the color of this wort:

Sometime in the future I’d like to do a split batch of this grain bill and brew half with all Centennial (actual Centennial) hops, and half with all Columbus. Right now, I’m intent on building up my pipeline a bit again and getting my kegorator filled with beer I want to drink for the next few months. Fall is always a busy time at our house, and I spend most of my weekends chasing pheasants with my dog.

Two-Parted

• Batch Size: 5.5 gallons
• Total Grist: 12 pounds
• O.G: 1.060
• F.G:
• Brewhouse Efficiency: 75%
• Boil Time: 60 minutes

Fermentables

• 11# US Two-row
• 1# Crystal 40L

Hops

• .75oz Hop Union Centennial-type @ 60m
• 1oz Hop Union Centennial-type @ 20 m
• 2oz Hop Union Centennial-type @ 5 m

Other

• Irish Moss – 1tsp @ 15 minutes remaining

Notes

2012/08/05 – Brewed late-afternoon. Knocked out 5.5 gallons at 85°.  Fermenter went into the fridge about 8pm to chill to pitching temps. Was still at 77° at 11:30pm, so I left it to chill to 64° overnight.

2012/08/06 – Wort given 60 seconds of oxygen; Decanted and pitched a 1600mL starter.

Brewed – Belgian Blonde

So, my first 10-gallon brewday was by and large unremarkable. It was a bit odd heating up a volume of strike water that’s closer to my normal pre-boil volume than anything else, but unfamililiar territory aside, I hit my mash numbers on the button and ran off 12.75 gallons of 1.053 wort, which put me at 89% efficiency coming out of the tun. Not at all bad considering the grist was 40% wheat. Rice hulls? We don’t need no stinking rice hulls. I continue to be happy with the new manifold I built, and the mill that I bought earlier this year.

Since the handle rivets leak on my 15.5 gallon pot, I decided to wing the second half of the brewday and boil in my keggle for the first time. I had only a rough idea what the boiloff rate would be, so I chose to err on the high side, expecting something close to or a little less than my other pot. Instead, I ended up with 11, but I was still a hair above the target O.G for this recipe (1.059 vs 1.057 expected at 75% efficiency for 10 gallons). So, everything went great up until the point when I turned off the flame and started chilling.

I’ve never had a problem dropping 5 gallon batches to pitching temps mid-summer with my 25′ copper immersion chiller, but I hit a wall with this volume around 95° and short of watering my entire lawn, it was clear I wasn’t going to make any substantial progress toward pitching temps in a reasonable amount of time, so I knocked out into two carboys and threw them in the fridge to chill further while I headed out to run errands.

I should have a temp controller built for my fermentation fridge in a few weeks, but I don’t see any more 10 gallon batches in my future until I can figure out what I want to do in terms of a pump, kettle fittings, and how I need to modify my wort chilling to make that process quicker in the few warm months we get. I’d love to go with a plate or counterflow chiller, but I don’t like what happens to my hop utilization using mesh bags, and I use pellet hops almost exclusively, so I have some pros and cons to weigh, and probably some more DIY in my future.

As for this batch, I’m going to keg 5 gallons after a good cold crash and drink it fresh while summer is still here. I’m thinking I’ll split the remainder and experiment with some brief aging on fruit.

Belgian Blonde Fruit Insanity Thing

• Batch Size: 11 gallons
• Total Grist: 20.5 pounds
• O.G: 1.058
• F.G: 1.011
• Brewhouse Efficiency: 85%
• Boil Time: 60 minutes

Fermentables

• 10# US Two-row
• 8# Wheat Malt
• 1# Crystal 10L
• 1# Flaked Wheat
• 8oz Caravienne

Hops

• 2oz Willamette @ 60m (not bagged)

Notes

2012/07/08 – Brewed early-afternoon. Knocked out 11 gallons at 90°.  Fermenters went into the fridge and chilled for about 4 hours until pitching. Carboys were shook for 3 minutes each to aerate and a 2000mL starter was split between the two carboys. Fermented in a cold-water bath at ~68-70°

2012/07/23 – Fermenters moved to fridge to cold-crash

2012/07/27 – Racked 6 gallons of beer onto 5# frozen strawberries in a bucket fermenter. Bucket went back into the fridge.

2012/07/30 – Broke down and pulled a sample. Nice strawberrie notes, racked to keg.

2012/07/31 – Bled pressure and reset to 8 PSI. Fridge at 34°

2012/08/06 – Really refreshing brew. Stoked with how the first keg came out.

EdWort’s Apfelwein

After a string of successful hop-tastic beers, I decided to broaden my horizons a bit and put something more wife-friendly on tap in the basement, so it was time to experiment with hard cider.

This is a HomeBrewTalk favorite, and it’s incredibly simple to make. All it takes is 5 gallons of 100% apple juice, 2 pounds of dextrose, and a packet of wine yeast. The end result is dangerously drinkable for 8.5% ABV. It’s wine-like, but at the same time, not. I really didn’t know what to expect from something like this, nor do I find myself able to explain it in a way that does it justice, so I’ll just cut to a quick rundown of how to make your own. These are EdWort’s instructions more or less verbatim: Read more →