The citrus IPA was kegged on Sunday, 4/19/15, and man did it smell great!! Thanks to my less than skillful handling of the tubing used to fill the keg, I didn't have a chance to taste it. I didn't take a final gravity reading on it but when I last checked before cold crashing the beer, it came in around 1.010 which puts the ABV at 4.07%. This beer will be great for the hot days ahead.
Speaking of hot days ahead, Saturday, May 2nd, is when this year's Big Brew Day event will be held at Bosco's in Overton Square. In 1988, May 7 was announced before Congress as National Homebrew Day. The American Homebrewers Association (AHA) created AHA Big Brew as an annual event to celebrate National Homebrew Day around the world. AHA Big Brew is held each year on the first Saturday in May. Bosco's has hosted this event many times and graciously provides their Bombay IPA wort and their house yeast to all participants. Home Brewers take it from there tailoring a beer to their liking via wort additions, hop schedules and boil time. All are welcome and many experienced brewers will be on hand from the Memphis Brewers Association to share their knowledge and possibly some home brew. I encourage anyone who's ever had any interest in home brewing to come out and see what it's all about. The great thing about home brewers is that we're a friendly group that loves to bring others into this hobby that we all love. My plan is to be at Bosco's around 8:30 to get set up and ready to brew. I'll have 5 gallons of the recently kegged citrus IPA on hand and I doubt you'll go thirsty given that most participants will have beverages on hand. I hope to see many current and potential brewers at Bosco's on the 2nd!!
Cheers
Tuesday, April 21, 2015
Wednesday, April 8, 2015
Citrus IPA Brew Day - 4/4/15
I brewed this beer last summer for the Evergreen home brew event that was held in October and it was well received so I wanted to give it another shot while making a few adjustments along the way. My grain bill called for the following:
12lbs American 2 Row Malt
1lb Crystal 20L Malt
1lb Vienna Malt
The hops used and hop schedule was as follows:
1oz Centennial (9% AA) First Wort Hop (fancy term for throwing the hops in the pot with the 1st runnings of wort)
1oz Centennial (9% AA) at 10 minutes remaining in the boil
2oz Citra (12.5% AA) at flameout (fancy term for end of the boil)
2oz Citra (12.50% AA) dry hop
Now...if ever a day was tailor made for brewing beer, Saturday, April 4, 2015, was!! The sun was shining, 98.9 FM was playing all of my favorite classic hip hop & I had plenty of time so rushing was not going to be an issue. It didn't hurt that I have a decent stout and the newly kegged IPL on tap.
I mashed in at 11:00 with 5.5 gallons of water heated to 168. After adding 2 cups of boiling water, I hit my desired temp of 150* and let it rest for 90 minutes. I would suggest heating your water to 5 degrees warmer than suggested prior to adding it to your mash tun. This way, when you pour the hot water into the mash tun, it pre-heats it prior to adding the grain. Once you've added the grain, simply stir it to release the heat until your desired rest temp has been reached.
After the 90 minute mash rest is when things started to go downhill. Prior to the wheels coming off of my brew day, I performed the vorlauf (fancy word for making sure the wort runs free of grain pieces) and was pleased with the color. As the first runnings of wort filled the brew pot, I tossed the 1oz of Centennial into the wort and man it smelled great. Now, you'll recall that I had added 5.5 gallons of water to the mash tun but I ended up with only 2.5 gallons of wort in the brew pot after the 1st runnings. I had lost 3 gallons of water in the system!! I knew something was terribly wrong. How wrong would be revealed later. To put it into perspective, the gravity of the first runnings for the IPL brewed in February was 1.065. This meant that I had extracted very little sugar from the crushed grains and that the body and strength of the resulting beer would be lighter and lower respectively. Oh well, there was nothing I could do about it at that time. I attributed this atrocity to my new CPVC mash manifold being rubbish and would address that later. I sparged with 5.10 gallons of 171* water and let it rest for 15 minutes. Once the 2nd vorlauf had been performed and the 2nd runnings had been drained into the boil pot, I'd collected 7.75 gallons of 1.022 wort!!! Again...I was not happy. I added 1lb of dehydrated malt extract to get the pre-boil gravity up to 1.031...pitiful I know. The boil proceeded as usual and of course...brewing isn't all work and no play.
The immersion chiller was added with 15 minutes remaining on the boil time. This is called a citrus IPA and is called such for the flavor imparted by the hops utilized but I like to kick up the citrusy aspect by adding the zest of 2 navel oranges to the wort once the flame has been turned off along with the 2 oz shot of Citra hops.
The last hop addition and orange zest steeped for 20 minutes before I chilled the wort to 77 degrees with the immersion chiller. At this point it really smelled great!!
