Homebrew 3 - IPA

30 December 2005 @ really damn late | Comments (1)

After an unsuccessful first attempt at brewing a partial extract India Pale Ale recipe, this is a slightly-modified second attempt.

The recipe

• Style: India Pale Ale
• Type: Extract w/grain
• Size: 5 gal (2 gal boil)
• Color: 18 SRM
• Bitterness: 58 IBU (Rager)
• OG: 1.058
• FG: 1.009
• Alcohol: 6.3% ABV
• Grain:
  • 0.5 lb. American victory
  • 1.0 lb. American crystal 80L
  • 0.25 lb. Dextrine malt (Cara-Pils)
• Boil:
  • 3.0 lb. Light DME
  • 3.0 lb. Amber DME
• Hops:
  • 2.0 oz. Northern Brewer (60 min)
  • 1.0 oz. Centennial (aroma)

So for this round I still lacked a lauter/mash tun, but managed to fake it with some pretty ghetto kitchen equipment. As to just how necessary it is to sparge steeped grain in a partial extract recipe… probably not very. Regardless, the process went rather flawlessly and I had only 10 oz. of total waste, which translates to more beer!

I wasn’t thinking clearly when shopping for ingredients this time around and picked up 80 Lovibond crystal malt (instead of 20L), so the color of this beer is much darker than a normal IPA (usually from to ). But I’m not really concerned too much with following guidelines at this point; I’m more focused on learning why the beers I’m making taste the way they do.

The result

Initially I was a bit worried that its bitterness would remain too strong, but after three weeks in the bottle it seems to have balanced out quite a bit. The rich toasted flavor supports the bitterness pretty well, although it is a bit confusing to be drinking such a dark IPA. It probably more-closely resembles a beer style that I’m unaware of.

I’ve gotta say though — like my last two batches — it still suffers from That Homebrew Taste, which is unfortunate because it muffles the hop aroma quite a bit. Don’t get me wrong, it’s plenty drinkable. But if I’ve tasted any other commercially-produced beers directly prior to sipping this, I can distinctly tell there are some off flavors. Hopefully these will disappear with my transition to all-grain.

Lessons learned

Don’t use tap water. Period.

Between San Diego’s abnormally-hard water (stemming from water blended from several imported sources) and the presence of chlorine disinfectant (chloramines), using any quantity of unfiltered tap water for brewing beer in San Diego pretty much guarantees bad beer. Naturally-ocurring phenols in beer combine with chlorine to make chlorophenols, resulting in a powerful band-aid like aroma and aftertaste detectable even in ppm (that’s one microgram per liter). In other words, a tiny bit of chlorine makes beer taste funky as hell.

In any case, since Homebrew II I’ve consumed every bit of available brewing knowledge, including the vast archives of rec.crafts.brewing and How To Brew (I even reformatted the online version for printing so I could have a portable copy, since the hard copy is out of print). I’ve also since put away my Papazian books (after reading them from cover to cover) from the advice of several veteran brewers who all said his books are good for getting started, but generally outdated.

So I purchased a converted Gott mash/lauter tun system from Northern Brewer. Now I need to get my hands on a rather large kettle, as well as a decent burner.

The next batch will be my first all-grain batch, which I’ll start in the next week or two. I think I’ll stick to this same IPA recipe so that I can more clearly see the changes in flavor from a converstion to all-grain.