Tired Hands HopHands Clone

I'll be brewing a new recipe for my next Hoppy Beer - a Clone of the Tired Hands Brewery's flagship HopHands.  This was developed by the blogger behind Ales of the Riverwards.  HopHands is very hoppy pale ale with a fairly reasonable ABV (around 5%).  This clone recipe calls for a pretty agressive level of late hopping which seems like it has a pretty good chance of duplicating their flavor.

It's a fairly simple grainbill with Pale Ale and Flaked Oats.  HopHands is a hazy beer - I wont take any special action to try to re-create that part so it will be interesting to see if the oats are enough to cause that by themselves.  I'm going to mash in the mid 150s to try to get it to finish around 1.013

For hops, the beer calls for Columbus, Centennial, Simcoe and Amarillo.  These, fortunately, are all hops I have on hand via bulk purchases which will save me quite a bit of money on what would have been an expensive recipe otherwise.  I have hops from Hops Direct which were fairly inexpensive but, for the Amarillo in particular, not particularly bold or complex in character.  I also have some newer hops that I purchased from Hop Heaven which seem a bit bolder.  I've decided to use my Hops Direct Hops for the boil (Centennial and Amarillo) and then use my Hop Heaven hops for the dry hop (will substitute Mosaic for Amarillo due to this.  It will be dry hopped for 5 days per recipe

Finally, I'm using Imperial Yeast Juice for this batch which is a yeast I have saved from a previous batch.  This is a yeast that produces a very nice pale ale with a bit of ester character (same as Wyeast London Ale III).  Reusing the yeast also saves a good amount of money.

I'm really looking forward to having this hoppy beer on tap.  I'll give it 2 weeks in the fermenter before kegging.

Recipe Details:

• Grain:
• 9 lb 2-row
• 2 lb Flaked Oats
• 3 oz Acid Malt
• Hops:
• 0.5 oz Columbus (Leaf, 14.6% AA) at 60 min
• 0.5 oz Centennial (Leaf, 10.1% AA) at 5 min
• 0.5 oz Amarillo (Leaf, 8.8% AA) at 5 min
• 0.5 oz Simcoe (Leaf, 10.6% AA) at 5 min
• 0.75 oz Centennial (Leaf, 10.1% AA) at Flame Out
• 0.75 oz Amarillo (Leaf, 8.8% AA) at Flame Out
• 0.75 oz Simcoe (Leaf, 10.6% AA) at Flame Out
• 2 oz Centennial (Leaf, 8.7% AA) Dry Hop
• 2 oz Mosaic (Leaf, 11.4% AA) Dry Hop
• 2 oz Simcoe (Leaf, 10.6% AA) Dry Hop
• Yeast:
• Imperial Yeast A38 Juice (3rd Pitch)
• Water:
• 10 gal Spring Water
• 6 gal of tap water
• 1 tsp CaCl
• 1 tsp Gypsum
• 1 tsp Irish Moss at 15 min

Process Details:

• Batch Size:
• 5.75 gal (Target 6 gal)
• Mash:
• 155 F for 60 min
• Boil:
• 60 min
• Fermentation Temperature:
• Ambient Basement Temps (Low 60s)
• Primary Duration:
• 2 Weeks
• Secondary Duration:
• NA

Results:

• OG:
• 1.051 (Target 1.048)
• Efficiency:
• 73% (Target 72%)
• FG:
• 1.020 (Target 1.013)
• Apparent Attenuation:
• 60% (Target 72%)
• ABV:
• 4.0% (Target 4.6%)

Brewing Notes:

• 1/22/22 - Built up a yeast starter using a jar of saved slurry, 100 g of DME and 100 L of water.  Set this up on the stir plate over night
• 1/23/22 - Brewday - 11:30 AM to 4:00 PM - Including Setup and Cleanup
• Heated 8 gal of spring water up to 180 F
• Milled my grain.  Added CaCl and Gypsum to it so I wouldn't forget

• Moved 6 gal of strike water to the mash tun and cycled through the RIMS until everything settled at 165 F
• Added the grain and stirred to eliminate all the dough balls.  Let this settle for 10 min
• Cycled the RIMS at 156 F for 50 more min

• With about 30 min left in the cycle I heated 6 gal of sparge water to 185 F
• Drained the mash tun into the kettle using a manual fly sparge until 5 gal had been collected.  Started heating the kettle after collecting 3 gal and had it at a boil shortly after the first wort was collect
• Adding the bittering hops at this point
• Topped up the mash tun with hot water and let this sit for 10 min.  Then did a second fly sparge until 8 gal of wort had been collected.  Drained fairly slowly to maintain the boil
• Boiled for 60 min
• Added Irish Moss at 15 min
• Added hops and the wort chiller to sanitize with 5 min left
• Added flameout hops after chilling the beer to 190 F.  Let the hops steep for 20 min - the beer had chilled down to 140 F on it's own over that period
• Chilled the beer down to 70 F
• Transferred to my fermenter - pitched the yeast during the transfer

• Collected about 5.75 gal of wort.  Measured the gravity as 1.051.  Just a little above target efficiency this time.
• Set this up at basement temperatures to ferment out.
• 1/25/22 - Still have no signs of fermentation after a couple days.  I decided to add in another jar of yeast (fresher this time) to get things going
• 1/27/22 - The beer had krausen on the surface finally
• 1/31/22 - Added 6 oz of dry hops.  I put each ounce in it's own muslin sack weighed down with stainless steel hardware.  I'll let this sit for 5 days.
• 2/6/21 - Kegged today.  Measured the gravity as 1.020.  Did the normal process of purging the keg with C02 for the transfer.  I let it carbonate for a week before giving it a try
• 3/12/22 - Tasting Notes - This a very nice hoppy beer.  It has bold hop aroma and flavor and a nice level of complexity.  The level of bitterness is very nice - makes for a really drinkable beer.  It has a nice level of body and substance to it that you would not guess that it's a 4% ABV beer (kind of like the way an English Bitter doesn't drink like a low alcohol beer).  I'm drinking this after quite some time in the keg (a bit over a month) but the hops haven't really fallen off in any significant way which I'm very happy about.  This is a beer that I will make again for sure.
  
• 8/16/22 - The keg finally kicked.  I figured I was less than 1 pint away from kicking this so I delayed drinking the last of it out of laziness over the cleaning job.  It was a good beer.