Double IPA

When I was considering starting homebrewing a few years ago one of things I was most excited about was being able to brew up my own big Double IPAs for a lot less money than I would pay for them at the store.  Brewing them at home would ensure that I would also be getting fresh beer with intense hop character.  So, now I am finally making one.  I had been a bit hesitant prior to now due to the high ingredient cost and the possibility that I'd screw it up.  I've built up quite a bit of experience now and I'm pretty confident that I can pull one of these off.

I have decided to try out the Heady Topper clone on homebrewtalk.com.  I've never had Heady so I don't really care if it's an exact copy.  I chose it because I was very impressed by the amount of hops crammed into one beer - 15 oz of hops post boil with a big bittering charge of hop oil.  It seems like this beer must have incredible hop flavor with that insane hop schedule.  This is quite a bit more than any beer I've made so far.

I will be using a second pitch of Conan from a Pale Mild I brewed a couple weeks ago.  I've read that Conan attenuates better on the second pitch.  The beer includes a bit of sugar in the raw and is mashed at 150 F to get a reasonably dry finish.  I'll also be ramping up the fermentation temperature towards the end to help it along.  Hopefully I'll get down to the target FG of 1.010.

I'm planning on about 0.5 gal of loss to the huge amount of hops and will filter them from the beer on the transfer to the fermentor - I really want to get a full 6 gal of this beer.

Really excited for this beer - can't wait to be drinking my first one 6 weeks from now.

Recipe Details:

• Grain/Adjunct:
• 14 lbs 8 oz Pearl Malt
• 1 lb White Wheat
• 12 oz Turbinado Sugar
• 12 oz Crystal 20L
• 4 oz Crystal 10L
• 4 oz Acid Malt
• Hops:
• 12 mL Hop Shot at 90 min
• 1 oz  Simcoe (Pellet, 12.6% AA) at 5 min
• 0.5 oz Apollo (Pellet, 18.5% AA) at 5 min
• 1 oz Columbus (Pellet, 12.5% AA) at 0 min
• 2 oz Simcoe (Pellet, 12.6% AA)  at 0 min
• 1 oz Columbus (Pellet, 12.5% AA) added once temp is down to 180 F (stand for 30 min)
• 1 oz Simcoe (Pellet, 12.6% AA) added once temp is down to 180 F (stand for 30 min)
• 1 oz Amarillo (Pellet, 8.0% AA) added once temp is down to 180 F (stand for 30 min)
• 1 oz Centennial (Pellet, 8.8% AA) added once temp is down to 180 F (stand for 30 min)
• 0.5 oz Apollo (Pellet, 18.5% AA) added once temp is down to 180 F (stand for 30 min)
• 1 oz Columbus (Pellet, 12.5% AA) Dry Hop
• 2 oz Simcoe (Pellet, 12.6% AA) Dry Hop
• 1 oz Amarillo (Pellet, 8.0% AA) Dry Hop
• 1 oz Centennial (Pellet, 8.8% AA) Dry Hop
• 1 oz Apollo (Pellet, 18.5% AA) Dry Hop
• Yeast:
• Yeast Bay Vermont Ale Yeast (2nd Pitch)
• Water:
• 13 gal spring water
• 6 gal tap water
• 1 tsp Calcium Chloride in Mash
• 1 tsp Gypsum in Mash
• 1 tsp Calcium Chloride in Boil
• 1 tsp Gypsum in Boil
• 1 tsp Irish Moss at 20 min

Process Details:

• Batch Size:
• 6 gal (Target 6 gal)
• Mash:
• 150 F (Target 150 F for 60 min)
• Boil:
• 96 min (90 min)
• Fermentation Temp:
• 65 F for 4 days
• Raised to 70 F to finish
• Primary Duration:
• 28 days
• Secondary Duration:
• NA

Results:

• OG:
• 1.073 (Target 1.073)
• Efficiency:
• 66% (Target 66% Assuming loss of 0.5 gal loss to hops)
• FG:
• 1.012 (Target 1.010)
• Apparent Attenuation:
• 83% (Target 86%)
• ABV:
• 8.01 (Target 8.26%)

Brew Notes:

• 9/7/15 - Brewday - 4:45 AM to 11:30 AM - Including setup and cleanup
• Heated 10.25 gal of spring water in HLT and cycled through mash tun and RIMS until the system was at 155 F - took 1 hr
• Ended up with 6 gal above the false bottom and 8.5 gal in the system total
• Added CaCl, Gypsum, and Acid Malt to the mash tun
• Doughed in and stirred until all the clumps were broken up.  Liquid level rose to 7.5 gal above the false bottom.  It is a thin mash
• Cycled through the RIMS at about 2 qt per minute.  Set the RIMS to 155 F.
• After 10 min the mash was at 145 to 146 F
• After 30 min the mash was about 154 F.  Lowered the RIMS to 152 F.  Stirred the mash to help conversion.
• Heated 10.5 gal of sparge water in the HLT
• The mash was 150 F with 10 min to go.  Gave it a final stir
• Stopped the mash after 60 min.  Measured gravity at the grant as 13.4 (1.054).
• Drained the grant volume back to the tun
• Added fly sparge water up to 9 gal above the false bottom.  Sparged at about 5 min per gal
• After collecting 3 gal the gravity in the grant was 12.8 brix (1.052)
• Started heating the kettle after collecting 4 gal
• Gravity at the grant was 13 brix after collecting 5 gal
• Gravity at the grant was 9.9 brix after collecting 7 gal
• Added CaCl and Gypsum to the kettle at around the 8 gal mar - wort was on the verge of boil at this point
• Gravity was 5.5 brix after collecting 9 gal
• After collecting 10 gal the gravity at the grant was 4.8 brix (1.019)
• Sparge took 1 hr.  I had some issues maintaining the 1 gal per 5 min rate due to flow restriction out of the HLT.  Was easy to correct after I noticed.
• Added hop shots after big hot break cleared (had a minor boil over)

