Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Triple Barrel part 3 – Belgian IPA

The final part of my triple brew weekend was to brew a Belgian IPA. A while back I brewed my standard pale ale and fermented half of it with the Duvel yeast strain (WLP570). I fermented it in my fermentation room which stays in the mid-60s and I didn’t get the Belgiany fruity esters that I wanted. For this batch I decided to ferment it in my old plastic fermenter in the heat of the summer in my garage (I’m not comfortable having a glass carboy on my concrete garage floor). The air temperature got up into the high 90s. My temperature strip on my fermenter goes up to 86F and it stopped working, which probably means that the fermentation got over 86F. I basically used my standard pale ale grain bill, but I hopped it with every US hop that I had. Unfortunately I did not note the AA% for the hops, so I can only guess as to the IBU. I’ll have tasting notes in a few days, but here is the recipe (by the way, for the metric challenged, 28g = 1 oz.):

Brew Date: 8/6/2011
Beer Number: B20
Beer Name: “Belgian IPA”
Type: Belgian IPA
Primary Fermenter: 6 gal. glass carboy (36 days)
Secondary Fermenter: none
OG: 1.052
FG: 1.010
Expected IBU: 70+
Expected SRM: 8

Ingredients:
10 lbs. American 2-row malt
.5 lbs. Crystal 40
.5 lbs. Crystal 60
1 lb. white wheat



Variety/Boil Time FWH 60 min 15 min 5 min 1 min
Columbus (?%AA) 14g 28g 14g 14g 12g
Chinook (?%AA) 14g 14g 14g 6g
Galena (?%AA) 14g 14g 14g 10g

WLP 570 yeast harvested from B-15B

Step by Step Process:
Crushed grain in Barley Crusher/double-crushed wheat
Heated 15 qt. strike water to @170F and poured into mash tun
Added grains to tun and stirred – temp. settled at @155F
Mashed for approximately 75 minutes – ending mash temp @154F
Recirculated @ 3 quarts
Opened valve slowly and began drain into kettle – after a few quarts opened valve wide open
While draining, fired burner and set heat on low and added FWH
When empty, filled with 3.25 gal. of 168F water
Stirred well, recirculated and drained
Added an additional 3.25 gal. of 168F water, stirred, recirculated and drained
Collected @ 7.5 gals.
Brought to a boil and added 1 oz. Columbus pellets for 60 min.
Added hop additions at 15, 5 and 1 minute remaining in boil per the above schedule
Cooled below 120F with wort chiller in @10 minutes
Placed kettle in ice bath and cooled to @65F
Transferred (yield approximately 6.25 gal. in fermenter) to 6 ½ gallon plastic bucket and pitched decanted yeast starter
Left fermenter in garage and allowed to free-rise into the upper 80sF
First activity @ 11 hours after pitching, temp 75F
Activity blew the top off of the fermenter and krausen entered airlock
Removed airlock and set up a blow off tube into jar of sanitizer
On 8/9/11 (3 days after pitching yeast), removed blow-off and replaced airlock
On 8/10/11 (4 days) gravity = 1.012
8/17/11 (11 days) brought inside to fermentation room SG=1.011
8/18/11 – temperature had dropped to 70F

Bottling (9/11/11)
On 9/5/11, boiled 113 g. (4.0 oz.) table sugar in 3 cups water for 10 min. (target of 2.3 volumes CO2 for 5.25 gal. at 72F
Placed cooled sugar water in 5 gal. bottling bucket and covered with aluminum foil
On 9/11/11 siphoned B-20 into sugar water, stirring periodically
Yield 44-12 oz., 1-22 oz. and 1-1.32 gal. mini keg = 5.62 gals

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