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....