brew day - noble ipa

Ryan Mooney

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Just wrapping up my brew day. Slapped together a couple of beers. At least one of which shows promise to be real good. We toured Belgium a few years back and one beer we had there that really stuck with me was the Belgium IPA we had at one place so I decided to try to recreate it.

Since I'm waiting for my second boil to finish with not much else to do, I thought it might be interesting for some of you if I laid out some of the thought process for today's beers.

I used 50% Belgium pilsner malt (1) and 50% american pale ale malt as the base mashed fairly cool at 149f (7) and ended up with a 1.065 wort (2). For the hops I used all noble hops (3) and put 1 oz of vanguard as first wort (4), 2 oz of German tettnanger at 60m and 1 oz each of saaz and vanguard at 0m (5). Planning to dry hop with an oz each of vanguard and saaz. The freshly boiled wort right out of the kettle was fantastic so I'm hoping the beer is half as good. Using German ale year (wyeast 1007) because it's a really clean/bright yeast which

Also did (well in progress on the boil) an English mild using lots of floor malt (6) and a fair bit of English caramel malt to start. Just a touch of goldings hops for balance and we're good to go.

1,6) different malts are made with different grains and are processed differently. The Belgium (castle brand) pills has a deep richness to it that I haven't seen in other malts. Saying "pils" malt (pilsner ) doesn't actually mean a lot without a qualifier, most German pils is quite a bit "harder" and brighter than american or Belgium. The floor malt is dried using an older direct heat method, this makes it irregular so some is darker and some is lighter (and is all darker than "2 row" or any pils. The unevenness gives the resulting beer a rounder character because you get notes from all of the blend instead of just a single note.

2) this is a measure of how much sugar is in the wort. Water has a specific gravity of 1.000 (close enough don't nit pick me here :D) and when you add sugar (in this case from the grain) the gravity goes up. This is a predictor of alcohol content (although the finishing gravity which measures the sugar left behind also plays a part in that math). In this case I'm expecting around 6% or maybe a smidge more alcohol in the final beer.

3) hops are native to both Europe and north America. The north american hops are often described as catty, piney, and similar. The European hops are either (german/polish) spicy and bright floral or (mostly English) muddy/earthy. The na hops have more of the stuff that makes beer bitter as well. The spicy German and polish derived hops (and strains derived from them) are considered "noble" because of their refined nature :D. Almost all ipas in north America use american hops, and English ipas use the earthier English hops. The all noble IPA should have a bright crisp character that I'm hoping will mirror what we had in Belgium.

4,5) hops added at different points add different characteristics. You specify hop addition times as how long before the end of the boil (so 60m is 60m before the boil is done and 0m is when the heat is turned off - the hops are also left in during the 15-20m cooling period). The earlier the hops are added generally the more bitter and less flavor/aroma you will get out of them. First wort hops are added while the syrup (wort) is draining into the kettle, naively you'd think this meant you only got bitter from them but that appears to not be the case. Oddly they seem to behave more like late addition hops and some how the character is set.

7) the hotter you keep the grains during the conversion process the less fermentable the wort is. You can use this to tune the resulting beers sweetness and mouth feel. 149F is on the lower end (and took a bit longer) so it should yield a pretty dry beer. The mild on the other hand is lower alcohol so it will naturally have less residual sugar and it should be a bit sweeter for the style so I mashed it at 154f to try to avoid doing it out as much (I'm also using a less dry yeast S-04 English test for the nerds).

And my boil is about done so I'll wrap this up by saying that my garage smells fantastic!
 
That'll be my next step Ryan. Brent helped me with a Milk Stout yesterday that is bubbling nicely this morning! I did use a bit of extract...but the resulting wort was really tasty! Lactose goes a long way for a great mouth feel and sweetness. We'll have to see about a swap!
 
my address is listed in the book under delton, mi, and warm is fine no need to chill, i got ice:)

:rofl: :D

We'll have to see about a swap!

I mostly just keg my beers nowadays. If I do bottle a batch I'll keep you guys in mind. Every once in a while the "hey lets bottle this round" insanity kicks in; the bottle cleaning and capping fixes that up and I go back to putting beers in kegs like a sane person for 6 months or so.

