Winter IPAs

Blogging my brewing has been a great experience these past nearly two years, for a multitude of reasons.  For one, it's revealed some of my own preferences on the seasonality of imbibing.  As much as I like to experiment, I fall into a cyclical pattern with such stunning regularity that you could set your pagan solstice virgin sacrifices by it.  Namely, it's light, bright, hoppy beers during the warm months and dark, roasty beers (of varying heft) in the cold months.  Saisons and sours cut in from time to time, and meads have been mixing it up in the last half year, but there it is: the hardcore basics of my brewing calendar.  I'm not alone in this, I know, but it does make it all feel a little...simplistic.

Fortunately, one other feature of my normal winter brewing helps to break up the monotony.  After a few months of stygian, contemplative pints, I experience a hop deficiency freakout and brew something way out of the porter/stout category (such as last year's IIPA attempt, which has evolved into a pretty decent, fruity "American old ale," if you will).  This season I got more of a jump on this curve-wrecking endeavour, making my last brewday of 2012 an IPA partigyle.  The first (strong) portion became an all-Summit-hopped American

IPA; the latter runnings of this mash formed a "micro" IPA of low gravity and heavy "new school" late hopping.

This NB blog post on Summit inspired the big beer.  Having never used much of the variety, and only to bitter, I was intrigued by their aromatic and flavour descriptors.  This beer went without a traditional 60-minute charge, as I hoped to avoid the onion/garlic character this hop can reputedly bring in larger quantities when bittering.  Fortunately, having such a ridiculously high level of alpha acids, the first wort- and late hopping added plenty of IBUs.  I still had a cache of Vienna in my stores, which seemed like it would make for a very characterful base; just a sprinkling of Caramunich came along for added complexity (originally there was some simple sugar in the plan, but the first runnings were so rich it wasn't required to hit the OG).  Had I actually considered it and realized how close I was to doing a SMaSH beer beforehand, I would've gone all Vienna for the grist and had done with it.  My oatmeal stout's WLP007 yeast cake had been hanging out in the fridge for a few weeks since bottling, just waiting for an opportunity to get back to work.  It actually took a few days to get going (including sending up kind of scary large, floating chunks of yeast/trub in the carboy) but eventually got properly fired up, requiring a blowoff tube.

This wasn't my first time trying to create a low-gravity beer that delivered a wallop of hoppiness (not even since starting this blog) and there are now even a couple commercial examples that have captured the hearts and minds of beer drinkers across the country.  I'd already had in my long-term docket to give this concept another shot; putting it together with the Summit IPA in partigyle form seemed kismet.  For hops, I cruised my LHBS for the hottest and sexiest varieties of today; I was kind of shooting for the homebrewer's Top 40 chart toppers.  And I found them: Citra, Simcoe, and Galaxy.  With a little old leftover Galena for nominal traditional bittering, the rest of the kettle hops went in together as an hour-long hopstand (starting with 5 minutes of active whirlpooling) to further accentuate their late-use qualities.  I also added my 2012 homegrown Centennial cones for extra fun.  Unfortunately the final mash runnings came in too low to use on their own, so I threw in some spare DME and table sugar at the start of the boil to compensate.  The amount of simple sugar ended up constituting more of the fermentables than I'd prefer, so time will tell if I'll experience some of those fabulous "cidery" off-flavours older homebrewing tomes mention in their cautions against using sugar.

In an attempt to have a brewday experience to rival my last one in terms of ease and simplicity, I went full bore in prepping the night before: filtered (nearly) all the water needed, parsed out all hop mineral additions, pulled out (nearly) all the equipment, organized and labeled everything, etc.  With little left to chance, things went damn near like clockwork, despite the snow and running out of propane early on.  Two batches into the fermenters with all the heavy cleaning complete within eight hours.  That's the efficiency I like to see.

Dry hops are in the fermenters currently, and I'm very much looking forward to having some fresh, hoppy bottles in the fridge to share before too long.  Here's to sticking to my trend of bucking my trend.

Also..."Blogging my brewing."  I should just rename the blog with that one.

Partigyle: Summit IPA - Micro IPA
Summit
Batch size: 5.5 gallons
Projected OG: 1.067
Projected SRM: 11.6
Projected IBU: 60.9
Boil time: 60 minutes
Brewhouse efficiency: 58%

Micro
Batch size: 5 gallons
Projected OG: 1.042
Projected SRM: 11.5
Projected IBU: ~40 (shot in the dark here)
Boil time: 60 minutes
Brewhouse efficiency: 26%

Grains
95.5% - 16 lb Weyermann Organic Vienna
4.5% - 12 oz Weyermann Caramunich II

Hops
 Summit
1 oz Summit (18.0%) (FWH)
1 oz Summit (18.0%) (10 min)
2 oz Summit (17.6%) (Dry hop - 5 days)

Micro
.3 oz Galena (13.2%) (60 min)
1 oz Citra (13.9%) (Whirlpool/hopstand - 60 min)
.5 oz Galaxy (14.0%) (Whirlpool/hopstand - 60 min)
.5 oz Simcoe (13.0%) (Whirlpool/hopstand - 60 min)
.6 oz Centennial (homegrown) (Whirlpool/hopstand - 60 min)
1 oz Citra (Dry hop - 5 days)
.5 oz Galaxy (Dry hop - 5 days)
.5 oz Simcoe (Dry hop - 5 days)

Yeast
Summit - WLP007 Dry English Ale - cake from Toasted Oatmeal Stout
Micro - 1 pkg US-05

Extras (each batch)
1 tsp Irish moss (10 min)
1 tsp Yeast nutrient (10 min)

Water additions
SLC profile

Summit
10 qts Distilled water (mash)
2 g Epsom salts (mash)
2 g Gypsum (boil)

Micro
10 qts Distilled water (mash)

Brewday: 29 December 2012
Summit
Mash: 151F for 90 minutes
SG @ 6 gallons collected: 16.1P (1.066) - cut with 1 gallon water
Pre-boil volume: 7 gallons
Pre-boil SG: 14.1P (1.058)

Micro
Pre-boil volume: 6.8 gallons
Pre-boil SG: 5.8P (1.023)
    Added 1 lb table sugar and 12 oz light DME to bring up SG

63F ambient to start fermentation.
Micro started within 24 hours, Summit within 36 hours; moved to 56F ambient to continue.

3 January 2013: fermentation very active; Summit required a blowoff tube.  Bumped up ambient temps to 60F once ferments settled down.

Micro Dry Hop: 8 January 2013

A few small clumps of yeast left floating, but should be plenty done with fermentation.

Summit Dry Hop: 12 January 2013

Bottled: 17 January 2013
Summit
FG: 1.013
ABV: 7.1%
Bottled with 4.4 oz table sugar.
Initial tasting suggests that a neutral American yeast might pair better than an English yeast, but time in the bottle will be more revealing. 

Micro
FG: 1.009
ABV: 4.42%
Bottled with 3.5 oz table sugar.
Left on dry hops longer than intended as I missed my bottling window earlier in the week.
Huge fruity nose; DeAunn particularly noted peach.