I will be moving to Pennsylvania at the end of July. Unfortunately Four Peaks does not distribute outside of AZ at this point. So, I'll have all the Victory Hop Devil that I could want to drink but no more Hop Knot.
The Bertus Brewery blog has what sounds like a very good clone of Hop Knot that I have been eager to try out. I am going to use US-05 on this batch. I would have liked to have tried the WLP007 that the clone called for but I didn't think far enough ahead to prepare a starter. I'm going to start fermentation off at 58 F at which US-05 is reputed to put off some peach ester. In the side by side comparison of the clone to Hop Knot it was reported that the original had a slight peach ester that the clone didn't. I've never personally gotten any peach from Hop Knot but I haven't tried this clone side by side with it either so I will trust that assessment. Four Peaks uses a proprietary house strain so I am just aiming for close not perfect. Close will still make a very nice beer I think.
There are a lot of hops in this beer. It's called "Hop Knot" because they use 5 different hops so go figure. I have decided to plan for a 6 gal batch and assume 0.5 gal of wort lost to the hops (so, that is 6.5 gal at 71% efficiency and assuming a 0.5 gal loss it's 67% brewhouse efficiency). We will see if that is a high enough assumption of loss to hops to get me 6 gal in the fermentor. I am also going to try filtering the spent hops out of the beer with a hop sack to maximize wort collection.
I will also try a slightly different dry hop schedule for this batch. I am going to dry hop in the primary fermentor using Pellet hops and I'm going to start dry hopping just as fermentation is closing out (day 5 maybe). I will break the dry hop up into two stages of 7 days each. I haven't decided if I'm going to use gelatin to fine the beer as I have heard that that can strip out some hop oils. I will cold crash after the first round of dry hopping is complete.
Hopefully this will turn out to be a fairly close approximation that I can rebrew down the road in PA when I feel like drinking some Hop Knot.
Recipe Details:
- Grain:
- 11 lbs 2 Row
- 4 lbs Maris Otter
- 12 oz Crystal 20 L
- 4 oz Acid Malt
- Hops:
- 1 oz Magnum (Pellet, 13.4% AA) at 90 min
- 1 oz Liberty (Pellet, 5.8% AA) at 30 min
- 1 oz Glacier (Pellet, 5.9% AA) at 30 min
- 0.75 oz Simcoe (Pellet, 14.0% AA) at 5 min
- 0.75 oz Cascade (Pellet, 7.1% AA) at 5 min
- 1.5 oz Simcoe (Pellet, 14.0% AA) at 0 min
- 1.5 oz Cascade (Pellet, 7.1% AA) at 0 min
- 1.75 oz Simcoe (Pellet, 14.0% AA) Dry hop
- 1.75 oz Cascade (Pellet, 7.1% AA) Dry hop
- Yeast:
- US-05
- Water
- 10 gal RO water
- 1.5 gal tap water
- 1 tsp Calcium Chloride
- 1 tsp Gypsum
- 1 tsp Irish Moss at 20 min
Process Details:
- Batch Size:
- 6 gal
- Mash:
- 150 F
- Boil
- 90 min
- Fermentation Temp:
- 58 F
Results:
- OG:
- 1.060 (Target 1.065)
- Efficiency:
- 62% (Target 67%)
- FG:
- 1.006 (Target 1.013)
- ABV:
- 7.09% (Target 6.83%)
Brewing Notes:
- 6/28/14 Brew day - 7:00 PM to 12:00 AM including setup and partial cleanup
- Added CaCl and Gypsum to RO water
- Heated 6 gal of strike water to 170 F
- Added 20 qt of water to mash tun for a 1.25 ratio of water to grain
- Let the mash tun temperature settle for 10 min - target is 160 F - ended up at 163 F
- Added grain and stirred in to eliminate dough balls - mash ended up at 150 F
- After 50 min ran the iodine starch conversion test - conversion appears to be complete
- At the end of the 60 min the mash was still at ~150 F
- Added 1 gal of mash out water at 170 F, stirred, let settle for 5 minutes, vorlaufed, and then drained
- Heated 4 gal of sparge water to 170 F and did two equal batch sparges. Ended up with 8.25 gal of wort. Took a sample and chilled in an ice bath. Measured gravity as 1.044 at 81 F which is 1.048 per my hydrometer calibration. This is 68% efficiency which is a little bit off my target of 71%.
- Added tap water to get up to 9.5 gal - the chlorine will boil off
- Heated the 9.5 gal of wart up to a boil - took 25 min
- Waited for the hot break foam to subside before adding the 90 min hops
- Added the 30 min hops
- At 20 min added the irish moss
- At 15 min I put in the wort chiller to sanitize
- Added the 5 min hops
- Added the 0 min hops at flameout
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| 5 min and 0 min hop additions - left to right |
- Did a 15 min hop stand - hops smelled wonderful but look pretty disgusting
- Chilled wort down to tap water temps (80s) - took 20 min
- Transferred wort to fermentor. Once it was down to the hops I poured the remainder of wort through a hop sack to strain out as much of the hops as possible. The hop sack was very effective - seemed to have caught most/all of the spent hops. Kneaded the bag a bit to get all the wort to drain out. I think I ended up losing very little wort with this method.
- Ended up with 6 gal of wort. Measured OG as 1.060 at 60 F which is the nominal measurement temperature for the hydrometer. This is 62% efficiency.