That'll be my next step Ryan. Brent helped me with a Milk Stout yesterday that is bubbling nicely this morning! I did use a bit of extract...but the resulting wort was really tasty! Lactose goes a long way for a great mouth feel and sweetness.

Yeah that one will be real good over ice cream :D There are a lot of really good beers that imho are just as good with extract as all grain. There are a few on the other hand that may be possible with extract but would be darn hard to pull of. Milk stouts generally don't really benefit flavor wise from all grain (not that it would be detrimental, just that you can get as good with extract unlike say a wit beer).

I have somewhat of a surplus of equipment so I can stack multiple beers on a brew days and all grain isn't so bad to do with the time amortized out (plus its a bit cheaper). My math works out something like this:
  • one batch of extract - about 3 hours to setup, brew and tear down.
  • one batch of all grain - about 4 hours to setup, brew and tear down.
  • two batches of all grain - about 5:15 hours to setup, brew and tear down.

I have an extra pot to keep heating water in so as soon as the first batch goes into the brew pot the second one is ready to mash and as soon as the first one is done with its boil the second one is ready to run off. I've done a three beer day and want to try a 4 beer day just to see how hard it would be. When I first started it took almost all day for a single batch and was a lot of work, with practice I can now do two and not really work all that hard (steady but not really hard).
 
I think that's about what we had into it for 5 gallons. I am slowly building up my equipment again...long story :(...but the next one will be a honey ale. Kegging will be in my near future, although I think I would still bottle a few from each batch...I love to share!
 
Love brew day:) I don't brew, but luckily for me my son and DIL do:D, Larry I have a case each of skeeter pee, porter and a chocolate porter, milked I believe, that I will gladly share with ya:)
 
Yep, I've been neglectful about posting some of my brewing adventures lately.

Was fun having Jim over yesterday. His stout is bubbling away quite nicely!

I spent a little time today bottling up a couple of beers. Well, Sort of bottling.

I made a triple ipa mango beer, and an english bitter. I kegged both of them and used my counter pressure bottle filler to bottle up a bunch of them.

Why? Because I'm working on a recipe collaboration with a guy on the east coast, so I have to send him beers, otherwise, I would just leave everything in the keg.

Well, that's not entirely true. The Mango Triple IPA hits 10.5% abv, so, thats pretty strong, and I'd rather not have more than one 12 ounce serving of that at a time...

I admit, I need to read the rest of Ryans post before commenting further, but I am very happy to add another home brewer to our fold, Yay Jim!
 
If I could find a recipe for one with less than three carbs, I'd be on it!

Three what per what of carbs Ted? Grams per 12 oz serving? It is possible to get some fairly low carb beers depending on how you measure it. If you don't count the alcohol its actually quite doable. If you do count the alcohol (some do because it mostly eventually gets metabolized back to things used by similar pathways as carbs but some don't because its slower and not all of it does.. also see papers supporting not counting it below) its a bit harder but still plausible.
A very handwaving overview is here at BYO: https://byo.com/stories/item/1181-nitro-beers--low-carb-beers
A nice list of grams/beer for various commercials is here: http://www.beer100.com/beercalories.htm

Alcohol != carbs:
http://journals.cambridge.org/downl...63a.pdf&code=fb2f4cd34b233dedae713db408d36660
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12393073

I'm pretty sure I could formulate a house beer in the ~5% range that had only 2-3 grams of carbs per serving (and less if you're willing to do add some extra enzymes to the fermentation to eat the carbs more, beano its not just for gas from eating beans anymore :D There are some more specific enzyme products but that one is easy to get most places..). They will all be relatively "thin" beers but can still have a lot of flavor.

although I think I would still bottle a few from each batch...I love to share!

Hmm, I should probably just break down and buy some of the "brew tabs" so I can easily put sugar in some individual bottles so it would be easy to do a 12 pack or so per batch. Mostly we share locally with growlers... but those don't ship so well :D
 
Thanks, Ryan. I try and limit my carb intake so end up drinking Michelob Ultra @2.6 g/12 oz--not great, but on a hot day it works for me. Your link to grams/beer is fantastic and gives me a few more beers to look for. I've spent a lot of time in Belgium and Germany. Never made it all the way through the lists of beers in either country, but really appreciate the variety of flavors and types available. Did a lot of biking and hiking and found a Bavarian beer/soda combo that is quite a thirst quencher called the Radler.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radler
Also spent summers in Canada as a youth and learned to like Molsons and V-8 juice...these days it's called Bloody Beer after someone 'invented' it.
When I get my detached garage built, learning to make beer is high on the to-do list.
 
