Erik’s American IPA #1

Description:

Several weeks ago I brewed my first partial mash where I used a significant amount of grain. It has been in the bottle about a month now and after extensive QC I think it is safe to post the recipe here without fear of recrimination.

I was trying to come up with something like Anchor liberty ale. I haven’t tried them side by side so I won’t guess how close I came.

The resulting beer was strong and well hopped. The FG of 1.016 left it with a medium body and a slight residual sweetness which was overbalanced by hop-bitterness. The flavor and aroma of the cascades was quite evident after a month in the bottle.

This is my best beer to date, to make it better I will probably boost the bittering hops a bit and cut out the extract to replace it with more pale two-row.

Ingredients:

• 6 lbs. American Pale 2-row
• 0.75 lbs. 60L American Crystal
• 0.25 lbs. Carapils
• 4.25 lbs. M&F Bulk Pale LME (added at 25 minutes)
• 0.5 oz. Nugget Hops (11.8%AA) @100 minutes to end
• 0.5 oz Nugget @40
• 0.5 oz. Cascade (6.5% AA) @30
• 0.5 oz. Cascade @15
• 0.5 oz. Cascade @8
• 0.33 oz. Cascade @0
• Wyeast 1028 London Ale
• 1-1/2 ounce Cascade (dry hop)
• 1/2 ounce Nugget (dry hop)

Procedure:

I used 1 qt of water per lb of grain (7 qts total, soft, pre boiled seattle water with 2 tsp of Gypsum) I used a short 20 minute protein rest and a long 2 hr mash @156F for some residual body and sweetness in the finished beer.

I only collected about 4.5 galons of wort because I don’t have a big enough brew pot. I was within a point or two of my target OG based on my assumed efficiency of 85% of Dave Miller’s optimal numbers. I boiled about 3.5 gal wort with the hops in a 4 gal pot. In another pot I boiled the remaining sweet wort and added it to the main pot as space became available.

All hops were whole hops from the Hop Source (good hops, good prices, no financial or personal interest). I adjusted my IBU calculations for the estimated SG in the main pot. I assumed a more-or-less linear increace in SG between the SG at the start of the boil and the estimated SG at the time I added all runnings to the main pot. When calculating the IBUs for the early additions I did not try to take into account the dramatic boost in OG over the last 25 minutes of the boil caused by the addition of the LME.

I cooled the wort over 40 minutes time in a covered kettle in a tub-full of cold water. Yeast was pitched at about 75F. Fermenation proceeded at 60F. Racked to carboy after 5 days, dry hopped for 8 before bottling.