Sunday, January 26, 2014

Black Rye IPA take 2

The last time I tried this recipe I accidentally grabbed a bunch of the dry hops when I kegged it, which led to the keg lines getting clogged with hops, and having to open the lid on a pressurised keg of beer, with ensuing shenanigans.  Still, I saved maybe half the keg, much of which got drunk flat, and still kind of liked it.  So I'm giving it another go.

I haven't brewed anything in almost a year, since the local homebrew shop shut down.  It takes so much more organisation when I can't just pop down of a morning and be brewing some suggestion from the brew shop guy an hour later.  But since I was getting organised in advance, I decided to do something I've wanted to do for awhile; make the same beer several times in a row, with minor variations.  So with the helpful assistance of Bill, who picked up my supplies on a run down to Prescott, and lent me his mill, we're going to do this a few times.

Grain Bill:

10 lbs Pale Malt (2 Row) US Grain
2 lbs Rye Malt Grain
1 lbs Caramel/Crystal Malt - 10L
12.0 oz Carafa I
10 oz Special Roast

(Note the Carafa III got converted to the much lighter Carafa I, because that's what they had - though I did get some of another substitute that will be part of the experimentation.)

Never actually milled my own grain before, so that deserves a picture:

With my anemic little 12v battery drill...
With Mike's industrial strength Torque-mada.  I'm sure there's a horribly macho metaphor there, but if you're doing your metaphorical with that much torque, you're doing it wrong.
5 gallons at 170 - my usual mash water for this much grain - was still WAY too hot.  Had to dump tons of ice in it to drop the temp down to 152.  Next time drop to at least 165.  Batch sparged at 168. 

60 min .75 oz Warrior [15.4 %]
45 min .25 oz Warrior [15.4 %]
10 min 1.0 oz Cascade [6.4% AA 5.9% BA]
10 min 1 tsp Irish Moss
5 min 1.0 oz Citra [14.1% AA 5.9%]

Initial Gravity: 1.044 (not a great yield for that much grain...)
Wyeast 1065 American Ale pitched at 80F.

Fermentation took a mere 4 days - blowing the lid off once - but was down to 1.002 and quiet so I reckon it was at least mostly done.  Transferred to the secondary fermenter on the evening of the 30th, and added:

1.0 oz Cascade [6.4% AA 5.9% BA]
1.0 oz Citra [14.1% AA 5.9%]

in a hops sock.

2 comments:

anti ob said...

Cracked this out for the boardgame-fest at Shane's last weekend. Very nice. A bit nutty from the rye. Not overly hopped. Everyone else seemed to approve too; we killed the keg, anyways.

anti ob said...

Saved a bit of all 4 batches of this beer, and cracked them out for dinner at Bill and Melanie's tonight - which therefore included a fair number of almost-intimidatingly-skilled brewers (who, I should point out, were in no other way than their skill and depth of knowledge intimidating about it.) This first version was a non-unanimous favorite, and I think I agree. There was a bit of almost sourness to it that didn't taste lactic, and I didn't remember from when it was in the keg, but then that was a fair few months back. Jeff seemed to think that it might be just the rye showing through. Could probably actually use a bit more bittering hops.