Home Brew Batch #14: Home Grown Whole Hop IPA

Two years ago I purchased some hop rhizomes (Cascade?) for my brother to grow on his ranch up in Northern California. The first season they didn't really take off, but last Summer they did fairly well.

Finally my brother showed up at my house with the harvested hops, I was a bit apprehensive to go through the whole process of making a batch of beer without knowing the alpha acid level, but I decided to go for it anyway. I figured as IPA would be the best to showcase the hops.







I have been doing all grain recipes, but I wanted to make a full 5 gallon batch with a high enough gravity for a good IPA. Since my brew kettle is only 4 gallons or so, I didn't have enough room for a full mash, so partial extract it is....

Here is the recipe I used:

5 lbs. American 2-row
1 lb. Carapils
6 lbs. Light LME
6 oz. Honey
3.5 oz. (approximately) dried whole hops. Cascade? AA%???
1 vial White Labs Yeast WLP001
1 tsp. yeast nutrient
1/2 tsp. irish moss
2 gallons purified bottled water
3/4 cup priming sugar

I started with 3 gallons of strike water at 160 f and mashed the 2-row and Carapils for 80 minutes at 150 f. Then I heated 5.5 gallons sparge water to 170 f. After I removed the grain bag, I soaked it in the sparge water for 10 monutes and then removed the grain. I dumped the sparge water in to the boil kettle with the rest of the mash water and brought it to a boil. I added 1 oz. of the whole hops at 60 minutes, 1/4 oz. of whole hops at 45 minutes, and 1/4 oz. of whole hops at 30 minutes. At 30 minutes I added the honey and LME. I added 1/4 oz. of hops at 15 minutes and then the irish moss and yeast nutrient at 10 minutes.

After 2 weeks of fermentation, I racked to a secondary fermentor and added the remaining hops for dry hopping. I bottled 2 weeks later.
















Update: As expected, the level of alpha acid was unknown, so the bitterness was way too low. Maybe next year as the root system develops the quality of the hops will improve. The one thing that was very interesting was that the aroma and taste of the beer was very much like the original hops my brother gave me, but seemed to have a strange detergent taste/smell. I didn't like it at all, but others seemed to like it a lot....

Home Brew Batch #13: All Grain Saison de Noel #1

The Summer always seems to get in the way of brewing with so many things to do away from home. By the time I started to think about my next batch it was already late August. I was trying to think ahead for something for the holidays and I came across a Saison de Noel recipe online. I adapted it as follows for a 2.5 gallon batch:

5 lbs. Belgian Pilsner Malt
0.25 lbs. Aromatic
0.125 lbs Carafa III
0.125 Cara Munich
0.50 lbs. Dextrose
0.50 lbs Belgian Candi Syrup 80 L
0.50 oz. Magnum Hops 15.2% AA
1/2 vial White Labs WLP 566 Saison II
1/2 tsp. Yeast Nutrient
1/4 tsp. Irish Moss
2.5 oz. Priming Sugar

I started with 3 gallon of strike water at 160 f. The mash started almost exactly at 150 f and held its heat
well. The sparge method I tried on this one was to heat 0.5 gallons of sparge water to 168 f and then I poured it over the grain bag as it was sitting on a colander suspended over my boil kettle.

After boiling for 15 minutes, I added the Magnum hops at 60 minutes. At 45 minutes I added the Dextrose and Belgian Candi Sugar (I didn't add them at 60 minutes because I was trying to avoid some carmelization, but this recipe is dark enough color and had lots of malty flavor, so it probably didn't matter too much). At 15 minutes I added the yeast nutrient and irish moss. Then cooled, pitched yeast, and let ferment for 2 weeks in the primary.



Update: I gave away a growler of this one and a couple of bottles, so there wasn't a whole lot left for me to enjoy after those. The beer was good, but not as memorable as the second batch. I wonder now if the yeast pitch rate was way too low. I tried to split a vial of yeast, so maybe it was unequal. For this high of gravity I definitely should have gone with a full vial per 2.5 gallon batch. The only other issue I can think of was that it fermented a bit too warm.