In our local pub they have a selection of books for browsing and one book including Mikkeller's Book of Beer. When we first started flicking through this book we were still on Brew #1, a full extract brew and the idea of a complex all-grain brewing just felt so so far away and impossible for us to attempt. However, on our last pub visit and flick through the book we actually realised that we have come so far as homebrewers that some of these were actually now achievable. So we decided to give one a go! We chose the Stateside IPA recipe because it sounded pretty damn good.
Check out some of our previous IPA brews.
Recipe planning
We used the recipe in the book but halved it for our small batch brewing needs and adjusted the grain bill to what we had available.
Recipe adapted from Mikkeller's Book of Beer by Mikkel Borg Bjergsø and Pernille Pang.
Method: All-grain BIAB
Batch size: 10 litres
Estimated OG: 1.072
Estimated FG: 1.017
Estimated ABV: 6.9%
Estimated colour: 20 EBC
Estimated IBU (Tinseth): 100+
Malt:
2.275 kg Weyermann's Floor Malted Bohemian Pilsner (5 EBC)
250 g Weyermann's Caramunich type I (90 EBC)
377 g Munich Malt (23 EBC)
377.5 g Flaked Oats including husks (2 EBC)
Hop schedule:
10 g Chinnook pellets at 60 minutes (AA: 11.3%)
11 g Amarillo whole leaf at 15 minutes (AA: 7.7%)
6 g Cascade pellets at 15 minutes (AA: 5.7%)
7 g Amarillo whole leaf at 1 minute (AA: 9.4%)
12 g Cascade pellets at 1 minute (AA: 5.7%)
Yeast:
Fermentis Safale S-04
Finings:
1/2 tsp Irish Moss at 15 mins remaining of the hop boil
Directions:
Mash at 66°C, mash out to 76°C
90 min hop boil.
Fermentation 14 days at 20°C
Carbonation - 2.4 CO2-vol
Brew day - 25/07/20
Every brew day deserves a great beer. This time I went for Jupa by Five Points Brewery. This brewery produces great beers and is only walking distance from our flat!
This Stateside IPA clone was all about the grain bill. The plan was to mash at 66°C for 1 hour, but it was quite hard the temperature at maintain 66°C. The temperature was a little too high so we added an additional 0.5 litres of water to reduce it. After the mashing step, we heated the grains up to 76°C for the mash out step.
We then proceeded to sparge with 6 litres of water. We left the water with the grain bag for 10 mins to steep, to give us more beautiful wort.
We then added the sparged wort to the original wort and brought it to a rolling boil, ready for the hops to be added.
This beer had 3 hop additions. Chinnook at 60 mins for bittering, an Amarillo and Cascade addition at 15 mins for flavouring and another Amarillo and Cascade addition at 1 min for aroma.
After all the hop boil additions, the wort was cooled to 23°C and we measured the gravity using our trusty hydrometer. We actually managed to actually hit our OG of 1.072. This literally never happens!
We then added our dried yeast (Fermentis S-04) and left the beer to ferment for 14 days completely untouched. This is the first time we have brewed an all-grain IPA without a dry-hopping step so I am intrigued to see how it turns out.
One thing that was really odd about this brew is how little wort we ended up with. We were aiming for 10 litres but ended up with around 7.5 litres. So much less than we expected. Not ideal but we kept it moving!
Bottling day - 08/08/20
The whole of this fermentation occurred during a very heat weather period in London which is always lovely but terrible for brewing.
We did our final hydrometer reading and it came in at 1.021, meaning the final brew ended at 6.7% rather than the 6.9% we were aiming for. Not bad but it is clear that the fermentation was affected by the temperature fluctuations from a hot 2 weeks in London.
We carbonated the beer to 2.4 CO2-vol by dissolving 46 g of dextrose sugar in 90 ml of hot water, adding this sugar to the bottling bucket then transferred the beer to the same bucket using our autosiphon.
This beer had a lovely colour!
We ended up with 18 x 330 ml bottles of beer which ain't too bad considering the low amount of wort that we started with.
Beer day - 22/08/20
Beer day is always a happy day!
Verdict:
This beer is all about the grain bill and super tasty. It goes straight to your head strong! On first pour into your glass your treated with a lovely chestnut coloured beer which is a thin head. On the tip of your nose you get a strong caramel smell which is matched upon sipping with caramel flavours owing to the caramel malt in the grain bill. Although, this beer has Amarillo, Chinnook and Cascade hops, this beer tastes to me like it is all about the grain bill and these hops work to complement it nicely. This is a great designed beer! It is super strong however, and at 6.7% you will feel this one! I feel like we learnt a lot from brewing this beer, especially the lesson of letting the grains do the work occasionally, rather than always producing hop forward beers. One problem we had with this brew came from the bottling process. There was quite a lot of bottle to bottle variation and some bottles were quite oxidised but the goods ones were great! Now I need to hunt down the original and see how our batch compares.
Tasting notes:
Colour: Chestnut
Clarity: Good clarity
Carbonation: Very light carbonation with thin head
Smell: Lovely caramel smell
Taste: Caramel flavour with strong alcohol running through
Alcohol level: 6.7%
Perceived alcohol level: Strong
Desirable: Yes
Would I pay money for it?: Yes
Rating: 3.5/5
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