Hmm, I should probably just break down and buy some of the "brew tabs" so I can easily put sugar in some individual bottles so it would be easy to do a 12 pack or so per batch. Mostly we share locally with growlers... but those don't ship so well :D

I had been doing some 'second runnings' lately and doing some highly experimental 1 gallon batches of fruit beers with the leftover wort. I bottled those pretty much directly and used the carb drops on them. Worked great!

I had made a mango triple IPA recently (10.5% abv), and I wasn't willing to trust that the residual yeast would carbonate at such a high abv, so I kegged it, force carbonated, and yesterday I bottled it all into 12 ounce bottles using a counter pressure bottle filler. That actually seemed to work out pretty good as well.

Very nice write up with all the footnotes Ryan!
 
I had made a mango triple IPA recently (10.5% abv), and I wasn't willing to trust that the residual yeast would carbonate at such a high abv, so I kegged it, force carbonated, and yesterday I bottled it all into 12 ounce bottles using a counter pressure bottle filler. That actually seemed to work out pretty good as well.

Yeah the counter pressure fillers seem to work well for beer. If yours supports it giving a shot of CO2 into the bottle before filling helps the lifespan some.

We tried to use one for bottling a mead once - it was a very very light mead and I wanted to bottle it at a fairly high pressure. My thought was that I could maintain the clarity without having to do something like method-champagne by counter pressure bottle filling. Well at around 3 atmospheres the mead would just foam out in the line - total disaster. Ended up de-carbonating it mostly and bottling with dosed sugar and yeast additions per bottle. That worked well enough - usually a bare pinch of dry yeast per bottle gives enough fresh yeast to finish the job, although you need to be careful to not use something that will eat to much more sugar and make bottle bombs.

Your fear of the yeast playing out is well founded. We did a Belgian Quad (something like 23lbs of castle pils and just enough carafa II for color, maybe? a touch of munich but I don't think so) which was a fantatic beer.. but we didn't re-dose fresh yeast at bottling time and it took a good 6 months to carbonate. Fine for a quad, not so good for an IPA - the flavor would all be long gone by the time it was done :(

Very nice write up with all the footnotes Ryan!

Thanks!
 
Yeah the counter pressure fillers seem to work well for beer. If yours supports it giving a shot of CO2 into the bottle before filling helps the lifespan some.

We tried to use one for bottling a mead once - it was a very very light mead and I wanted to bottle it at a fairly high pressure. My thought was that I could maintain the clarity without having to do something like method-champagne by counter pressure bottle filling. Well at around 3 atmospheres the mead would just foam out in the line - total disaster. Ended up de-carbonating it mostly and bottling with dosed sugar and yeast additions per bottle. That worked well enough - usually a bare pinch of dry yeast per bottle gives enough fresh yeast to finish the job, although you need to be careful to not use something that will eat to much more sugar and make bottle bombs.

Your fear of the yeast playing out is well founded. We did a Belgian Quad (something like 23lbs of castle pils and just enough carafa II for color, maybe? a touch of munich but I don't think so) which was a fantatic beer.. but we didn't re-dose fresh yeast at bottling time and it took a good 6 months to carbonate. Fine for a quad, not so good for an IPA - the flavor would all be long gone by the time it was done :(

Thanks!

Interesting. Using my CP filler as a tap to pour a small glass to drink while I bottled resulted in a nearly full glass of foam.

I was able to put purge the bottles with CO2 under pressure, then let the beer flow. Under pressure, the beer didn't barely have any foam at all and I had plenty of time to put the cap on.

If I had had some dry yeast laying around, I probably would have gone ahead and tried to bottle condition them. I did pick up a little safale dry yeast to keep on hand, just for that purpose though!

Here's a picture. I had to try one out and post it on up to Untappd, of course.

Bltl19QCUAEWvNt.jpg
 
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Interesting. Using my CP filler as a tap to pour a small glass to drink while I bottled resulted in a nearly full glass of foam.

I was able to put purge the bottles with CO2 under pressure, then let the beer flow. Under pressure, the beer didn't barely have any foam at all and I had plenty of time to put the cap on.

