By Greg B. What do you do, when you are moving to a place that can no longer guarantee you a good supply of fresh IPA?  Or any IPA, at least American style?  Well, if you know in advance that this will be your fate, you try to stock up and enjoy the sensuous aromas and flavors put forth by breweries all over the USA while you still can!  Now, while I am not a brewery, I can make a mean IPA, and one of my friends required something mean.  Something big.  Something that will knock anyone’s socks off if they try it, as her leaving-America-forever beer.  And I think I knew just the recipe to put together.

After about 7 months of experimenting with all-grain recipes, I’ve gotten back into using extract as well.  With the brewing setup I have now, it’s just so damn difficult to get a great conversion of starch to sugar, and to maintain the volume of beer that I need if I’m going to be hosting parties and such!  So, this is where extract comes to the rescue.  It packs a high sugar punch that cant be beat, and though the flavors tend to be different, and they don’t have diastic power (remember that enzyme I was talking about a few beer recipes ago?) and sometimes they have other ‘stuff’ in them, I decided to use them.  But I also decided that, you know, if I put in a few pounds of US 6row, maybe some of the enzymes in there will be able to breakdown any remaining starch in the extract.  It’s just a thought, but it’s worth trying.  I also know that the person I’m brewing for is a big fan of the grapefruity IPA aroma, and likes the flavor to be big as well.  So when we ventured to the homebrew store, I made some last minute changes to the brewing schedule.  Initially, I just assumed we’d be lucky if we could find any simcoe pellets, but what I found was a fridge FULL of whole leaf hops, of all sorts.  And so, I made some adjustments.  Here is the recipe.

Fermentables

• Cooper’s Plain light malt, 6.6lb LME
• 2lb Munton’s DME
• 2.5lb 6-row US pale malt

Everything else

• 2oz simcoe whole leaf hops 12.4% aa
• 2oz chinook whole leaf hops 13% aa
• 2oz challenger pelleted hops
• 4oz amarillo whole leaf hops, 9.3% aa
• WLP001 California ale yeast in suspension
• Gypsum, 1 teaspoon about
• Irish Moss, 1 teaspoon or so
• Yeast Energizer, about 1/2+ teaspoon

Ok, so maybe I went a little overboard on the hop buying at the store… but some of the recent really ‘big’ beers, over 8% abv really have a high malt content to them still, so I want some hops to balance that out with bitters… and well, to have extra bitters at the end!  The plan for brewing was simple, use a step mash in for the grains for about 40 minutes at 125F, then raise to 150F and remove the 6-row after 40 minutes there.  Then, add all the sugars and extract, the temperature will lower a bit, to around 125F (if it doesn’t, add some more water) and let whatever enzymes are in solution do their thing on anything in the extract as I kept the heat on low, slowly raising the temperature over the course of the next hour or so to 165F.  Then, I turned up the heat, brought it all to a boil and began hopping the liquid.  Remember to have some grain/hop bags handy for this, with the whole leaf deal there’s a lot of stuff they can potentially get into your beer!  First, I added about 1oz of the simcoe and 1oz of the chinook in a bag for 20 minutes, followed by another 1oz simcoe and 1oz chinook in a bag for 20 minutes, followed by 2oz challenger and 1oz amarillo for 15-20 minutes. Also during this time, add the Irish moss to the mix, to encourage anything in the solution to precipitate out.  At this point, I drained the hop bags, cooled it to 75F and poured my yeast into the primary, along with some yeast energizer, then siphoned the cooled wort into the primary.  I collected a small sample, this beer has a starting gravity of 1.084, meaning it’s going to be BIG.  So, when transferring the wort, I try to make sure the siphon hose is pretty high above the bottom of the fermenter.  This means that the wort mixes the yeast well, but also that a lot of air gets mixed into solution.  Since I don’t have an aerator, this is my poor man’s way of beginning aeration.  Once all the wort and none of the trub is into the fermenter, I have a very large brewing spoon I use to mix for a good 60-120 seconds vigorously, again to encourage aeration so the yeast can live happily.  remember, happy yeast give you good beer!    I plan on steeping the remaining 3oz of amarillo hops in the secondary, whenever this beer gets mostly done with fermenting.  I’ll make a judgement call once I open the primary fermenter as to how the aroma is working out, but I really hope for a citrus/grapefruit thing along with a nice spicy nose from the challenger hops.  Chinook should give some nice bitters to balance the malt, as well as a more earthy component.  I look forward to the day when this beer is ready to drink!

**Update, June 3rd 2009** The beer settled at 1.032 gravity, so I felt it was time to  rouse the yeast.  I moved the beer to the secondary, being sure to aerate as much as possible during the transfer as well as to take any yeast at the top of the fermenter.  Once in the secondary, I took 3oz of amarillo hops in a hop bag, crammed it through the glass hole at the top, and began to steep the beer with these hops in a process known as ‘dry-hopping’.  This will continue for another few days, potentially with me moving the beer upstairs to the 2nd floor, where the house ambient temperature is around 75-76F daily.  I hope this will speed up the digestion and production of alcohol.  After this time, I’ll take it down to the basement (around 65F) for a few days, letting yeast settle out of the beer, before transferring to another secondary and then bottling.