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| American-grown grain and hops, English ale yeast. |
So what did I brew on America Day? An American Pale Ale? A crappy, rice and corn mashed pilsner? A bourbon barrel stout? None of the above, but a single-hop double IPA using a proprietary Hopunion hop; an American craft beer-style super-hopped IPA, bigger and bolder like everything else in the US. I found the original recipe here, where Hopunion implies that they give a new recipe every month, but this has been up since February 2013. As I brew in gallon batches I adjusted the original recipe to my needs, and then when I purchased the grains I increased the base 2-Row Pale Malt grains from 2.4 lbs to 3.0 lbs because I wanted to make a stronger beer. I prepared my recipe the night before so when I went to brew I was ready. However, I remembered the suggestions from the Beer Craft 1-gallon homebrewing book for turning a pale ale into an IPA, then into a double IPA, so while I mashed the grains I modified my recipe on the fly, increasing the sparge amount and boil time, as well as the hop amounts.
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| Look at that glorious mash! |
The mash went well but I overshot striking the water so I had to add ice and cold water to bring the mash temperature down to an acceptable range. After about 5 minutes it came down to 154°F so I put it in the oven that was preheated to 155°F. At the first 15-minute temperature check the mash had dropped to 148°F, so I put it on the stove on high heat and in 5 minutes brought it to 154°F; then it went back in the oven. I left the oven on and at the 30-minute temperature check the mash was at 158°F. Another 3/4 C of cold water brought it down to 154°F and it went back in the oven. The 45- and 60-minute temperature checks saw a steady measurement of 154°F, and because of the early temperature swings I left it in the oven for an additional 10 minutes, resulting in a 70-minute mash. Then on to the sparge.
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| First runnings on the left, 5 qt of second runnings on the right. |
As I mentioned above, I decided during the mash to more fully develop this recipe into a double IPA, so I increased the sparge from the planned 4 quarts to 5 quarts. Near the end of the mash I began bringing that water to 170°F on high heat and when the mash ended I increased its temperature to 170°F to stop the starch conversion. When the mash hit 170°F I strained out the first runnings while the sparge water rose to 170°F. When that was ready I steeped the grains in bag in the sparge water for 10 minutes then strained out the second runnings and mixed the two putting the combined pre-wort on to boil.
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| Heat break! Time to start the boil timer and add hops. |
With hops weighed out and the wort at a rolling boil, I started the timer. My decision to turn this recipe in a double IPA came during the mash, not when I was planning my brewing the night before, so I had to adjust the hop addition times on the fly, and changed them severally throughout the boil when I saw that I might end up with too much wort at boil's end. My goal is to have roughly 5 quarts of chilled mash to pour into the fermenter. Of course I'll miss some of the sugars I extract during the mash and sparge, but I want to avoid having to strain out too much of the hops and sediment, so I don't mind leaving behind a pint or so of wort. I didn't add the first hops until 10 minutes into the boil because I didn't want too much bitterness, but this was a gut feeling rather than any scientifically based decision, and I'm ok with that. I first stretched the boil to 75 minutes, and halfway through that time I realized I was going to have to boil it for upwards of 90 minutes to bring the volume down to 4-5 quarts of wort. I waffled with 80-minute and 85-minute worts, changing the hop schedule with every choice, and settled on an 85-minute boil but could have gone as far as 90-minute and still have enough wort for the fermenter.
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| Look at those hoppity hops weighed out to be added to a rolling boil. |
I increased the hops additions per the Craft Beer book suggestions for a double IPA. The original recipe, downsized for 1-gallon brewing, called for a total of 1.4 oz Zythos hops, 1 oz of which went into the boil and the other 0.4 oz was to be used for dry-hopping. I bumped the boil hop additions to 1.4 oz, and the dry hop to 0.6 oz, using the full 2 oz I bought for this recipe. I weighed out the boil hops when I put the wort on to boil so they'd be ready to go when I needed them.
The Zythos hop strain is a proprietary development of Hopunion. As described on their website:
“Zythos is a customized IPA/Pale Ale style pellet blend designed to embody the powerful tradition and unique aroma characteristics required in premium craft brews. While the unique flavors and aromas of our proprietary varieties cannot be duplicated or replaced, we at Hopunion, along with our growers, recognize the need to supply more of the distinct varieties and exceptional aroma characteristics craft brewers have become accustomed to. Zythos is not a replacement for proprietary varieties, but rather a premium pellet blend designed to complement existing IPA/Pale Ale lineups. Zythos can be used as a single hop addition or as a compliment to current inventories, imparting distinct tropical (pineapple) and citrus tones with slight pine characteristics.”
