New Years Eve IPA

New Years Eve 2010 in Northeast OH was such a beautiful day out. We had sunny skies and it almost hit 60*F which is crazy for this time of year! The best way to end the year on a day like that is to invite the guys over, sit in the garage and brew some beer.

I wanted to brew something hoppy that would be a good session beer, so I decided to keep the OG around 1.050. I also had been reading a lot about 'first wort hopping' and wanted to give it a try. From what I have read it adds some complexity to the flavor while only contributing a little bit of bittering units. I also wanted to keep the malt bill very simple. I chose to use some maris otter I had laying around and some crystal 40L. Brew day went great, hung out with the dogs, and drank some brown ales and porters I had on tap. We mashed in at 150*F which is exactly what I wanted so that the beer would have a lot of fermentables and finish nice and dry, although the maris otter should add some body and maltyness to the beer. We used Tetnang for the FWH and cluster, chinook, and cascades for the rest. We ended up hitting an OG of 1.055 but only collected 4 gallons which I contribute to more boil-off than I had expected. We cooled it down to 75*F fairly quickly with an immersion wort chiller since the ground water is nice and cold right now. I pitched some S-04 that I made a starter with a few days prior. I originally wanted to use Wyeast 1056 but when I got it out of the fridge it smelled a little funky and decided to dump it.

Planning on keeping this in the primary for about 3 weeks then getting it into the keg with some more homegrown cascades. I have an empty handle on my keezer and need to get something in there!

New Years Eve IPA
Brewed on 12/31/10
5 Gallon (Anticipated)
All Grain
Measured OG 1.055
Anticipated FG 1.014
IBUs 40
SRM 6.8

8 lbs 8 oz Maris Otter
8 oz Crystal 40L
.75 oz Tettnang FWH
1 oz Cluster 60 min
1.5 oz Homegrown Cascades 3 min
1.5 oz Chinook 3 min
Plan to put 1.5 - 2 oz Homegrown Cascades dry hopped in keg.
.5 tsp yeast nutrient 10 min
.5 tsp irish moss 10 min
S-04 (used starter, second generation)

1-3-10 Airlock activity has slowed almost to a stop. S-04 usually finishes very fast for me.

1-12-11 Due to a quick swing in temps at the house it got stuck around 1.023. I racked it to a secondary to let it sit another 2-3 weeks. It still tasted really good so even if the gravity doesn't chance I might just keg it and drink it as is or add some Brett. and make it a funky ipa...

1/21/11 FG 1.018 Tasted good, decided to keg as is and not dry hop since it really didn't need it.