I collected 5.5 gallons of wort in the ale pale and placed it in the fermentation chamber with the temp controller set to 65 degrees. It took about 2 hours for it to cool to 65 so the yeast was pitched at 6:30 PM. The starting gravity of the wort going into the ale pale fermenting bucket was 1.041. Assuming the yeast does well, which is should given the size of the yeast starter, this beer should ferment down to about 1.010 which equates to roughly 4.10% ABV. This isn't close to what I was shooting for but given the warm, read HOT, days right around the corner, a lower alcohol session beer will be a welcomed respite after an afternoon of yard work.
Now, as to why I had so much trouble, the answer turned to be very simple. I discovered when cleaning the mash tun that the manifold had floated up nearly 4 inches at the back of the mash tun. As I searched the internet thinking that I was going to need an advanced degree in fluid dynamics in order to engineer a new mash tun manifold, I came across a forum post that solved the problem. All I needed to do was open the valve on the mash tun after I added the strike water in order to fill the manifold with water. This would have displaced the air and kept it firmly seated at the bottom of the mash tun.
The beer fermented quickly and vigorously. I checked the gravity at 9:30 on 4/7/15 and it showed as being 1.014 so I ramped the temperature of the fermentation chamber up to 70 degrees in order to get down to at least 1.010. I'll likely dry hop the beer this weekend and keg it next weekend. I'll update you guys with a tasting as soon as it carbs up.
Cheers
12lbs American 2 Row Malt
1lb Crystal 20L Malt
1lb Vienna Malt
The hops used and hop schedule was as follows:
1oz Centennial (9% AA) First Wort Hop (fancy term for throwing the hops in the pot with the 1st runnings of wort)
1oz Centennial (9% AA) at 10 minutes remaining in the boil
2oz Citra (12.5% AA) at flameout (fancy term for end of the boil)
2oz Citra (12.50% AA) dry hop
Now...if ever a day was tailor made for brewing beer, Saturday, April 4, 2015, was!! The sun was shining, 98.9 FM was playing all of my favorite classic hip hop & I had plenty of time so rushing was not going to be an issue. It didn't hurt that I have a decent stout and the newly kegged IPL on tap.
I mashed in at 11:00 with 5.5 gallons of water heated to 168. After adding 2 cups of boiling water, I hit my desired temp of 150* and let it rest for 90 minutes. I would suggest heating your water to 5 degrees warmer than suggested prior to adding it to your mash tun. This way, when you pour the hot water into the mash tun, it pre-heats it prior to adding the grain. Once you've added the grain, simply stir it to release the heat until your desired rest temp has been reached. After the 90 minute mash rest is when things started to go downhill. Prior to the wheels coming off of my brew day, I performed the vorlauf (fancy word for making sure the wort runs free of grain pieces) and was pleased with the color. As the first runnings of wort filled the brew pot, I tossed the 1oz of Centennial into the wort and man it smelled great. Now, you'll recall that I had added 5.5 gallons of water to the mash tun but I ended up with only 2.5 gallons of wort in the brew pot after the 1st runnings. I had lost 3 gallons of water in the system!! I knew something was terribly wrong. How wrong would be revealed later. To put it into perspective, the gravity of the first runnings for the IPL brewed in February was 1.065. This meant that I had extracted very little sugar from the crushed grains and that the body and strength of the resulting beer would be lighter and lower respectively. Oh well, there was nothing I could do about it at that time. I attributed this atrocity to my new CPVC mash manifold being rubbish and would address that later. I sparged with 5.10 gallons of 171* water and let it rest for 15 minutes. Once the 2nd vorlauf had been performed and the 2nd runnings had been drained into the boil pot, I'd collected 7.75 gallons of 1.022 wort!!! Again...I was not happy. I added 1lb of dehydrated malt extract to get the pre-boil gravity up to 1.031...pitiful I know. The boil proceeded as usual and of course...brewing isn't all work and no play.
The immersion chiller was added with 15 minutes remaining on the boil time. This is called a citrus IPA and is called such for the flavor imparted by the hops utilized but I like to kick up the citrusy aspect by adding the zest of 2 navel oranges to the wort once the flame has been turned off along with the 2 oz shot of Citra hops.
Now, as to why I had so much trouble, the answer turned to be very simple. I discovered when cleaning the mash tun that the manifold had floated up nearly 4 inches at the back of the mash tun. As I searched the internet thinking that I was going to need an advanced degree in fluid dynamics in order to engineer a new mash tun manifold, I came across a forum post that solved the problem. All I needed to do was open the valve on the mash tun after I added the strike water in order to fill the manifold with water. This would have displaced the air and kept it firmly seated at the bottom of the mash tun.
The beer fermented quickly and vigorously. I checked the gravity at 9:30 on 4/7/15 and it showed as being 1.014 so I ramped the temperature of the fermentation chamber up to 70 degrees in order to get down to at least 1.010. I'll likely dry hop the beer this weekend and keg it next weekend. I'll update you guys with a tasting as soon as it carbs up.
Cheers
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