I used 2 oz total in my 1-gallon batch, so this will be one hoppy sucker. With a 10.9 AA%, this should have a bitter bite, and after racking it I can ensure it will also have a nice hoppy aroma.
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| Sanitized water ready to rehydrate the yeast. |
Yeast rehydration again went well so nothing to say about that. But I think the general warmth of the day slowed the cooling of the 1/2 C boiled water and it plateaued around 105°F so I had to sit it in a small ice water bath to bring it down to 90°F for appropriate yeast hydration.
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| OG reading of 1.071. |
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| Chilled wort in the fermenter with pitched yeast. Hydrometer sample taken. |
After chilling the wort to 68°F I poured it into the fermenter through a strainer and funnel and pitched the rehydrated yeast, taking a hydrometer sample for gravity measurement before the pitch. I fixed the bung, blow off tube and bottle and noticed a strange stratification of the wort, like nothing I've seen before. In the above image one can see four layers; from the top: light-colored wort; sediment and likely gelatinized irish moss; darker wort; and more sediment and irish moss. Even though I poured through a strainer, I bet there were hops pieces in there, and the irish moss was doing it's thing but was more noticeable in this second use because the previous batch was a black ale. Within a few hours the two sediment/moss layers had become one at the bottom of the fermenter and the wort above was a uniformly darker mixture of the two earlier wort layers. By the time primary fermentation started, the sediment layer had settled to the bottom of the fermenter, as seen in the below image.
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| Primary fermentation in action! |
Primary fermentation was so active that it pushed a non-neglible amount of wort out through the blow off tube into the bottle, which is a bummer when also considering the thick layer of trub. This stage took place at 80+°F, and was done in about 24 hours. I didn't take a hydrometer reading to see if fermentation had indeed ended as that's 6 oz of beer I can't get back, so I trust that it ended when all the sugar was consumed and not before. I worried about a premature end to primary fermentation with this batch because I placed the fermenter in a bath of water that might have been a little too cold, although the fermometer read in the mid-60s °F, a perfectly appropriate temperature range for ale fermentation. I stopped in and talked to one of the proprietors of Warehouse Beverage in Lyndhurst, OH, and he felt that fermenting in 80+°F probably just sped up primary fermentation but that I wouldn't know for sure unless I took a hydrometer reading. I explained to him my reasons for not wanting to do so but hearing the "warmer temp, faster primary fermentation" from a much more experienced brewer eased my fears.
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| Primary fermenation pushed some wort into the blow off bottle, nearly filling it, so it needed to be replaced. |
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| Dry hopping with 0.6 oz Zythos hops. |
Five days after pitching the yeast I dry hopped with another 0.6 oz of the Zythos hops, thus using all of the 2 oz I bought for this brewing. I figured, why not? It will only make the beer hoppier, and that's what I'm going for with this batch. I let the hops sit in the fermenting wort for a week and then racked it into a cleaned and sanitized secondary fermenter, careful to not aerate the baby beer. With the racking finished I had just over 3 quarts of beer. This is not desirable. One of the issues is a 1-gallon jug does not produce 1 gallon of final product. To allow for enough head space during the very active primary fermentation, you should not fill a 1-gallon jug past its fill line (as I've experienced). The fill line allows minimal head space and often the blow-off tube is caked with krausen that is blown out during the most active part of primary fermentation. Also, this very active primary fermentation also blows out some of the wort, losing it forever to possible later bottling. The image below shows how much space the trub, settled yeast, and dry hopped hops took up at the bottom of the fermenter. It was about an inch thick, which is a lot of space in the 1-gallon fermenter. Adding this to the nearly 3/4-inch lost from blow out I had at least 1.5 inches less beer than when I pitched the yeast. My usual technique is to boil and cool enough water to top off the fermenter after racking. However, with just over 3 quarts of wort, adding 33% more water to that would thin it out to the detriment of the final product. But with only 3 quarts, I wanted more than what that volume would give me after another couple weeks of aging, so I added enough water to give 3.5 quarts. Yes, I added roughly 16 oz. water to my wort, and this will affect my FG measurement for sure. I was mentally prepared for that and worked out the calculations and measurements needed to get the corrected FG value from my final measurement, but didn't carry that out correctly at racking. I figured for this batch I'll again have an incorrect FG, but it'll have to do until I get this all sorted out. Or until I find a 5-6 qt jug to use as a primary fermenter and can stop fretting about head space and losing wort to blow-off and trub.
