working on a recipe

As I mentioned, prevailing wisdom aside...if you go on to read the rest of the post, I was looking for people's experiences with turning around smaller beers quickly, as I am normally a "let it go a couple of weeks, test/taste, give it more time test/taste, etc." type of brewer.

 

Good call, I have some finings but have never used them, as I've been brewing a lot with Wy-1968 and haven't needed it. This seems like a good opportunity to try it out.

 

Gotcha, thanks man.

 

Update: so I tasted and tested today (one week out from brew day). I must say, I was pleasantly surprised. Moving all of the hop additions to 15 minutes and on worked nicely. Just where I wanted to be in terms of bitterness, and loads of flavor. After I get this DH'd, I am thinking that the hop character is going to be excellent.

I ended up mashing at 152 for about 75 minutes, and it's at 1.010 after a week. I broke my hydrometer on the brew day after I took pre-boil but before I took post-boil readings, but best estimate was that my OG came out to around 1.046ish. That would put me in the upper range of 1056's attenuation if it was indeed 1.046. Interesting side-note, I had blowoff, which I didn't expect from a smaller beer.

The beer has body without being too sweet. Definitely not hop candy, and there's not an overwhelming caramel presence. The sweetness that's there is working fairly nicely with the hops as of now. It's all still coming together obviously, but I've found that my beers tend to taste sweeter on the first tasting than they do by the time they're kegged and carbed. I have high hopes for this one as a first stab at a session ipa.

I'll probably let it go until Tuesday, sample again, and dry-hop in the keg until for 4-5 days. Then crash and get it on the gas on next Sunday.

Possibilities for the next iteration:

1) Keep hop schedule and the base grain ratio of 50/50 2row/MO, cut crystal and carapils in half, compensate with a bit more base grain, and add a tiny touch of something dark to get the color back up.

2) If the body/sweetness turns out good, I might keep the hop schedule/ibu but change up the hops to include either Mosaic or Galaxy since LHBS has tons of both right now. Haven't thought about a combo yet.

I plan to keep updating this thread as I tweak the recipe, hopefully will have something that I'm stoked about nailed down by the end of the summer. Thanks for the suggestions so far.

 

Good call, some malts like that would probably work well. I've had really good results using rye in a couple of beers (an IPA and an APA), so I will keep that in mind when reformulating for version two. I really want to make myself only tweak one element of the recipe, as I normally just brew something new every time. The goal here is to zero in a single house recipe, so I need to restrain myself from doing too much different.

Oh, yes, some interesting sugars are on deck...I was thinking something dark like treacle for a stab at a mild that I'll do sometime soon. I'm in Raleigh, so I'll look around for some of the others.

Thanks, I did end up mashing at 152...I think it came out pretty well.

 

I ended up moving my bucket to the chest freezer to crash in the mid 30s yesterday ahead of gelatin today. First time using it...from what I've read on various boards, some folks say 2-3 days, some folks say 1 day. In the spirit of the experiment of turning a beer around quicker, I'm going to give it a look tomorrow and go ahead and keg if it looks good. I thought about going ahead and putting the keg straight back in the chest freezer on gas for a cold dry-hop, but I've not loved the results of a cold dry-hopping experiment in the past. So I will probably let it warm back up to room temps in the keg after the hops go in for 3 days, back to the freezer, and put the gas on it.

 

Update: I did end up kegging this on Thursday after 1 day with gelatin produced a nice, clear sample. I hung dry hops in the keg in a bag, applied gas at 30psi, and left the keg in my fermentation cabinet in the upper 60s. Sampled on Friday with little noticeable increase in aroma, but Saturday afternoon's sample had started to pop. So I dialed pressure back to 12psi, moved the keg to my keezer, and dropped it back down into the 30s.

Pulled two pints for me and the Mrs. around 9pm last night, and it was good enough for me to pull another after that. So 13 days grain to glass. Carbonation isn't quite there, but it was good enough to not detract a great deal from the two glasses I drank. The experiment in using a higher crystal malt % than I normally would with a lower/longer mash and an attenuative yeast worked nicely in terms of providing ample body...its not watery and its not sweet hop candy. Hop character is explosively fruity/tropical with a touch of pine and perfect, easy-drinking bitterness (seems like the hopbursting method does indeed lend that smooth bitterness). Two glasses and I was hardly feeling it, but my craving for hops was fully sated...just what I was going for. I could knock this beer back all afternoon at a music festival or something.

I know that "session IPA" isn't a thing if you're brewing to style, but I think that it's a good descriptor here. A quick grain to glass turn around on a quaffable hop bomb was the goal, and I'm pretty pleased with the results of my first stab at it. Will definitely be brewing this again with some tweaks...I'm leaning toward cutting crystal, adding rye, mashing higher, and maybe using 1968 to try to get it to clear quicker without gelatin.

 

Thanks man. I've used 1968 in hoppy beers before and have better success than it sounds like you had with english strains. But looking at your schedule, I'm definitely heavier handed with hops. On the American hoppy styles I've used it in, I pitched a good sized starter and fermented on the low end of the range to minimize ester production. And I had dry-hop additions.

Quick question: what's the thinking behind the 90 minute mash? Is that for efficiency's sake or something else?

Chances are, I'll probably tweak less than I originally mentioned. Adjust grain bill and mash temp, but keep the 1056 as the yeast. Had another glass today after mowing the lawn. Decided to call it "Pliny the Yard Guy."

 

Ok, that's what I figured. I've skimmed through that stuff from Kai, I'll give it a more careful read.