What's Brewing? (February Edition)

Based hop schedule & varieties off of VikeMan's Average NEIPA recipe, thank you sir, https://www.beeradvocate.com/commun...ortheast-ipa-ag-w-partial-mash-option.436541/ but have upped total ounces up to 17, 8 galaxy, 6 citra, 3 mosaic.

 

Mashing in a session IPA after breakfast. First brew since November, since I had to work through some of my inventory. I had planned on making a normal session IPA, but of course it morphed into a NE style.

8# GP, 2# oat malt, 100% Azacca hops, Conan yeast. Mashing at 160° and hoping to end up just under 4%.

 

Sounds great. I really really want to brew today but I have 3 full fermenters and 3 full kegs. Need to badly have friends over to purge this stuff. May keep this in mind after.

 

Finally got around to another brew day today. Everything was going smoothly until I hooked up my immersion chiller and realized my outside faucet was frozen shut. After a bit of cussing, I improvised. Luckily my wife wasn't home to see me carrying 5 gallons of boiling wort through the house.

 

Yep. I was in that boat for a while. Finally broke the dry spell. Hopefully I'll kill this low ABV keg quicker than most.

I cooled batches like that for over a year. With your cold water, it probably didn't take too long. It was 80° here today, so I needed to pump ice water through my chiller. No frozen spigots for me!

 

Just had a long brew day that started with a bunch of testing.

First I got 5 gallons of water to 160 degrees then filled my shiny new SsBrewtech 10 gallon mash tun with it and let it sit for an hour to see how it held temp. (Lost about 3 degrees in my 62 degree house for those wondering).

Then got the old school 24" round caste iron skillet that my father gave me and put it across two burners on my kitchen stove to see if I could get 7 gallons of water boiling using the two burners and the skillet. My brew kettle kind of teetered when trying to span the burners without something else making me nervous. To my surprise, I could maintain an uncovered gently rolling boil without the lid on.

The came the brew time. My home brew club got a bunch of grain and hops from a farm in Conneticut, Thrall Farms or Thrall Malt, something like that. Well we split it out to the club and everyone is brewing something using it. Other than .75lb of Crystal 20, my recipe uses just the Thrall stuff. 2-row, Munich, Zeus, Nugget and Cashmere. Went for a odd hopy pale ale. First run with a mash tun was funky trying to get the temp right. Ended up good but took some reheating to land it just right (recorded numbers to compare to the next run). Ended up messing up some where and had an extra gallon in the brew kettle.... Lead to a two hour boil. All in all, ended spot on for predicted OG from Brewcipher with a 75% efficiency. First time using Cashmere hops, praying to god I don't get a lot of coconut....

 

Added priming sugar yesterday to primary, kegged today and first time using a spunding valve. Everything went smooth except for I got to much in the keg and I got beer coming out of the spunding valve.....Note to self: trim back the gas tube!!!!!

 

Did this ^ tonight.
The beer was American Pale Ale, with Flaked Rye. Had about 13% each flaked rye and copper carapils, about 20% Maris otter, and the rest 2-row. OG 1.050, FG 1.010, 5.2% est ABV. 1 oz columbus split evenly in the kettle at 60 and 15 minutes, 2oz cascade and 1 oz simcoe in the whirlpool. The copper carapils was a freebie from Homebrewcon. Can't say it has noticeable impact on the flavor. Same with the rye. Body seems a little slickish, sort of NEIPA softness territory. For the dry hops, I used 1 oz simcoe cryohops (first time user of this product line) and 2 oz centennial, in the keg..

Should be a decent drinker, although as I review the flavors of tonight's hydrometer sample, I think I might have preferred a higher percentage of MO. Seems a little boring as is. But the dry hops haven't done their thing yet.

 

Brewed up my Congress Street clone today. Had airlock activity within a few hours and it's roaring now. Pitched WLP007 and fermenting at 67F.

Will add the first dry hop tomorrow night, followed by the large one a day or two later depending on gravity (plan to do within 5 points of FG).

