Rye IPA #1 Brewday

One of the benefits of being in the local homebrew club is apparently that some people come in with stuff to give away. Of course everyone shares their homebrew, but in the last two meetings I've attended, a couple of people walked in with big bags of ingredients or small pieces of equipment that they didn't need. I was fortunate enough to have been given 3oz of Warrior pellet hops and 3oz of homegrown Cascade hops from the 2010 harvest. Both sets of hops were in unopened vacum-sealed bags and apparently had been stored in a freezer, so they should be in a decent state of freshness.

I've been wanting to do something with rye to see what it adds to a beer. For this beer, I plan to use some of the Warrior hops for bittering, along with a late hop addition of Cascade, Chinook and Centenial for flavor and aroma, as well as a dry-hop with those varieties. I hope to get a firmly bitter IPA with a nice rye backbone and strong hop aroma. I read from several sources that the Cascade - Chinook - Centenial combo is a classic one for American IPAs. The grain bill is based off the previous IPA I brewed, with Rye substituted for some of the 2-Row, and with a small amount of CaraRed for head retention and I hope a reddish hue.

Rye IPA #1
3.25 gallons

6.25# American 2-Row
2# Rye Malt
4oz Crystal 20L
4oz Crystal 40L
2oz CaraRed

Mash at 150F, 60 minute boil.

.875oz Warrior, 13.7% AA, 60min

1/3oz Chinnook, 11.9% AA, 5min
1/3oz Centenial, 8.7% AA, 5min
1/3oz Homegrown Cascade, (Estimated at 5%-6% AA), 5min

1/3oz Chinnook, 11.9% AA, 1min
1/3oz Centenial, 8.7% AA, 1min
1/3oz Homegrown Cascade, (Estimated at 5%-6% AA), 1min

1/3oz Chinnook, 11.9% AA, Dry, 7 days
1/3oz Centenial, 8.7% AA, Dry, 7 days
1 and 1/3oz Homegrown Cascade, (Estimated at 5%-6% AA), Dry, 7 days

US-05 Yeast, fermented 64F.

Expected FG/OG/IBUs/ABV: 1.067, 1.017, 67, 6.5%

Brewed 2/25/13
Made a starter the previous evening using recycled US-05 from a previous batch. It was slowly bubbling by 9am, so probably not yet at full krausen.

My mash temps were a little low. Drained off some wort, boiled for a minute and added back to raise the temp a couple of degrees.

Got 2 gallons of 1st runnings. Added about 2 gal of sparge water at 180F. The mash temp was 165F - perfect. Got a total pre-boil volume of 4.25gallons, a little above target but I will boil for an extra 15mins or so.

I used my hop bag for the first time. Basically a nylon mesh bag clipped to the side of the kettle with a giant paper clip. So far it seems to work well.

The wort is boiling quite vigorously. Woohoo! 

Preboil OG was 1.050 at 4.25gallons. Low efficiency. Crap. But according to a couple of calculators if I hit the target volume of 3.25 gallons I will get an OG of 1.064, which is about right, though I added 2oz of DME to compensate.

My immersion ooler worked really well today because of the cold weather. The cooling water temp was in the 30s and there was some ice in the recirculation pool. Still, my IC doesn't cool the wort uniformly - the center of the pot was at 80F when the sides near the cooler were at 60F.

Removed the hop-bag and squeezed it out, resulting in about another 1/4 gallon into the pot. Transferred and aerated using a siphon spray aerator (as usual) when the wort was about 65F. Pitched most of the starter, which by now was actively fermenting.

Placed fermenting bucket in bin of 65F water in the basement. The stick-on thermometer read 61F. Got about 3.25 gallons in the fermenter.

Overall a fast brew day due to the low temps outside and the quick cooling.

But I realized I forgot to add Irish Moss. D'Oh!

2/18/13
The beer got off to a slow start with fermenting, and didn't seem to cause a lot of bubbling in the airlock. Still there seems to be a lot of krausen creeping up the side of the fermentor.  I think the less than vigorous fermentation is due to the relatively cool pitching temperature and ambient air temps. Currently the fermentor is in 64F ambient air temps. Perhaps I will move it to a warmer place tomorrow for it to finish out fermenting.

2/22/13
Dry hopped today as per the schedule. The beer inside was still bubbly on the surface and not clear, so at least some fermentation is going on. I will move the fermenter to a warmer spot in a couple of days just to make sure fermentation is complete. 

3/3/13
Bottled today, aiming for 2.25 volumes of CO2. Got 32x12oz bottles of 1.014 FG beer. So the beer has attenuated enough. Squeezed the hop bag (wearing sanitized kitchen gloves) to get all the beer absorbed by the hops.