• Added the worth chiller halfway through the boil to sanitize.  Don't want it in there when I'm doing the hop stands.  Sprayed it down with a starsan solution once it was out.
• Added Irish moss with about 20 min left in the boil
• Added the 5 min hops with about 1 qt left to boil off
• Added the sugar with about 2 min left to go.  Stirred the mash to help it dissolve.  Left my mash paddle in the kettle to say sanitized.
• Added the 0 min hops at flameout
• Boil took 96 min - ended up with about 6.5 gal of wort
• Let the kettle sit uncovered to chill down to 180 F - took 20 min
• Measured gravity as 17.8 brix which is 1.073 - right on target
•  Added the hop stand hops once the temperature was 180 F - left covered
• After 20 min the wort was down to 168 F.  Took off the lid for the final 10 min.
• At the end of the 30 min hop stand we were at 158 F
• Added chiller - chilled to 70 F - took 15 min
• Drained through a sanitized hop sack onto the previous batch's yeast cake.  There was a huge amount of hops at the bottom of the kettle - poured this bit into the hop sack as well.  Ended up squeezing the hop sack to get as much wort as I could out of the hops.  Ended up with about a softball size ball of hop matter at the end.  Collected 6 gal of wort.  My estimate of losing about 0.5 gal to the hops was a pretty good one

• Moved the beer down to the fermentation chamber and set to 65 F.  Setup the fermentor with a blowoff tube as this will probably be a pretty strong fermentation.

• The fermentor was already bubbling 7 hrs later
• 9/8/15 - I had been lagering a beer in the chamber prior to adding the Double IPA.  This morning I found that the lager had managed to cool this beer down to 59 F.  It was still bubbling pretty strongly so it doesn't appear that any damage has really been done.  I left the chamber open all day and the beer has gone up to 62 F.  This might have an impact on some of the ester character but I think there is plenty of time to recover from this.  I will leave the chamber open until it gets up to the target of 65 F.
• 9/11/15 - Bubbling in blowoff has settled down a lot.  Moved the beer out of the fermentation chamber and set it up with an airlock to finish fermentation at basement temps (low 70s).
• 9/21/15 - Added half the dry hops in a hop sack.  These will stay in the beer for 7 days.
• 9/25/15 - The hop sack hadn't sunk yet so I tied a sanitized stainless steel bolt to it.  This did the trick.  I have a string tied to it to make for easier extraction.  I'm thinking the hop sack might restrict the exposure of a lot of the hops to the beer.  I'll be throwing the second round in loose.
• 9/28/15 - Pulled the first round of dry hops and added in the second round loose.
• 10/5/15 - Bottled with 3.75 oz of priming sugar.  Measured FG as 1.012.  Ended up with ~5.5 gal in the bottling bucket which got me 54 12 oz bottles.  There was about a half a gal of trub at the bottom of the fermentor.  I ended up picking up quite a bit of hop particulate in some of the bottles.  The beer smells and tastes terrific - really nice fruity hop character.  I will give it a couple weeks to condition before trying my first one.
• 10/10/15 - Tested one of the bottles that had quite a bit of sediment for carbonation.  Pretty good carbonation so far.  So, I am going to start drinking this beer a bit earlier than planned.  The hop flavor is intense but the aroma isn't quite as profound as I'd hoped it would be - in that first bottle anyway.
• 10/25/15 - Tasting Notes - Fantastic beer.  Best I've made so far.  Intensely hoppy with citrus fruit, pine, and dank earthy hop flavors that linger on the palate.  Intensely bitter but somehow still reasonably balanced on the finish.  The beer is also pretty smooth and easy drinking despite the 8% ABV.  I am really happy how this one turned out.
• 2/14/16 - Drank the last bottle of this today.  The aroma hops had faded considerably but it still had the great intense flavoring hops front and center.  This was a really good beer.  I'm going to have to brew this up again before too long.

Lessons Learned:

1. Smooth but long brew day.  I hit all my numbers and didn't make any big time wasting mistakes this time.  One of my best brew days so far.  Big relief given the complicated and expensive recipe.
2. There was quite a bit of contact between my hands and the beer during the transfer to through the hop bag.  The bag had been soaked in sanitizer so I think it will probably be okay.  I probably should have sprayed my hands a bit more rigorously prior to squeezing the bag.
3. Hop oil is very oily - made a big mess in my boil kettle.  Will soak it in oxiclean over night.