Batch 16 – India Pale Ale

Wednesday evening my friend and I brewed batch 16, which is based off of Papazian’s recipe “Laughing Heart IPA.”  We did a hops substitution, as we had no Centennial hops but had Chinook, so we used them for the bittering hops.

The recipe is a mini-mash, so I started with the grains, doing the stepped infusion process that Papazian recommends.  After the protien rest and during the extraction, I had an issue with the heat, as though I was stirring the grains I wasn’t getting all the grains from the bottom of the pot, which caused a large heat build up.  Once I stirred these up the temperature jumped from 145 degrees to 165 degrees!  OUCHIES!!!!  I quickly pulled the pot off the burner and added some cold water to get the temp back down to 150 degrees where it needs to be.

During the extraction my friend/investor came over, and he took over babysitting the grains while I took care of my kids.  Once our mash was done, we sparged the grains and got our wort to a boil.  Once the boil began we added 4 lbs of light malt extract to the mash and the 1-1/2 oz of Chinook hops.  The final 5 minutes we added some Irish moss and the 1/2 oz of Cascade aroma hops.

Thursday morning I took the initial gravity, pitched the yeast, and life was good.  We have a new hydrometer and a hydrometer tube to do the measurement in, which turned out to be a GREAT investment!  I tested the measurement tube ahead of time, and water was coming up as 1.000 initial gravity, just like it was supposed to.  The IPA had an initial gravity of 1.050, which will give us the potential for over 6% alcohol.  No doubt it will be closer to 5%.  I’m looking forward to it being done and drinkable.

News on the English bitter:  We tried a bottle before it was technically ready, and it was good.  Another week in the bottle and this baby will be money!