The IPA that Would Be a Pale

The Utah Beehive Brewoff is coming up, and it will be the first homebrew competition I’ve entered.  Still making decisions on what I have that’s in shape to submit, I thought a small batch of IPA would keep me in hoppy beer into the fall, age well in primary while we’re out of town, and could potentially make for a good entry.  I’ll have just enough time to give it a short dry hop and carbonate it before submitting my bottles.

I made this the second half of my batch #100 brewday, just before we left Salt Lake; while that beer came out as planned, finishing that batch and the race to finish packing and prepping the house for our departure took its toll on the IPA.  I’d planned to do a 3-gallon batch, but inattention put me into normal-batch mode: I ended up sparging to 6 gallons pre-boil volume and ended up with just under 5 gallons of wort to ferment.  The extra volume meant a reduction in gravity and IBUs; I added a pound of sugar to compensate for the low gravity at knockout, but not wanting to add another hour of boiling to my late hops and lacking the time in my day to do so anyway, I had to leave it at that.

The wort that ended up in the fermenter fell squarely into the American pale ale category; not what I was trying to make, but definitely a better outcome than I should expect from paying so little attention on brewday.  We’ll see at that point if it’s worth submitting.

Dumb Luck Pale
Batch size: 4.8 gallons
Projected OG: 1.052
Projected SRM: 7.0
Projected IBU: 42.2
Boil time: 60 minutes
Brewhouse efficiency: 87%

Grains
53.3% - 4 lb Malteurop 2-row
20.0% - 1.5 lb Weyermann Organic Vienna
6.7% - 8 oz Crisp Amber
6.7% - 8 oz Briess C40
13.3% - 1 lb Table sugar (0 min)

Hops
.3 oz Columbus (16.7%) (FWH)
.3 oz Summit (17.6%) (60 min)
.3 oz Columbus (10 min)
.3 oz Summit (10 min)
.4 oz Columbus (Dry hop 3 days)
.4 oz Summit (Dry hop 3 days)

Yeast
WY1450/US-05 (slurry)

Extras
1 tsp Yeast energizer (10 min)

Water additions
7 qts RO water (mash)
1 g Gypsum (mash)
2 g Gypsum (boil)

Brewday: 18 June 2012
Mash: 151F for 60 min
Pre-boil volume: 6 gallons

Originally supposed to be a 3-gallon batch of IPA, but was too distracted to realize my sparge numbers were way too high
Ferment in swamp cooler at 62F ambient

Dry hops: 4 August 2012

Bottled: 8 August 2012
FG: 1.005
ABV: 6.1%

Bottled with 3.6 oz table sugar.

Tasting: Did not turn out.  Can’t remember if it was infected or simply poorly made, but dumped the whole batch.  Next time I’ll make the beer I intend to make.