West Coast IPA

Of all the beers that I'd really like to get good at brewing, probably IPA is at the top of the list. No matter what the season or the circumstances, a good IPA with a wallop of hop aroma and flavor will always hit the spot. None of my IPA have been great, but they're slowly getting better. We'll see how this one goes....

This recipe came from a blog called West Coast Brewing and although I know nothing about the brewer, he and his buddies seem to like it, so why not. Plus, it doesn't call for an enormous (and expensive) volume of hops, potentially making it an efficient way to brew a good IPA. (Saving on hops, not too much beer lost to absorption by the hops.)

I did a double brew-day with two guys in the homebrewing club. The other beer was a Bitter, for which we used my larger cooler mash tun and its stainless bazooka screen. The tun performed well, although it seemed to loose more wort to tun deadspace than my round cooler.

The cooler, on the other hand, wouldn't stop leaking. So I just mashed in my kettle and used the tun to sparge. Probably this resulted in some efficiency loss, but that's OK. Anyway, it's always a work in progress. Eventually I will find the right combination of hardware pieces to fully seal the round cooler with the new 1/2" fittings and CPVC manifold.

West Coast IPA
 3-Gallons

6# US 2-Row
10oz C40
6oz C20

.5oz Centenial, 9.7%AA, first wort
.75oz Centenial, 9.7%AA, 20min
.5oz Centenial, 9.7%AA, 10min
.5oz Cascade, 6.4%AA, 0min
1.5oz Cascade, 6.4%, dry, 7 days

US-05 Yeast

2grams Gypsum
1gram CaCl

Mash @152F, 1 hour

1 hour boil

Expected OG/FG/IBU/ABV: 1.046 / 1.011 / 4.5 / 59

Brewed on 12/14/13

Initial Mash temps were good, but the kettle doesn't hold heat too well, so I had to use direct heat and stir. Sparge was OK but probably not hot enough.

Pre-Boil OG was in the 1.035 range, so I added 1lb of dry malt extract to compensate, and get rid of some of the extract I had lying around.

Boil went fine. Got a nice vigorous boil but I suspect I was over my target volume a bit.

Cooled to around 110F using my immersion chiller , and transferred to Better Bottle, being careful not to aerate.  It was about 25F and snowing outside, so I just let the Better Bottle sit outside for a while, until it felt cool to the touch. This took about 3 hours.

Pitched around 7pm, and shook the vigorously to aerate.

Let the BB sit in a tub of water, around 60F ambient. 

12/16/13, 6pm - About a quarter inch of krausen has formed.

12/17/13, 6pm - Fermentation is more active, with maybe 3/4" - 1" of krausen.

12/18/13, 6:15pm - Fermentation is even more active. Likely to be high krausen.

12/24/13 - After moving the carboy on 12/22/13 to a room temperature area to finish up, fermentation is now going very slowly and the yeast is starting to sink. I guess the low temps in the basement really keep fermentation slow.

12/26/13 - Racked to secondary and added the dry hops.

1/3/13 - Bottled, going for 2 units of carbonation. Got about 1.25 gallons - 24 * 12oz and a few 22oz bottles. The sample tasted good, with an OK aroma.