Brew #2: Brave New IIPA; November, 2009

Ah...beer. Why are you so satisfying in every way?

Due to the financial black hole that was most of 2009--Black Ought-Nine, as it will be remembered hereafter--I wasn't able to brew again until November. I'll spare you the sordid details. How I yearned to though, and I used most of that time to do research, to ask around, to get input, and to draw doodles of foamy pints on every available surface around me.

At some point I determined that the next one would 'kick ass' on the first one, by being a double, or as some say, an imperial IPA.


For those of you who don't know, an IPA is an India Pale Ale, and the story on that is that way back when, during the heyday of the Empire, Lord Vader used to send his ships back and forth to the various rebel bases on missions, and naturally his stormtroopers required beer. Now, the trip was long, and for some reason their ships lacked refrigeration, so the beer--or simply 'ale' as it was known at the time--would not keep for very long. Some wise underling discovered that if you laced the kegs with hops (a plant related to cannabis, but with none of the unique uses that that plant has), it would act as a preservative.  A long time after that, when the rebels took over and were running things, they decided that they liked not only the preservative power and the bittering qualities of hops, but also that distinctive flavor and aroma that hops added. So they began brewing with more hops, developing what's now called 'American' style craft beers. And even later, out in California I believe, some intrepid brewing pioneers decided to take it a few steps further and just see how far they could bump up the hops before your tongue just turned into a piece of numb green gelatin and slid out onto the bar for all to see. They called this toxic concoction double, or imperial, or in some cases super-duper IPA.

Some of my facts may be a tad off here, but that's the gist of it. I figured it would be a good way for me to learn, by trying a beer that needs a really particular balance of bitterness, sweetness, and aroma to be drinkable. Imperial IPAs generally have more of everything, and as such it's really easy to screw them up. I wanted my screw-ups to be obvious, so I chose this extreme style, thinking I'd learn a lot from that and then work back to a more middle of the road ale after that.

Well it was pretty successful, I guess. Here's the recipe:

Steeping grains (steeped for 60 min. @ 62C; rinsed w/3 L @ 74C):

Maris Otter, 2.5 kg

Belgian Cara-Pils, 1 kg

Crystal Malt 40L, .20 kg

Wheat Malt, .3 kg

20 L batch; 12 L boil for 60 min.

Munton's Light DME, 2.5 kg (half at 60 min./half @ 15 min.)

Nugget hops, 17 g (First wort hoppings,  added right after steeping, before boiling)

Centennial, 30 g (FWH)

Centennial, 30 g @ 60 min.

Cascade, 30 g @ 20 min.

Cascade, 10 g ea. @  10, 6, 4, 2, 0 min. (=50 g 'hop burst')

Safale US05 Ale yeast, 33 g (rehydrated)

30 g Cascade leaf hops as dry hop in secondary

As you can see, I used a lot of hops (157 grams!), a lot of yeast, and...a reasonable amount of grain and fermentables. I had a few problems though, as I note below.

• Problem: boilover, causing thick mounds of charred candy gunk to be cemented all over the brew kettle and stove top. Solution: leave the lid off and pay attention.
• Problem: improper grain bill due to my improper understanding of metrics, resulting in not enough character malts in the steeping stage, and not enough fermentables (DME) in the boil, producing less malt flavor and body in the beer. Solution: learn bloody metrics!

Yeast will party till they puke if you keep feeding them

• Problem: Eruption of 'Mt. Krausen' due to excessive yeast and too vigorous fermentation, resulting in fermenter exploding and over-attenuation (also due to lack of fermentables; basically the yeast ate up all the malt and left nothing for us to drink); airlock bubbled for 9 days! Solution: Don't believe every piece of advice you get from half-soused home brewers; use a blow-off hose instead of an airlock.
• Problem: broke hydrometer (second one in two batches). Solution: keep hydro away from Mark. Get an assistant.

And to illustrate some further problems, please view the following videos of the racking process.






The 3 Stooges could have done that smoother than I did, but after all that the finished beer came out pretty good, and even better with a little maturing in the bottles. However when we first cracked one open it was still a bit...

Yep. Gotta love the Colt .45 comment!


Brave New IIPA was definitely a step up from my first attempt. Steeping the grains broadened the complexity of flavors and gave it a fuller body, although it still lacked the chunkiness that I was going for. The aroma and color were spot on, however.

So what did I learn from brew #2? A couple of things. One is, when you siphon, keep the racking tube down in the beer, otherwise it won't draw out, derrr... Another, if you've got a spigot on your fermenter, why bother with the siphon, BUT...be sure to strain out all the hop matter from your boil and dry hop stages to eliminate those pesky clogs that can result in racking cluster-f**ks.

In fact, as I have subsequently learned from brew #3, leaving the hop junk in your beer can really foul up both the process and the product, i.e. produce weird flavors that you definitely don't want. More on that in the next post. Stay tuned.