Phineas & an Ugly, Ugly Brewday

At the end of a recent Brewing TV episode on brewing double IPAs, Kristen England spoke on the difficulty small breweries have obtaining the hottest, sexiest new hops; between small harvests of these new varieties and these breweries being low on the pecking order for the hop quantities needed for commercial-scale

brewing, it seems like it's easier to score the likes of Amarillo, Simcoe, and Citra as a homebrewer than as a widely recognized regional brewery.  As alternatives to the flashy new hops, Kris brought up "back to basics" varieties like Cascade and Brewer's Gold, reminding me that these were the basis for the monuments of craft brewing like SNPA.  It being high time to bring another batch of pale ale into the world--the Short Notice Pale has come and gone already--it felt right to return to the roots of homebrewing by using some tried-and-true hops.

With the late spring heating up, few things would be more welcome here than a hefty supply of easy-drinking hoppy beer.  On hand last summer were the yin-and-yang "session IPAs" Sturm und Drang; they ended up being less sessionable than intended, but certainly did the trick.  So this year why not counterbalance a "traditional" pale with another one that takes advantage of that homebrewer-scale access to all these exotic new varieties?  Taking this theme of opposites attracting in a different direction, I set out to brew ten gallons of wort, hopping one half with old-school hops and the other half with the new wave.

None of my three pots would hold the 13+ gallons of pre-boil wort alone, but the solution was fairly elegant (if not exactly ingenious).  The first and second runnings went into the 9-gallon pot, while the final sparge water--heated in one of the 7.5-gallon pots--was added to the tun.  These runnings were mixed well and evenly split between the two smaller pots; the final runnings also ran to the big pot and were mixed before being split between the other pots again.  The pre-boil gravity ended exactly the same between the two pots.

Everything can't go right for too long, of course; it just wouldn't be right.  Apparently a flaw in the design of my new small-pot windscreen has been exposing the end of the propane line to elevated temperatures while in use, and while heating the final batch of sparge water, the hose finally degraded and started leaking propane, igniting in a magnificent (also frightening) gout of flame outside the safe confines of the turkey fryer.  Fortunately no hellacious propane tank explosion ensued, but an hour and a half of driving around searching for a replacement hose for my (admittedly cheap Chinese) fryer assembly proved fruitless, so onto the slow burn of the electric range went the pots.  To put it charitably, the brewday was extended somewhat by this development.

Past those good times, I also managed to unintentionally leave three different valves open in the brewing process, causing a minor kitchen flood each time.  Two were on the swamp coolers--left open since their last use to air dry--while the other was the mash tun valve, which was open for the same reason.  Fortunately no wort was lost, just a little bit of the strike water.  Still aggravating.  As the final brewday coup de grace, I

crushed one of my floating thermometers while placing a fermenter in its swamp cooler.  As an added bonus, the slurry of WY1450 I pitched in both fermenters didn't seem to be taking off even after a couple days, so I rehydrated my emergency packet of US-05 and pitched it with a fair bit of yeast energizer.  I'm not sure if the new yeast went right to work or if the energizer kicked the old yeast into gear, but fermentation was going strong within a few hours.

Activity has slowed to a crawl, so the dry hops should go in soon.  Provided I don't introduce acetobacter at that point (knocking on wood as I write) I should have several cases of hoppy session beer to last through what's shaping up to be a beautiful summer.  For the record, the name of this batch derives from a character from the book A Separate Peace who delights in all manner of outdoor summer activities.  It's also a badass name in its own right...and just happens to grant these two beers the same initials as a very famous duo of much more high-octane offerings from a renowned West Coast brewery. 

Phineas Summer Pale Ale - split batch

Batch size: 10 gallons
Projected OG: 1.046
Projected SRM: 7.1
Projected IBU: 38.4/38.1
Boil time: 60 minutes
Brewhouse efficiency: 85%

Grains
80.0% - 12 lb Malteurop 2-row
13.3% - 2 lb Weyermann Organic Munich
6.7% - 1 lb Caramunich II

Hops (per half batch)
.4 oz Nugget (12.4%) (60 min)
.9 oz Hop blend (15 min)
.9 oz Hop blend (0 min - hop stand 30 min)
1.2 oz Hop blend (Dry hop 5 days)

- Phineas the Elder blend - 1:1:1 Centennial Type (9.7%) - Columbus (13.3%) - Nugget (12.4%)
- Phineas the Younger blend - 1:1:1 Amarillo (9.3%) - Citra (13.4%) - Sorachi Ace (12.1%)

Yeast
WY1450 Denny’s Favorite 50 (slurry)

Exras (per half batch)
1 tsp Irish moss (10 min)

Water additions
3.5 gal RO water (mash)
1 g Gypsum (mash)
2 g Epsom salts (mash)
1 g CaCl (mash)
1 g Gypsum (per half batch, boil)

Brewday: 12 May 2012
Mash: 151F for 90 minutes
Pre-boil volume: 13.6 gallons
Pre-boil SG: 9.2P (1.037)

Phineas the Younger 
Fermenter volume: 5.2 gallons
OG: 10.6P (1.043)

Phineas the Elder
Fermenter volume: 5 gallons
OG. 11.4P (1.046)

No activity after 42 hours; rehydrated & added US-05 to both fermenters.  Activity after a couple hours; fermenting strongly by the next morning.

Dry hops: 6 June 2012
Transferred PtY to a 5-gal bucket to free up bottling bucket.  Didn’t taste it, but aroma was alarmingly Belgian; no sign of infection, though.  Hopefully it’s just the hops, but will know at bottling in under a week if it’s infected or if somehow I used the wrong yeast.

Bottled: 11 June 2012
Bottled each batch with 4 oz table sugar

Phineas the Younger
FG: 1.008
ABV: 4.6%

Phineas the Elder
FG: 1.010
ABV: 4.7%

The “Belgian” aroma detected at transfer in PtY seems to be hop derived, probably from the Sorachi; the yeast flavour is clean.  Not sure it’s my favourite hop, though it could work very well in a number of Belgian-style beers, especially a saison.

Tasting: PtY never turned out; it gave the distinct aroma of Pine-Sol, with a flavour to match.  PtE was all right during the summer, but fell off by the autumn; entered in a local homebrew contest, it was diagnosed with serious brewing/fermentation flaws.