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November 17, 2005
IPA
I brewed my first successful all-grain batch of beer last night. I brewed an IPA, and it weighed in at 1.075. I started around 6:00PM, and finished at 1:00AM -- including all of the clean up. It took a bit longer than expected, but I wasn't exactly efficient.The picture below on the right is my attempt to keep the mash at it's optimal temperature (150-158 degrees). I wrapped the whole mash tun in a blanket, and then put another pot over the top. Who knows how much this helped, but I did manage to keep it in the optimal temperature range for 1 hour and 15 minutes.
From Andy, who happened to brew an IPA on the same night:
Given this calculation, my final gravity should be around 1.020 with an alcohol volume of 7.2%. Not too shabby.
Here's the recipe:
8lbs English Pale Maris Otter Malt
4lbs US Rye Malt
1lb. German Munich Malt
1lb. Crisp Caramunich Malt 15L
.5lb German light crystal malt
Hops:
1oz. Chinook 60 minutes
2oz. Crystal 60 minutes
1oz. Chinook 30 minutes
1oz. Amarillo 10 minutes
1oz Chinook 10 minutes
-----------
1oz. Chinook - dry hop
1oz. Amarillo - dry hop
Wyeast 1028 London Ale Yeast
For the most part, the process went smoothly. I picked up a few tips for my next batch:
Make an action list to follow for the process from start to finish. For example: When mash reaches a stable temperature, START heating up the sparge water. I forgot about this until the end of the mash, duh!- Make sure your pots all have internal markings for fluid volumes. It would have been helpful to know how much wort I started with, and how much I ended up with. Or, how much sparge water I was heating up.
- Boil the hops in a cheese-cloth bag.
- You can squeeze out wort from the saturated hop flowers when transferring to your primary. I think I left a lot of good wort in my 6 ounces of hops, which probably explains why I ended up with 4.5 gallons of wort after the boil. I ended up using 1/2 gallon of water to bring things up to 5 gallons.
Dry hop in the secondary. I didn't realize that it isn't preferable to dry hop in the primary -- although I think this could be subject to personal preference.- Insert the airlock into the lid BEFORE you put it on the bucket. The stupid black gasket has fallen into my wort 3 times, no matter how careful you are. ;-) Yes, it's difficult to get it out without contaminating the wort.
Posted by mark at November 17, 2005 12:29 PM Subscribe (FeedBurner)
Comments
I'm not hardcore enough to do an all grain mash (mostly I'm too cheap to buy the right gear), but I can relate to the airlock problem. Those stupid things have a mind of their own.
Posted by: alan at November 17, 2005 11:52 PM
So the next thing you're going to do is apply your new skills to your chosen field - and come up with one of these:
http://www.ucomics.com/thefifthwave/2005/11/13/right? *heh*
Posted by: Nathan at November 18, 2005 4:49 PM
Thanks Nathan, that's my kinda computer. Perhaps that's a TCP/IPA. ;-)
I'd love to take credit for this, but my friend and coworker Randy coined that name earlier this week.
Posted by: Mark Veerman at November 18, 2005 7:15 PM
The final gravity weighed in at 1.018, so that should give me 7.4% ABV. The dry hopping in the primary really fouled up the racking process as the drain spout on my primary got clogged up. However, it seemed to taste pretty good, so I'm excited. I'll probably put it in the keg later this week.
Posted by: Mark Veerman at November 30, 2005 7:03 PM
way too much math for beer.
mmmmm... beeeer.
Posted by: Nate at December 18, 2005 3:44 PM