Locked Out Black IPA

With only 2 beers on tap (porter and IPA), we are definitely needing to get brewing to fill that kegerator up. Today I brewed our Black IPA (now for the 3rd time). We used the same grain bill as previous versions, but scaled it up for 6 gallons in order to end up with 5 gallons in the keg. Also, now that we have bulk hops, I upped both the late addition and dry hop amounts so hopefully, it will be on par with the commercial example in the hop-department as the malt flavor is spot on (Stone Sublimely Self Righteous).

 

The day could not gotten off to a worse start though. I went to the garage at about 715a to start the mash and immediately locked myself out of the house. Fantastic start to the day. After that was taken care of, the rest of the day went smoothly. I was able to clean a couple of dirty kegs while I brewed and the weather was nice and cool, although a little windy. I finished in about 3.5 hours, which is one of the fastest days yet.

 

This batch was also our first brew using the new keggle. Hopefully we wont have similar issues with this brew pot as the aluminum because the stainless steel is so much easier to keep clean. I was happy with it today and it seemed to come to a boil a little quicker than the other pot did. We'll have to keep tweaking our volumes initially though until we get the boil off rate figured out. I'm going to do some reseach about making a dip-tube to draw the wort from the side of the keggle when transferring to hopefully leave a lot of hops and trub behind.

 

Recipe:

90% Pale 2-row

5% Crystal 60L

5% Carafa III

 

2 oz Chinook at 60

2.25 oz Centennial at 2 min

2.25 oz Simcoe at 2 min

 

2.25 oz Centennial -- Dry hop

2.25 oz Simcoe -- Dry hop

 

Yeast: US05

 

OG: 1074

Efficiency: 72%

Anticipated alchol: +7%