Attenuation: 70%

ABV: 6.16

Bottling was quite uneventful. Primed with 5oz priming sugar boiled in 1 pint of water. Aging is certainly required to tame down the oats astringency.

Attenuation: 75%

ABV: 6.69

Bottling was quite uneventful. Primed with 5oz priming sugar boiled in 1 pint of water. I’ll let it age until April

Attenuation: 72%

ABV: 6.43

I’ll let it sit in the carboy for a week before I bottle. I’ll take my next reading then.

Sunday Feb 12, 2006 Update: Loads of flocculation on bottom of carboy. Woo!

I really enjoy this style of beer for a variety of reasons. First, as a hophead, I love to be pelted in the nose by an overwhelming amount of hops when I get near a glass. Something about that just says beer to me. Next, IPAs always make me think of warm weather and sunny days. I can imagine sitting out on a warm evening drinking a pint. In the bar near college I used to have an IPA in the summer at happy hour while I ate wings. The hops really re-enforced the flavor in the sauce. That grassy flavor just reminds me of playing on a baseball field after the lawn was cut. I think this beer will be a perfect candidate for some aging (~2 months) before it’s ready to be consumed. With all that being said and my spidey senses tingling, let’s look at the lineup:

RECIPE

Specialty Grains

The notes say this malt is 30-37° L which would give the beer a reddish appearance? I may be wrong about this and I guess i’ll tell after I make the wort. The notes also indicate that this grain will contribute dextrins and add to head stability. Well, dextrins to boost body sound appropriate for an IPA. If a beer with this much flavor going on was missing body it would probably taste like wastewater.

Fermentable Sugars

I have used this much sugar in a recipe before. They must really be going for a serious O.G. in this recipe. Using this nifty homebrew calculator:

O.G. 1.064 to 1.075

That’s a nice big beer. I will certainly make a starter like I did last time. Fortunately, Northern Brewer ships Wyeast XL packs standard so my yeast will be off and running. Oh, there’s also the oxygen i’ll be injecting.

Hops

And did I mention it had hops? I’m still learning what these numbers actually mean. I was wrong in my previous post. The IBU for my last beer (Flagship Ale) was only 24.7. I’m looking at 2.4 times the amount of bitterness. Well, there’s alot more malt too, should be an experience.

I.B.U. = 59.4

I’ve worked with Kent Goldings and Fuggles before. I used the fuggles in the Original Porter and the Kent Goldings in either the Trippel or the Wheat Beer. The nugget are new ones for me. Here is what I found about those hop varieties:

Fuggle (UK) – AA% 4 to 5.5, robust and earthy
Kent Goldings (UK) – AA% 4 to 5.5, mild and pleasant, gentle
Nugget – AA% 11 to 14.5, heavy, herbal

Yeast

Medium flocculation, typical ale range, 72-76% attenuation. If all goes to plan that should give me a final gravity of 1.015 (76% attenuation). That translates into an ABV of 6.43%, not too shabby. We’ll see what the future holds for this one.

My first pull just to taste it was pleasing. It’s decently malty but not overpowering. The hop presence has certainly diminshed. I was able to see the formings of a creamy white head.

Second pull (Sunday 01/29/2006, 9:30AM) definitely some head now. Passed the pint around the breakfast table. My parents agreed, this one came out nice. (Pats self on back)

It leaves the aftertaste in your mouth of Smithwick’s. It’s a reddish color and it’s got a very creamy taste. I think it will be an easy drinking beer that should satisfy many palates.

Alcohol By Volume (ABV) = 4.59375

Apparent Attenuation = 77.77%

Well, I’m happy with that. Of course I gave it a taste. At first I was skeptical. It had not much mouth feel, but I was also used to drinking beer with more body. I realized that I had not used nearly as much fermentable sugar in this recipe. Also, the hops were certainly present which came as a surprise. They were right about the honey, it really didn’t add body at all. Does this mean that meade has a light mouthfeel too?

So it’s racked over to the secondary. I’ll be taking it over to the keg this evening.

IBU = 47.034

Gravity

The O.G. of this recipe came out at 1.045, a moderate number from my research. I know there are calculators online to estimate what your O.G. will be, but it’s just as easy to sanitize the players involved and measure it. Since the aim was fermentation efficiency, I acquired (from Santi Clause) an aeration stone on a 22” long stick, tubing and a regulator. I picked up a 1.4oz canister of oxygen from the local hardware store. I was determined to oxygenate-aerate (oxygenate) my wort. After sanitizing and drying off, I put it in and let her go full throttle.

First off, it whined like crazy. My poor cat, Mr. Earl Grey ran for the hills in a flash. My parents just looked at each other with the “we’ve raised a mad scientist” expression. I let it go for 50 seconds. The wort was rather bubbled. After that I unplugged the starter, flamed the lip, swirled the bottle and pitched it all. Final volume stood at 5 gallons.

Fermentation

In a word, vigorous. It began fermenting only hours after this whole process. By the night it was poppin off something fierce. It continued in this manner on Monday and Tuesday. It really settled and almost stopped by Wednesday. The airlock was still suspended up so I’m sure it was slowly doing something. By Thursday it had almost ceased and I was worried. I couldn’t take it any longer so I set up shop to rack it over to the carboy.