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| After a week of dry hopping, the hops settle on top of the trub and the wort is ready to rack. |
The racked, topped-off wort aged in the secondary fermenter for nearly two weeks before bottling it. And when I did it was quite the clear beauty! The irish moss worked to make this one of the most clarified beers I've ever brewed. (The Winter Wheat brewed in January 2013 was somehow amazingly clear, and I did nothing to help that along. I was expecting a hazy wit, but got a clear brew.) I boiled 1 cup of water for a while to sanitize if before measuring out and adding about 19 gm of corn sugar to it. If I had a full gallon of wort to bottle I would have used closer to 22 gm, but with 87% of a gallon I used about 87% of the full call for priming sugar. That solution boiled for a while longer to completely sanitize it and then I cooled it down in a water bath in the sink, changing out the warmed water a few times to keep the bath cold. The bottling equipment and enough cleaned bottles were sanitized and dried, and then bottling began.
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| Aged and clarified wort ready to be mixed with corn sugar solution for bottling. |
First thing's first when bottling is to take a hydrometer sample for FG reading before syphoning the rest of the wort into the cooled sugar solution. I noted above that when I racked and added cooled sanitized water I forgot to take some weight measurements. Being a physicist I was able to back calculate the pre-topped-off wort weight from the added water volume, total volume, and final weight. I needed all this so I could figure out the pre-racked gravity. I'm not too worried that the gravity would have changed much over the two weeks of post-racking aging, and so in my final calculations simply took my FG reading as what it would have been at racking. For me racking to a secondary fermenter is about clarifying the beer and getting rid of as much trub as possible before bottling so as not put that junk into the final product. If and when I brew a barleywine or lagered beer I'll have to think more about what racking to secondary means for the final product, but for now it's not about increasing the FG. I never rack before one week in the primary, rarely before 10 days, and usually at two weeks. Then it ages in the secondary for at least a week or two, depending on when I can find the time to bottle. All that said, the gravity measurement was 1.008, adjusting from the 70°F reading temperature to the 60°F hydrometer calibration temperature gives 1.009, and the adjustment for the added 0.5 quart of water ended with an FG of 1.010. The OG was 1.071, and calculating with the appropriate, non-linear formula that works over all ranges up to higher gravity draughts gives an ABV of 8.39%! That's one heavy beer, and exactly what I was aiming for with this, my first double IPA.
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| Taking FG measurement. Look at that clarified beer! |
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| Close up of the hydrometer reading: FG = 1.008. |
Bottling is another step in the brewing process that I've mastered fairly well and am only tweaking it with every batch. Bottling with the wand is a snap once I mastered using it with the syphon, and putting the empty, clean, sanitized bottles in a 9"x13" pan on a towel on the floor makes clean up a breeze. I knew I was not going to get more than 8 bottles out of the batch, and if I used every last drop from the bottling pot and the hydrometer sample I could have gotten a ninth bottle, but it would have been iffy and maybe not the best example of this brewing. These will sit for at least 2-3 weeks before I try one, and I am looking forward to that day.
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| 8 bottles to condition and drink when it's ready! |
And now the recipe for my first double IPA:
Zythos Indubitably Patriotic Ale
Grain Bill:
3.0 lb American Pale 2-Row Malt
0.25 lb Munich Malt
0.10 lb Crystal 40L Malt
0.10 lb Carapils Malt
Strike 4.3 qt H2O to 163F. Mash in oven for 70 minutes at 153°F. Sparge with 5 qt H2O at 170°F.
85-min Boil:
0.3 oz Zythos hops 10.9 AA% @ 75 min
0.3 oz Zythos hops 10.9 AA% @ 35 min
0.3 oz Zythos hops 10.9 AA% @ 15 min
1/2 tsp Irish Moss @ 15 min
0.5 oz Zythos hops 10.9 AA% @ flameout
Cool to 68°F in an ice bath. Hydrate and pitch 1/2 packet Safale S-04 yeast. Dry hop for 7 days with 0.6 oz Zythos hops 10.9 AA% after primary fermentation. Bottle with 22 gm priming sugar.
And that's that! I expect this brew to keep me company at late summer dinners and into the fall. I'll likely update with a first bottle tasting, so keep an eye out for that. For a full gallery of photos check them out here.
What single-hop pale ales or IPAs do you like? Is there a single hop you've used in a particularly awesome homebrew?
Until next time friends, happy brewing!
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