I have been lurking on the email list for the Tippecanoe Homebrew Circle for a while now but never participated at all. Recently some emails started going out about a brew day at People's Brewing Company here in Lafayette. I love the beer there so I figured why not go brew some beer and meet some people. I have read a bit about hop bursting (or late hopping) beer so I wanted to give it a shot. It should provide a huge amount of hop aroma and flavor with pleasant bitterness. The recipe:
- Grain:
- 10 lb Pale Malt
- 1 lb Crystal-30
- 1 lb Vienna Malt
- 0.75 lb Cara-pils
- 0.25 lb Crystal-120
- Hops
- 0.35 oz Warrior @ FWH
- 0.5 oz Simcoe @ 15, 10 and 5 min
- 0.5 oz Cascade @ 15, 10 and 5 min
- 0.5 oz Columbus @ 10 and 5 min
- 0.5 oz Citra @ 10 and 5 min
- 1. oz Citra @ 1 min
- 0.5 oz Galaxy @ 1 min
- 1.0 oz Cascade @ 1 min
- 0.75 oz Simcoe @ 1 min
- 1 tsp Irish Moss
- 0.5 tsp Yeast Nutrient
- 10 drops FermcapS
- Beersmith Specs:
- OG: 1070
- 72.1 IBU
- 9.5 SRM
- 7.3% ABV
The plan was to mash at 152 F for 60 minutes and boil for 60 minutes.
I got all of the stuff packed up in the car which was no small feat and makes the whole brewing not at home thing a bit of a pain. It all fit though and everything made it back in one piece too.
The brewers at People's offered to provide base malt and yeast for free so I got my 10 lb of pale malt from them and crushed it up then mixed in the specialty grains. I also set up right next to one of the former brewers at People's who now works at Flat12 in Indianapolis. He had a pretty nice set-up with a multi-tier system.
Mash went pretty well, but it was cold and windy and I had to adjust temp to get the mash to 152 F. The first 5 minutes were probably more like 149 F. After the mash I tossed in the FWH and sparged ending up with 7 gallons of wort but I forgot to write down the Brix on it.
Clare came along and helped with the brewing, she stirs the mash like a champ and really likes the spent grain a lot...
The boil went pretty well but keeping the burner lit in the wind was a challenge. It probably didn't stay as hot and boil off was lower than usual. This was a ton of hops, the bag below is the 1 minute addition. The 4 doses are in the images below that.
People's gives the spent grain to local farmers so the mash tun was emptied into the grain tub
After the boil I cooled a bit differently than usual. I picked up a 1/4 HP submersible pump and got it hooked up to my wort chiller. I started with cool tap water and recirculated that until it was hot. Then I switched to a new bucket of cool water and started adding ice to keep it cold. Clare helped stir the wort with the chiller and we got it cooled down with 4 buckets in 20 minutes. Much less water wasted than how I do it at home but it did take a bit longer.
The wort ended up at 14.7% Brix (1057), much lower than planned. It is possible that the base malt weight was off from the hand scale or the efficiency just went down from the temps and boil. All in all it was a successful brew and a good time. The wort smelled amazing going into the fermentation chamber at 15.5 C and the CO2 bubbles coming out smell like hop heaven.
