#17 - Ronk Island IPA [Extract]

My favourite type of beer at the moment is the IPA (India Pale Ale). I like it because it is relatively light in terms of malt flavour and heavy in terms of hop bittering and aroma. One brand of commercial IPA which has got my attention again and again is Goose Island IPA. I decided to make a clone of this beer using a modified extract recipe from one of the American brewing websites. It was modified due to availability of hops and grain in my main home brew supplier.  

Ingredients for Kit, Extract and All Grain Brews

Over Christmas I got plenty of brewing equipment and vouchers so I decided to finally make the transition to All Grain brewing.

This brew would probably be my last extract brew before I exclusively transition to all grain. The adjacent photo shows the ingredients for 3 brews (1016, 1017 and 1018) and pretty much represents my progress in learning brewing over the last 8 months.

Yeast Starter, Irish Moss and Hops

I made a yeast starter for this brew using Danstar Nottingham yeast. I made this with a small amount of malt extract and hops. The dust from the pellet hops can actually be seen on the krausen on top of the starter. 

I boiled the brew with my new boiler which is just a fermenter bucket with a 2kW (240V) kettle element and a hop strainer. The 2kW element is sufficient to achieve a good rolling boil but it takes quite a while to reach this point. A great improvement would be the addition of a second element to speed up the boiling process and then turn it off once a rolling boil starts. This addition would save nearly an hour on brew-day! The hop strainer consists of a copper pipe covered in holes which is then connected to a tap in the side of the boiler. This strainer simply does not work if pellet hops are used, I tried to use it and not even a drop came out it was blocked too badly. It works perfectly when only leaf hops are used. 

Steeping Grains

 The recipe calls for 3 different types of grain, 2 of which need to be mashed (Wheat and Munich Malt) and 1 which only needs to be steeped (Crystal). The recipe doesn't say that they need to be mashed so they are really only contributing some flavour. I decided to try and get a bit of conversion going and left all the grain steeping for an hour at approximately 67 degrees C (152 degrees F). 

As can be seen from the photo, the colour is beginning to change due to the contribution from the crystal grains. I found that the other grains were making the beer cloudy more than anything else which was probably mainly starch as there was not enough base grain for a good conversion to take place.  

Once the grains were steeped for an hour I brought the wort back up to boiling and started the timer for the hop additions. The hops were added as per schedule along with the Irish moss. I think I added too much Irish moss as there was a huge amount of break material generated while the wort was cooling. As stated earlier, the hop strainer was instantly blocked from the volume of material which must have taken up between 4 and 5 litres at the bottom of the boiler. I siphoned out the wort into the fermenter and it eventually got blocked once the wort drained to the same level as the break material. I got 18 litres instead of the anticipated 19 litres so I have updated the boiler losses in BeerSmith to take this into account.

The recipe for this brew can be found below:
Recipe: Ronk Island IPA TYPE: Extract    Style: American IPA

---RECIPE SPECIFICATIONS-----------------------------------------------
SRM: 21.6 EBC SRM RANGE: 11.8-29.6 EBC
IBU: 66.0 IBUs Tinseth IBU RANGE: 40.0-70.0 IBUs
OG: 1.060 SG OG RANGE: 1.056-1.075 SG
FG: 1.014 SG FG RANGE: 1.010-1.018 SG
BU:GU: 1.093 Calories: 427.1 kcal/l Est ABV: 6.1 %
EE%: 70.00 % Batch: 19.00 l      Boil: 26.21 l BT: 60 Mins
Total Grain Weight: 4.20 kg Total Hops: 105.00 g oz.
---MASH/STEEP PROCESS------MASH PH:5.40 ------
Amt                   Name                                     Type          #        %/IBU         
0.50 kg               Caramel/Crystal Malt - 40L (78.8 EBC)    Grain         1        11.9 %        
0.35 kg               Munich Malt (17.7 EBC)                   Grain         2        8.3 %         
0.35 kg               Wheat Malt, Ger (3.9 EBC)                Grain         3        8.3 %         
---SPARGE PROCESS---
Remove grains, and prepare to boil wort
---BOIL PROCESS-----------------------------
Est Pre_Boil Gravity: 1.050 SG Est OG: 1.060 SG
Amt                   Name                                     Type          #        %/IBU         
3.00 kg               Light Dry Extract (15.8 EBC)             Dry Extract   4        71.4 %        
37.00 g               Centennial [10.00 %] - Boil 60.0 min     Hop           5        42.7 IBUs     
38.00 g               Fuggles [4.50 %] - Boil 30.0 min         Hop           6        15.2 IBUs     
1.00 tsp              Irish Moss (Boil 20.0 mins)              Fining        7        -             
22.00 g               Fuggles [4.50 %] - Boil 15.0 min         Hop           8        5.7 IBUs      
8.00 g                Cascade [5.50 %] - Boil 15.0 min         Hop           9        2.5 IBUs      
---FERM PROCESS-----------------------------
Primary Start: 01/01/2012 - 4.00 Days at 19.4 C
Secondary Start: 05/01/2012 - 10.00 Days at 19.4 C
Style Carb Range: 2.20-2.70 Vols

#15 - Ronk Christmas Bock [Extract]

Since its getting close to the festive season I went searching for a Christmas beer that sounded tasty. Seeing as I was still quite new to extract brewing and I had just started using BeerSmith (#14), I went looking on their website for a recipe. I went through the various recipies and came across "Happy Holidays Ale" which attracted my attention due to the simplicity of the ingredients and the addition of a speciality grain called 'Special B Malt'. It was great to see something that wasn't the same old iteration involving crystal grains.

