Friday I made a batch of my East India IPA. I redid the recipe from last time, with only two differences. As I was getting my ingredients, Steinbarts ran out of the 120L crystal malt. So, I used 1/4lb of the 120L crystal and 1/4lb 80L crystal. I also had access to some loose leaf Cascade hops, which was nice as I am all out of Cascade pellets. I used some Safale SA-04 English ale yeast, as it’s cheap and it’s what I used the last time I made this and it turned out great.
Added the grains to 1 gallon of water and did a protein rest at 130 for 30 minutes.
After the protein rest I added 1/2 gallon of near-boiling water to the grains to bring it up to 150. The strange thing was it should have done it easily, as technically 1/4 gallon should have. I eventually got things settled at 150 degrees and let it simmer there for 45 minutes.
Next, I took the temp up to 158 for 15 minutes, then up to 168 to stop the conversion process. I sparged with 2 gallons of 170 degree water. I added 1/2 the gypsum to the boil water and 1/2 to the sparge water.
Once sparged I began the boil. Had an incident with the malt extract bucket falling into the water and splashing wort all over the stove. Argh! Cleaned that up and realized I wasn’t stirring the malt extract, and naturally some got scorched on the bottom of the pot.
Once the boil started I added the first batch of hops. 2oz of Chinook and 1/2oz of Centennial. Wowza! Hoppy goodness!
At the 30 minute boil mark I added 1/4oz Centennial and 1/4oz of the loose leaf Cascades. With 2 minutes remaining I added the remaining Cascades, which was 1/2oz worth. More than last time, but didn’t see the need to leave them sitting around. Another thing I forgot this time was the Irish Moss. Grr…..
Filtered out the hops as best as I could and added it to my fermenter, topping it off to 5 gallons. Yesterday I aerated the beer, took my hydrometer reading and pitched the yeast. My initial gravity came out to 1.074, more than last time I brewed this. Hmm…. ok. Maybe my sparging was better this time. Who knows.
The fermentation has really kicked off on this. I plan on letting it go for a week then transferring it to a secondary fermenter with some oak chips. Should add more to this delightfully wonderful beer.
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