Six Pack IPA -- First Tasting

I was able to finally try the first bottle of my six pack of IPA yesterday, and was astounded by the results. I forgot to take a picture of the final beer so that you can see the color but I will definitely take and post a pic of the next one that I pop open.

The color is dark orange and pretty cloudy. The smell blew me away. Extremely hoppy, but due to the fact that I used only simcoe hops it is extremely piney, and resiney, with very little of what I would call a citrusy flavor. Usually in an IPA the citrus aroma is my favorite part so I was pretty worried that I was not going to like this one, but quite the opposite, I think I liked it more because it was so different.

Not being able to do a gravity reading before or after fermentation, I really had no idea what to expect as far as bitterness or alcohol. As it turns out I would call the final beer much more a double IPA than a regular IPA. The resiny aspect of the hops really came out but in a pleasant way. The bitterness level was extremely high, I would guess around the high 70 to low 80 IBU range, and balanced a pretty malty base very well.

In the end the beer came out better than I would have ever guessed that it would and I cant wait to make some more. Maybe a 5 gallon batch this time.

Six Pack IPA Bottled

Well, the six pack of IPA has now been bottled and is slowly undergoing its bottle fermentation in the living room right now. I hope to taste it in about two weeks, and now that I am done with this little project I have a few little observations to share. First, making 3 quarts of beer is way easier than making 5 gallons. The cleanup takes no time at all, chilling the wort is a breeze, everything is just very easy. Second, it is going to be a great way to get into wild fermentations and stuff like that. Throwing away a bad six pack of a brett beer is way easier than throwing away a full five gallon batch. Finally, I love imperial IPA's and was worried that with the hop shortage, enjoying a nice homemade Double IPA was going to be impossible. With the one gallon batch however it will be no problem. 3 ounces of hops in there will be more than enough.

All in all, it was a fun expirement that I would definitely recommend to anyone considering it.

Six Pack IPA

This is the six pack IPA from James Spencer at Basic Brewing Radio. I used the recipe that was published in BYO magazine. I was just bored one night and wanted to brew but didn't want to drag out all of the equipment when I remembered this recipe. Everything went really well and it was pretty easy to make. The only real problem I ran into was that Pro Mash did not like working with volumes less than a gallon. Also, since I do not own a refractometer, the actual gravity and IBU numbers are completely unknown to me. I can make a guess based on volume, but to tweak this recipe it looks like I am going to have to work purely on taste.

I know that the background looks pretty ghetto, but that is because I am fermenting in my basement where it is cool. At the time of this posting it had just started to ferment, and I am hoping that it will really take off today.

The recipe was pretty basic, one thing you really need is a good scale as the hop additions are all measured in gram increments. I went to the local head shop and picked up one of those little scales that hang off of your finger. It worked OK, but a nice digital Escali scale would have been a lot nicer.

So here is the recipe I used:

2 oz. Crystal Malt 60L
1 Lb Light DME
10 g. Simcoe Hop Pellets 15 min.
4 g. Simcoe Hop Pellets 5 min.
4 g. Simcoe Hop Pellets 0 min.
5 g. Safale US - 05 Dry Yeast
4 g. Simcoe Hop Pellets -- I will dry hop in about a week for 3 days.

I started with one gallon of water, and then just did it like normal except that everything was way smaller. The whole article is in the July-August 07 BYO and it goes into a lot more detail on the actual process.