Black IPA Racking

Tonight we racked our Black IPA and did the dry hopping for the secondary fermentation. We had a three gallon batch and decided to rack into three separate one-gallon carboys so that we could try different varieties of hops. Normally I don't bother with a blog post because racking is usually smooth and uneventful. Though not our most epic racking disaster, tonight still had enough twists to warrant the post.

When we took the lid off the primary fermenter, the krausen still hadn't fallen in the beer, so that was a little concerning. Ideally we would wait for the krausen to fall before racking, but with the plastic bucket there's no way to know without opening the lid and risking contamination. I think we're going to get a clear plastic fermenter so that in future brews we can see what's going on during primary fermentation. I don't know why the krausen still hadn't fallen after a week - maybe it was too cold in the room we had so the fermentation was slow. The gravity was down to 1.021. Ideally it would still drop a few points, but it is up to 8% ABV so at least that part is good.

We're using Cascade, Sorachi Ace, and Galaxy for our three hops. Since the three hops have different levels of alpha acid, I adjusted the amount of hops added to each carboy to balance them out. The goal is for each beer to have roughly the same level of hop aroma and flavor from the dry hopping. The alpha acid numbers are used to adjust bitterness levels when using hops during the boil. I'm not actually sure it will translate to the levels of aroma and flavor from the dry hopping, but that's all I could think of.

The original recipe called for 21.8g for each hop addition during the boil, then 21.8g of Cascade for the dry hopping. Based on the different alpha acid levels, 21.8g of Cascade translated to 13.1g of Sorachi Ace or 10.5g of Galaxy hops, which were the amounts we used. The only catch - those numbers were for the whole batch! I should have divided by three, giving 7.3g of Cascade, 4.4g of Sorachi Ace, and 3.5g of Galaxy in their respective carboys.

Not only did we use three times as much hops for the dry hopping as we were supposed to, I also forgot that we were supposed to do the dry hopping a week before bottling, not right at the start of racking to the secondary. I even have it on my calendar to do the dry hopping next Tuesday then bottle the following Tuesday.

I'm not sure what to do next to avoid totally overpowering the beer with the hops, since now we have three times as much hops sitting on the beer for twice as long as it was supposed to. Maybe we can rack the beer off of those hops in a week, or just go ahead and bottle in a week and give it longer in the bottle to continue the conditioning process. Or we can leave the hops in there for the next two weeks and possibly create some seriously face-slapping hoppy beer.

[ Black IPA Brew Day ] <--- | ---> [ 409 Tasting ]

Black IPA Brew Day

Today Desert Penguin ventured into a type of beer I never thought we'd brew - an IPA! To change it up and make it not all about the hops, we decided on a black IPA. It's the brew recommended for January by our new 2015 home brew calendar. We also wanted the ability to experiment with some flavors and see if we could come up with something different and interesting. The black IPA recipe we're using requires some dry hopping during secondary fermentation. We picked up a new 1 gallon carboy and we're going to do a different dry hop in each of 3 different carboys. Hopefully each gallon will have different qualities given the different hops that we chose.

Brew day went very smoothly again. We headed to Annapolis home brew in the morning and got all the supplies. They were out of some of the grains we were hoping to get, but Paul saved the day with some quick rework of the recipe. The combined grains weighed about 10 lbs.

We started brewing at 4:30 pm and were all finished at 8:30 pm. This recipe is another all grain brew using brew in a bag. The new pot and brew bag worked perfectly again. We started off with 5.7 gallons of water and we brought it up to the strike temp of 159. When the water was at the ideal temp, we added the brew bag and grains. About 5 min after we started the mash, we remembered to add the pH stabilizer to help improve the efficiency. It was a 90 min mash. After the mash finished, we pulled out the bag of grains and let it drain in the strainer while bringing the wort to a boil. We were just a little shy of the ideal amount of water after the mash. We added about 2 cups of water strained through the grains.

It was a 60 min boil and we added hops at 5 different points. At the start of the boil, we added summit hops. The summit hops had a really nice smell. With 15 min left, we added chinook hops; then at 10 min left, we added centennial hops; with 5 min left, cascade hops went in; and finally more centennial hops went in at the end of the boil.

With the outside temp keeping the incoming water very cold, it only took 12 min to cool the wort to 70 degrees. We racked the wort to the primary fermentation bucket, pitched the yeast, and took it downstairs to begin the alcohol making process.

The efficiency of this batch was slightly higher (66%) than our previous BIAB brew (60%), so it resulted in a higher gravity than expected. Not a bad thing in my book. :) The goal is to hit 8.16% ABV, but it might come in slightly higher. Another very fun and successful all grain brew in a bag experience!

---> [ Black IPA Racking ]

2014 Year in Review

The last six months have been a lot of fun for Amy and me, as we got back into home brewing after a very long hiatus. We brewed seven beers in 2014:

• El Jefe: 1 gal of hefeweizen that was extract-only
• Black Mo: 3 gal of Tumbler clone, which was our first use of specialty grains
• Bug Juice: 2 gal (which later turned into 1 gallon) of dunkelweizen
• Pumqueen: 2 gal of Pumking clone, which was our first all grain attempt
• Christmas Miracle 2014: 3 gal of Christmas beer with dried cherries, vanilla, and cinnamon
• 2 gal of oatmeal stout, with bourbon-soaked oak used in half the batch
• 3 gal of Belgian strong dark ale, our second all-grain brew

One of the fun things brewing this year was that we got to involve some of our family as well. We brewed the dunkel with Amy's Uncle Harold and the oatmeal stout with Paul's brother Craig. We also managed to get our finished beers (and sometimes our not-so-finished beers) into the hands of family and friends so that more people could share in the tasting. Amy and I are both looking forward to brewing more beers with family and friends in 2015.

Another fun thing about brewing this year was how much we're learning. It seems like there's a wealth of information out there, and it's so much fun to soak it all up - not just to apply to our brewing but also as beer lovers in general. I know so much more about brewing and beer now compared to six months ago.

The process of tweaking the brew setup with each beer has also been a lot of fun. The BeerSmith software has so many calibration options, and with each brew we get more information about how to set the numbers to get each beer closer to the desired result from the recipe. There's also a DIY aspect of home brewing that's really cool, with each person's home brew setup being slightly different. We started out with a pretty minimal setup, but have gradually worked our way up to a great set of home brew equipment for stove-top brewing up to 3-gallon all-grain batches.

As of the start of 2015, here is our current brewing equipment:

• Brew Day:
• 8-gallon MegaPot 1.2
• 5-gallon kettle
• BIAB bag from bagbrewer.com
• 5.2 mash pH stabilizer
• thermometer
• long stirring spoons
• 12" strainer
• scale (up to 11 lbs with 1g resolution)
• 2nd scale (up to 1.3 lbs with 0.1g resolution)
• irish moss
• copper immersion wort chiller
• sanitizer, bucket, and spray bottle
• auto-siphon
• hydrometer and test tube
• refractometer
• aerating stirrer
• Fermentation:
• 6.5 gallon bucket with lid
• 3-piece airlocks
• stoppers
• two 1-gallon glass carboys
• one 3-gallon glass carboy
• 5 cu. ft. chest freezer
• Johnson A419 temperature controller
• lasko personal space heater
• Bottling:
• bottle capper
• bottle washer
• bottle drying tree
• bottling bucket with valve
• spring tip bottle filler
• 12oz bottles
• 22oz bottles
• bottle caps

Here's to a fun half-year of brewing in 2014 and looking ahead to a great 2015 filled with more delicious beer!