I’ve been extremely happy with my first attempt at a home brewed IPA and because I’d nearly run out (it’s delicious) the time had come to brew a new batch. I decided to increase the DME a little and drop the brown sugar for better mouth feel and lower ABV. Additionally I was going to use a yeast starter harvested from a batch of American brown ale, which in turn used yeast that was harvested from the very same initial batch of IPA. The original strain was SAFALE-US05. Unfortunately my initial recipe was thrown into disarray because my LHBS of choice is shut on Mondays (damn them) and I had to go to my backup where I purchased alternate ingredients. I’ve replaced the Briess Light LME with Coopers Light LME and used Simcoe hops different alpha which I suspect are not particularly fresh. The hopping schedule has changed somewhat too, with more put into the late boil to give more flavour/aroma while still providing the required bittering.

1.5KG Coopers Light LME
0.6KG Light DME
0.2KG Brown Sugar
Briess Light Crystal Malt 0.25KG
17g Simcoe @ 60 mins 12.7%AA
35g Simcoe @ 5 mins 12.7%AA
3rd Generation SAFALE US-05 in 500mL starter (50g DME, 500mL cool boiled water).

Brew Type : 12.5L Extract

OG: 1.065
FG: 1.015
ABV: 6.9%
IBU: 49.0
EBC: 20.7

Method:

1. Bring 8L of water to boil. The water had sat in the boil pot for 24 hours to allow any chlorine or other volatiles to evaporate.
2. Steep the crystal malt in 1L of 65-70C water for 30 minutes.
3. Strain the crystal malt through a muslin lined strainer into into boil pot and sparge with 1L of 65-70C water.
4. Add 1KG of the Coopers LME to bring up gravity of wort for better hop utilisation.
5. Put heat back on and bring to rolling boil. When boiling make first hop addition. Boil for 55 minutes and make second addition. Boil for a further 5 minutes, turn off heat and stir in the remaining LME, DME, and brown sugar and mix well to ensure it is all dissolved. Add cold water to bring volume to 12L and plunge pot into ice bath to bring wort to 25C.
6. Tip wort into FV through strainer to remove most of the hops. Take starting gravity reading, aerate worth with spoon, pitch yeast starter put airlock in place and commence fermenting.

The wort was measured at 24C before pitching and had a gravity of 1.068 (target 1.065). The FV was put into the fermentation fridge with a set temperature of 18.5C.

Fermentation Notes

14 July 2015 – Fermentation appears to have started after about 18 hours.
18 July 2015 – Turned set temperature up to 20.5C.
20 July 2015 – Took gravity reading, 1.018. This is still a little high, will take another reading in two days to check for any changes. If no change will dry hop then.
22 July 2015 – Dry hopped with 48g of Simcoe and turned fridge down to 18C.
25 July 2015 – Turned of temperature controller and turned on fridge, cold crashing for 2 days.
27 July 2015 – Bulk primed with 104g of white sugar in 200mL of boiled water. Still not happy with carbonation of previous batches so I’m trying 8g/L. I racked the FV off into another vessel as usual with the sugar solution and bottled using my bottling wand. Yield was 11.3L. However, as I usually do I drank the last dregs out of the bottling vessel and they were very sweet so clearly the sugar had not dispersed into the beer correctly when the beer was draining into it. So I don’t expect any sort of even carbonation. Dammit. Note to self, mix bulk primed beer to ensure proper sugar dispersal. Second note to self, you forgot to take a final gravity reading you idiot. I harvested yeast out of the fermentation vessel and washed it once and it’s now sitting in the fridge ready for the next brew day.

Tasting

8 August 2015 – I cracked a bottle today and poured it into my glass of choice. Head was decent and creamy. There was a little bit of passionfruit on the nose, but given that I suspected the Simcoe hops I used were old this isn’t surprising. The beer seemed a little more bitter than the first IPA I made and a bit dryer in the mouth. Still, it’s very tasty and was an enjoyable quaff. Should improve in a week or two with more carbonation.

American IPA Version 2