 

Congress St. clone here as well. Just transfered from dry hop keg to serving keg. Did a 6oz Galaxy and 1oz Columbus dry hop over about 4 days. I used two hop filters to try to avoid too much compacted hop material and to try to get as much beer to flow through all of it (this was discussed in another thread)

During the 4 days, about every 12 hours, I gently laid the keg down and rolled it a few times and then stood it up on the other end. So I guess I did this about 8 times. The two pics of the spent hops show them out of the filters. I rummaged through them and noticed no pellets. I have rummaged through previous spent hops in this manner in the past and found some pellets. They did not all get saturated by the beer. This time around they all seemed to get wet. I don't know but I take that as a good sign.

Also, very interesting (to me at least) is when I stuck my nose into my dry hop keg and inhaled, I did not get any hop burn or plastic odor. This was with 7oz of hops too. I did this with about 2-3oz of Simcoe and it burned the inside of my nose. This mix of 6oz Galaxy and 1oz Columbus smelled like super ripe pineapple.

Set and forget method to carb to 2.3-2.4 volumes. Will grab a pint in about 10 days.

 

I'm about to employ a similar dry hopping method for the first time next weekend. Planning to dry hop in a keg before transferring to a serving keg. The only difference is that I plan to put a filter over the beer dip tube and throw the hops in commando. I use leaf hops, so I'm not too worried about clogging the filter.

I think the agitation will allow much better extraction than my old method of stuffing the hops into the headspace of my primary carboy.

 

Brewed a NEIPA this weekend. 2-row, pilsner, wheat, oats, and honey malt. Galaxy, Motueka, Columbus. I used Wyeast 1469 and am fermenting at 65º.

Also kegged my best bitter hopped exclusively with motueka.

 

Tomorrow, a centenial lager and a saaz lager.

 

Just ordered another keg, going to try to start doing some lagers/pilsners using pressurized fermentation method. Would like to make something light and tasty for the upcoming summer season.

 

These are easy, centenial makes a lager lighter, to me, cause of the mop taste.

 

That's quite the descriptor lol

Centennial to me is super floral, but I never tasted a mop honestly!


@Curmudgeon

Keep us updated on your clone! I am going a slightly different route with my hopping methods, I will be curious to compare notes.

For mine, my boil additions additions:

(All Columbus)
1oz (FWH, 60min)
0.75oz (10min)
2oz (Whirlpool for 20min at <180F)

First dry hop was 18hrs after pitching yeast. Included 2oz Galaxy, 0.5oz Columbus.

The main dry hop will be added near FG, probably by tomorrow at the rate of fermentation going on right now. Will include 5oz Galaxy and 1oz Columbus. This will stay in for 2-3 days of contact time.

Once at FG for a day or two, the last hopping will be in the keg. I will rack the beer into the keg and add some priming sugar to naturally carbonate. There will be 1oz Galaxy and 0.25oz Columbus for the keg addition which will stay in there until the keg kicks in a stainless hop filter (like you have).

Last time I did this clone, it came out really well... But it wasn't exactly right. But I also used a different yeast at the time (Conan) so we will see how WLP007 does with some of the other tweaks I have done.

 

Dam spell check ment to say hop taste. Dam

 

Always surprised at how quickly these beers mature. Pitched on Saturday night. High krausen by Sunday morning. Dry hops on Tuesday and Thursday. Package on Saturday. Bottle conditioned in a week, max. Never had an issue.

Any of you guys have issues with packaging too soon?

 

Not neipas, cause I don't brew them now, but definatly have bottled imperial stouts to soon, boom.

 

Yesterday I was able to brew again for the first time in a long while. I had several oz of hops from a hop farm in my area that I bought in the fall after they made them available to homebrewers for the first time. A combination of Zeus and Cascade (which smelled very aromatic). So I went with a nice West Coast style pale ale, OG 1.049, bittered with an oz of Zeus and then an ounce of Cascade at 10 min, 5 min, and will dry hop with 3 oz. Just want to showcase the Cascade and see what it's like. I also went with all pale ale malt for the first time, with the exception of 5% Carapils.