Interesting - I can't fully explain that. Was the glass the first pour? I'm wondering if you were getting forst pour foam (like how the first glass if you haven't had one in a while is often a bit foamy from the temperature differential mostly). Maybe if you try it again try throwing the CP filler into the freezer for 30m or so first and see if the behavior repeats (for science!).

I had pre-chilled the CP filler AND the bottles in the mead case - I think it was a combination of being an atmosphere or so over normal bottling pressure and the mead being a really thin substrate.


Pretty! The foam has great lacing - which is both a sign of good beer (or at least good amino and protein balance for head formation :D) and good (and clean!) glassware :thumb:
 
Interesting - I can't fully explain that. Was the glass the first pour? I'm wondering if you were getting forst pour foam (like how the first glass if you haven't had one in a while is often a bit foamy from the temperature differential mostly). Maybe if you try it again try throwing the CP filler into the freezer for 30m or so first and see if the behavior repeats (for science!).

Uh, Let's say that I repeated that experiment several times, and if there wasn't pressure on the beer (as in the bottle) it foamed pretty good. Inside the bottle, under pressure, no foam, and Very minimal, if any foaming once I removed the filler. The kegs were chilled pretty good in the kegerator, and had been under pressure for about a week, so I'm sure the beer was fully carbonated.

I was actually pretty happy with how it worked. Should be sediment free bottled beer. Not that the sediment ever really bothers me. If I happen to get some in my glass, no big deal.

Here's a link to my website where I've been documenting some of this stuff. http://www.isolateddesertcompound.com/2014/03/25/more-mango-work/

I threw more dry hops and fruit in this beer than any I've ever done before. It fermented out pretty dry, down to 1.006. For as many IBU's I threw at it, the bitterness is not overwhelming, but you do get a lot of aroma from all the dry hops I put in. Really big citrus/grapefruit notes with a touch of mango afterwards. Really happy with it, but I think I can improve on it a bit, so will be repeating it some day.
 
Thanks, Ryan. I try and limit my carb intake so end up drinking Michelob Ultra @2.6 g/12 oz--not great, but on a hot day it works for me. <snip>

Did a lot of biking and hiking and found a Bavarian beer/soda combo that is quite a thirst quencher called the Radler.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radler
Also spent summers in Canada as a youth and learned to like Molsons and V-8 juice...these days it's called Bloody Beer after someone 'invented' it.
When I get my detached garage built, learning to make beer is high on the to-do list.

I'll kick the idea around and let you know if I end up with anything usefull, I suspect it will still be a pretty lean beer but maybe I can cook up something that still has a decent flavor - the one challenge with doing it as a homebrewer is that we're working from "calculated" carbs not measured so there is a bit of fudging in the math (so I'll try to shoot towards the low end). I'm fairly stocked up on beer for summer at the moment (or will be once these ferment out anyway :D) so it might be a fall project.

I've had/made the English variant of a Radler where they call it a shandy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shandy Appears to be the same thing. Mostly make them from a bitter or maybe a mild mixed with uncarbonated lemonade.

They do beer and tomato juice around here (redneck bloody mary), I think it started because a lot of people wanted a bloody mary but some bars only had beer licenses not liquor licenses. I've never acquired a taste for them myself...
 
My favorite Radler was the Bavarian version...Weissbier or weizen (unfiltered, with lots of 'stuff' on the bottom) and mountain dew or 7UP with a twist of lemon. I haven't found a comparable weizen here in the states. I was introduced to bloody beer while re-shingling a boathouse roof in very hot weather. After two of those I fell off the roof. My Canadian friends didn't want me to be embarrassed, so they jumped off too:)
 
When I went to school in South Dakota, It was called 'Red Beer' up there.

I like this Radler idea. I think a wheat beer with Lemon Lime would be pretty darn good... I think I'd make up some of my own lemon lime soda to go with it though...
 
My favorite Radler was the Bavarian version...Weissbier or weizen (unfiltered, with lots of 'stuff' on the bottom) and mountain dew or 7UP with a twist of lemon. I haven't found a comparable weizen here in the states.

They do exist :D Well.. maybe not comparable but there are a lot of ones to try.. so there's hope anyway http://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/style/89/
Worst case it just seemed really good because of the mindset you were in and that can be hard to recreate.
 
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