- Moved the wort to the fermentation chamber at 56 F to chill down to pitching temps over night
- 6/29/14 - Pitching the yeast
- Rehydrated dry yeast in 1 cup of previously boiled tap water at 100 F
- Sprinkled the yeast on the surface and let it absorb water for 15 min
- Stirred to mix in
- Brought the yeast to pitching temps by slowly adding 56 F wort until the mix got down to 66 F
- Poured yeast mix into fermentor
- Shook fermentor to aerate
- Increased fermentation chamber temperature to 58 F
- Set up the fermentor with a blowoff tube
- 6/30/14 - No blowoff tube activity yet - looking through the airlock hole I see that a think layer of foam has formed. I am confident that fermentation is starting but that it's just a bit slower due to the low fermentation temperature
- 7/1/14 - No bubbling but I opened the fermentor (maybe not a good idea) to find the krausen layer is still there - pretty confident that it is fermenting fine
- 7/2/14 - Letting the fermentation rise to 62 F today to ensure it finishes out
- 7/3/14 - Increased the fermentation temperature to 66 F
- 7/8/14 - Added 3/4 oz each of Cascade and Simcoe as a dry hop addition in a mesh hop bag
- 7/9/14 - Cold crashed my Strong Brown Ale. Left the IPA in the fermentation chamber to chill down to 50 F and then took it out for the night to keep it in the 50-70 F range for the dry hopping.
- 7/10/14 - By the next morning the fermentation chamber had chilled the Strong Brown Ale down to 34 F. Moved the IPA back into the fermentation chamber. At the end of the day I moved it back into the house to prevent it from getting too cool for dry hopping (got down to the mid 40s).
- 7/11/14 - The beer had gotten up to the mid 60's by the next morning. Moved it back into the fermentation chamber.
- 7/12/14 - Increased the fermentation chamber to 65 F.
- 7/14/14 - Replaced the dry hops with an additional ounce each of Cascade and Simcoe. The aroma from the spent hops is wonderful. It smells exactly like Hop Knot. I am really looking forward to trying this one.
- 7/19/14 - Removed the dry hops and lowered the fermentation chamber temp down to 34 F to start the cold crash.
- 7/21/14 - I decided to fine with gelatin. Added 1 tsp of gelatin in a pint of water heated up to 160 F. Hopefully this doesn't strip out too much hop character.
- 7/22/14 - Bottled with 4.5 oz of priming sugar. Ended up with about 5 gal of beer which got me 36 12 oz bottles and 9 17.5 oz bottles. Measured the Final Gravity as 1.006 at 60 F. The sample has a really great hop flavor and aroma to it. Without having a Hop Knot in front of me I'd say that this beer is very close to the real thing - maybe a tad bit dryer but the flavors are all there.
- 8/11/14 - Tasting Notes - On it's own merits - it has a very nice balance between peach ester character and citrus hop flavor as well as a nice firm bitterness. I think this is a pretty good IPA.
- 8/14/14 - Did a side by side comparison between my IPA and Hop Knot. My can of Hop Knot was produced on 5/20/14. My version is quite a bit darker (as shown in the picture). They have pretty similar levels of carbonation. The aroma of the two beers is similar - same contributions from the hops - but mine has a lot more fruity ester character. Hop Knot has a much cleaner hoppy flavor than my beer. I don't really get much yeast character from hop knot. Mine has a lot of yeast character by contrast. The level of bitterness and malt sweetness in the finish is very close. Mine seems to have a slightly more body which I think maybe due to the fuller flavor due to the ester. So, I think my decision to ferment US-05 in the 50's to produce the peach ester has caused my beer to be quite different than the actual Hop Knot. Mine is not very close as a clone (although it is still tasty). Next time I brew this I will probably still US-05 but I'll try to keep the temperature in the clean flavor range.
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| (L) Hop Knot, (R) My IPA |
- 11/28/14 - Opened one of these that was completely uncarbonated. It may have been that the bottlecap leaked. I had it and a few others stored in a closet at my mother's house. The other one I opened had normal carbonation levels - very odd.
- 2/4/16 - Drank my last one today. The hops had faded away to a large extent but it was still a nice tasting beer. The peach ester had also faded a bit but was still fairly assertive.
Lessons Learned:
- I did not account for loss of water to grain and dead space in the mash tun which bit me. I was planning on having something like 9 gal of wort after mashing but only ended up with 8. I didn't have any more RO water either so I had to top up with hose water so that I could keep the 90 min boil. I need to make sure I have an extra 5 gal of RO water on hand when I brew. I'm sure a small bit of tap water pre-boil isn't going to hurt anything but if I had ended up short on wort at the end of the boil then topping off with tap water wouldn't have been an option I would have been comfortable with.
- My sugar extraction from the grain wasn't very good - 68% efficiency after matching. Maybe I should have collected a bit more pre-boil volume (of course I didn't have any more RO water so that wasn't really an option). I'm not too upset though - I would actually rather have this beer come closer to 6% then 7% just from a drinkability standpoint.
- My planning for loss of wort to hops kept the OG a lot closer to target than it would have otherwise. I believe this is the reason I ended up with 6 gal of wort that is reasonably close to the target.
- Using the hop bag to separate the hops from the wort was very effective. Not sure if I got 100% of the hops but I definitely got a significant portion of them. This probably saved me at least 0.5 gal of wort loss. Cleanup was relatively easy too.
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