Double IPA

4/9/2010

True Brew Whiteley Series Double IPA

Start date: 3/17/2010     keg date: 4/3/2010          Drink date: 4/17/2010

BG: 1.04               FG:  1.01                       ABV: 3.94%

Hop bittering units: 50

Ingredients

Hopped light malt extract- 1 can

Unhopped extra light malt extract- 1 can

Extra light dried malt extract- 2 lbs

Crystal grain malt- 6 oz

Centennial hop pellets- 2 oz

Willamette hop pellets- 1 oz

Amarillo hop pellets- 2 oz

Cascade hop pellets- 2 oz

Fermentis US-05 Ale yeast- 1 pack

priming sugar- 5 oz

Process

·         boil the water

·         steep the grains for 30 minutes

·         boil the malt and 1 oz of Centennial hops

·         add 1 oz each of Willamette, Centennial and Amarillo to the boil

·         add 1 oz of Cascade hops at the end of the boil

·         fermented in bucket for 1 week

·         Dry hop the beer by adding 1 oz each of Amarillo and Cascade hops

·         add only 1/2 the priming sugar (~2.5 oz) when kegging.

·         keg the beer 1 week after that

·         wait at least 2 weeks before enjoying

Comments

We brewed 2 batches this day.  The european bock was the other one.  This is when I really started getting obsessed with hops.  We added so many hops to this brew and they smelt so damn good.  Our ritual now is to open the bag of hop pellets and let anyone around get a good whiff.  Everyone comes away smiling.  We have never dry hopped before either.  I'm not entirely sure about that process so I need to do some research, but hopefully it makes the product even more hoppy.   We then kegged it for the first time.  We used only half the amount of priming sugar, as instructed by the fellows at the brew shop in Falls Church.  We thought about force carbonating it in the keg, but we're in no rush.  We forgot to take a hydrometer reading though.  So we will have to take a reading before we drink, which may not be completely accurate.  It's a learning process and we still make some minor mistakes.  Sue us.  We kegged outside while we were brewing the red ale.  I had a Clipper City double IPA a few weeks ago and I can only hope ours is as good as that.

We moved the keg to the kegerator and moved the Bock fermenter to our new big fridge.  After about a week we were ready to tap the Double IPA keg.  The excitement was building.  We tapped it and let it settle for a bit.  Then came the disappointment.  This wasn't like when you're disappointed because the redskins traded away more draft picks or because with the picks they actually had they drafted some clown ass Colt Brennan.  We're huge fans but we don't have anything personally to do with that process or decision.  There aren't many things that you create yourself, put the hard work in, and see it all the way through.  At least not in our young, shallow, petty lives.  But this was one of them.  I was excited for the hops and the great tasting, strong beer.  Unfortunately, that didn't happen.  It had no carbonation.  I thought it tasted awful too.  It almost tasted like the wort, but a little different.  Chris thought it tasted close to what he expected from a Double IPA, except for the lack of carbonation.  It was kind of sweet and bitter and had a bad after taste.  I'm not talking about like a bitter taste from the hops or something.  It didn't taste like beer at all.  We're not sure what went wrong.  It's so hard to tell; there could be myriad different reasons.  We're leaning towards either we didn't put enough sugar in it or the seal on the keg was not sufficient.  The guy at the homebrew store told us to only use half the sugar since we were kegging it.  We'll have to do some research on that topic for the future.  When I moved the keg to the kegerator fridge it bubbled a little bit through the seal.  I thought that was a bad sign.  If the seal was not very good and oxygen got in and CO2 got out then that could definitely be the reason for our bad batch of beer. 

We are thinking about resealing it for another week.  It probably won't help, but we're holding out hope that something happens.  I don't know how the fact that we've already tapped it will affect it if we unhook it from the CO2 now.  As I said before, we were very disappointed that this happpened.  We've only had 2 successful brews and one bad one now.  Obviously we have a long way to go to being respectable. 

We resealed the keg and pumped it full of CO2 for about 2 weeks.  This actually helped out a lot.  Once we started drinking it again it had a decent level of carbonation. It still tasted kind of flat and boring, but you could kind of tell it was supposed to be a double IPA.  It had a little bit of bite to it.  The more we drank it the more we thought it was serviceable.  But that's more likely due to our brains tricking us due to the repetition.  So it wasn't a complete failure, but we still weren't too thrilled with it.  Until next time, you stay classy.