Steeping grains

As was the case in the previous brew (#14), some of the ingredients were not available in the home brew store. I had to substitute the grains with something so I literally guessed that Carafa Special I Roasted Caramalt would do the trick. 

The resulting taste of this brew has been very good. Fairly good head retention which I reckon could be improved a lot with the addition of some flaked Oates. As it was a Christmas beer I would have liked a bit more of the cloves and cinnamon to come through. They were very much in the background and I couldn't detect them. The next time I think I would double their addition size to increase their potency. The hops come through very well in aroma and taste. They are not overpowering but are still upfront enough to be enjoyable. Overall a recommended recipe. :) 

Recipe: Ronk Christmas Bock TYPE: Extract

Style: Fruit Beer/Bock

---RECIPE SPECIFICATIONS-----------------------------------------------

SRM: 31.3 SRM SRM RANGE: 5.0-50.0 SRM

IBU: 21.4 IBUs Tinseth IBU RANGE: 5.0-70.0 IBUs

OG: 1.059 SG OG RANGE: 1.030-1.110 SG

FG: 1.013 SG FG RANGE: 1.006-1.024 SG

BU:GU: 0.365 Calories: 169.1 kCal/12 oz Est ABV: 6.0 %

EE%: 72.00 % Batch: 5.02 gal      Boil: 3.69 gal BT: 60 Mins

---WATER CHEMISTRY ADDITIONS----------------

Taste of Christmas! 

Amt                   Name                                     Type          #        %/IBU         

3.96 gal              Dublin, Ireland                       Water         1           -             

Remove grains, and prepare to boil wort

---BOIL PROCESS-----------------------------

Est Pre_Boil Gravity: 1.088 SG Est OG: 1.059 SG

Amt                   Name                                                 Type           #        %/IBU         

6 lbs 9.8 oz          Light Dry Extract (8.0 SRM)                  Dry Extract   3        85.7 %        

2.00 oz               Cascade [4.30 %] - Boil 45.0 min           Hop           4        19.3 IBUs     

0.45 kg               Honey (Boil 45.0 mins)                         Other         5        -             

1.00 tsp              Irish Moss (Boil 15.0 mins)                    Fining        6        -             

4.00 Items           Orange Peel, Sweet (Boil 10.0 mins)      Spice         7        -             

2.00 tsp              Vanilla (Boil 10.0 mins)                         Spice         8        -             

0.25 tsp              Cloves (Ground) (Boil 10.0 mins)           Spice         10       -             

0.25 tsp              Cinnamon (Powdered) (Boil 10.0 mins)   Spice         9        -             

1.00 oz               Cascade [4.30 %] - Boil 5.0 min            Hop           11       2.1 IBUs      

#14 - 60 Minute IPA (Continually Hopped) [Extract]

Ingredients for first extract recipe

After brewing with kits and experiments I finally moved up the ladder to extract brewing. I purchased a small 4 gallon stock pot and finally got round to using BeerSmith to its potential! My first brew was initially meant to be a Dogfish Head 60 Minute IPA clone based on this recipe but none of the Irish home brew stores had all the hops so I had to substitute. I think most hops were substituted quite well other than the Amarillo Hops which seem to be quite unique. I also had to get a slightly different type of grain (Crystal 60L) for the same reason as the hops. I'm thinking that with the amount of substitutions it is no longer a clone. :)

Steeping the grains, Crystal 

Initially I brought the water up to 65 degrees and put 

in the grains to steep for around 20 minutes. As my stove is so slow to heat the water, I was able to turn it down to the lowest output and that kept the temperature relatively constant. The colour change from a couple of minutes of steeping the grains can be seen in the adjacent image. 

After steeping, I removed the grains and didn't sparge them although I have read in several places that you should, so I might do that the next time. I then brought the water to a boil which took AGES due to the poor cooker. The length of time that it takes to bring it to a rolling boil really made me understand while all the yanks are using propane burners or huge elements in their kettles. It really is a time saver to have a decent source of heat.  

Once boiling, the endurance test began. The recipe calls for the wort to be continuously hopped for the full 60 minutes. I had two timers going, one for the total 60 minutes and the other which went off every minute to signal a hop addition. The idea behind this is to add a few pellets/cones every minute so that you end up spreading out the whole lot over 60 minutes. I was extremely paranoid about a boil-over so I had 2 tea towels ready to grab the handles and take it off the head at the first signs of boiling over. Thankfully the boil-over never really happened, probably due to the length of time it takes for the cooker to bring the wort to the boil.  

Once the 60 minutes had elapsed, I took the pot off the head and lowered the pot into a sink of cold water. I then ran down to my local store and got 2 bags of ice which I then dumped into the pot. The ice is surprisingly effective at getting the wort down to pitching temperatures. I have seen arguments about putting ice about whether it is a good idea or not but it is safe to assume that the ice is completely sterile as otherwise people would be getting sick when consuming it with their drinks.

High Krausen!

It took about 5 minutes for the wort to cool once the ice was added so I then transferred it to a freshly sanitised fermenter through a couple of sieves. There was a lot of debris in the wort due to the large amount of pellet and whole hops so the sieves got clogged repeatedly. I topped up the fermenter to the 19L mark with cold tap water and pitched the yeast. I had previously made a 1L starter with a sachet of Safale US-05 and some malt extract. Due to my experience of using kits I wasn't familiar with the necessity of using a blow-off tube.....It was necessary this time.....for several days in fact! Part of the problem was due to the fact that the capacity of the fermenter was only 23L (as opposed to the normal 30L) so the head-space was quickly filled with Krausen. It is due to reactions like this that I have added this  brewing t shirt  to my Christmas list. :)