Partially because, at heart, Chris is just a giant hipster (even if he shaved off the beard), it was only a matter of time until he tackled a vermont-style IPA using Conan. Inspired by his recent video with Rudy from Community Beer Works, it was going to be a no-crystal all-late-hop IPA. And totally out of character for Crooked Bullseye, he brewed it by himself.
Yeah, that’s 24oz of hops
Recipe
40 litre batch
OG 1.060
FG 1.012
8 SRM
30 IBU (Calculated, possibly innacurate)
Fermentables:
- 5kg Floor Malted Pilsner
- 4kg Canadian 2-row
- 2kg Wheat Flakes
- 1kg Biscuit Malt
Hops:
- 4oz Centennial (10%) 5m
- 4oz Cascade (5.5%) 3m
- 2oz Sorachi Ace (12.9%) 3m
- 1oz Sorachi Ace (12.9%) 1m
- 2oz Simcoe (13%) 1m
- 2oz El Dorado (13.2%) 1m
- 1oz Nelson Sauvin (11.6%) 0m
- 1oz Waimea (17.5%) 0m
- 1oz El Dorado (13.2%) 0m
- 1oz Nelson Sauvin (11.6%) 10m (whirlpool)
- 1oz Waimea (17.5%) 10m (whirlpool)
- 1oz El Dorado (13.2%) 10m (whirlpool)
Yeast
- Conan, but no idea who’s particular strain (WL, YB, etc). I scored it fresh from a fermenter at a friendly brewery.
No starter needed as I had enough from the brewery (~1000ml) to actually hold some back for a future batch. Mash was another total disaster with temperature, and I had a full breakthrough moment. I’ve been dicking around with a cheap bi-metal dial thermometre, and also a cool thermo-couple that connects to my iPhone, but it turns out the probes are not remotely water proof, and therefore has been spitting very questionable results.
Decoction is a standard Crooked Bullseye routine
I know, “just buy a thermapen”, except, well, $100 for a thermometre is just a bit rich for my blood. Shortly I’ll be getting one of these, though, which rates really well, but is not back-lit and is less waterproof than a thermapen.
Back at it, with an un-planned protein rest, mash was done, and wort was collected. Clocked just a little under the projected 1.064 but considering the usual shit-show around mash temp, not bad.
Our really big DIY Mash/Lauter Tun
Got the kettle to a nice boil, realized I would probably run out of propane before I could boil for 40 minutes, but thought, “To hell with it”. Against all odds and past experiences, at 5 minutes left, I gave the tank a shake and could still feel some propane in there. So in went the first 4 oz of 24(!). At the end of the boil the 0m hops went in, and I started the 20 minute whirlpool. 10 minutes in I added the last 3oz. After the 20 minute whirlpool I did a 10 minute stand, then started chilling. There had been a *lot* of protein break (doubtless from the unintentional protein rest), and it showed up as the chilled wort was filling the carboys.
Healthy yeast = fast start
Regardless, in went the super-healthy yeast, and literally 4 hours later, there was notable active fermentation already happening. 6 days later (fermenting in my bedroom, wrapped in t-shirts to protect from sunlight), the airlocks had fallen silent so I pulled samples from each (very carefully, as there was a whole lot of trub). Both were pegged bang on 1.012, so everything looked great, right?
1.012 and everything is cool, right?
Wrong. So so wrong.
I chilled down the samples to give a taste, expecting big fruity hops, with some serious lemon, tropicals, and white wine. Nope! Green apple Jolly Ranchers. Or, to put it another way: acetaldehyde.
Acetaldehyde is a normal bi-product of brewing. Except usually the yeast metabolizes it out of the beer. And it probably should have happened by now. Except it hasn’t. So I gave them both a good swirl, and left them alone. There’s been some more activity in the airlocks, so I’m hopeful. I could also try pitching some US05 to see if it will clean-up the mess. We’ll see…..
More to come.
Update: I checked periodically on the acetaldehyde and was happy to see it dropping. I was considering pitching US-05 on it, to clean up the mess, but decided just to be patient. Patient, but apparently lazy. The beer got an infection. I noticed it the day I thought the green apple was nearly gone, because there was a hint of horse to it. Because the fermentors were in my bedroom and would be exposed to some amount of daylight, I had covered them in old t-shits, so I pulled one off, and saw clear as day, the classic brettanomyces grey/white pellicle forming. Rather than trusting that whatever bug it had gotten was a good one, I intended to spin up an expired Yeast Bay Brussels Brett Blend I had gotten, but when I mentioned that to Nick at Brew North, he told me he had some more recently expired Omega and gave me the two packs.
Omega OYL212 Bring On Da Funk brett blend
Once I had racked the beer off of the huge yeast cake and serious layer of protein (cold crashing would be difficult right now, and would include a car ride; I usually crash in a protected space under my porch when it’s cold out), I actually basically just had ~6 gallons.
That’s a lot of trub
So I picked the OLY212 “Bring da Funk” and threw it in. I also happened to take a sample of an IPA today that got the exact same yeast in secondary 6 months ago, and it was popping with horse blanket, pineapple, and peaches, so I’m very hopeful there will be a fantastic brett IPA coming my way just in time for Christmas…..
— — — Update May 16th — — —
Check out the pellicle on this!
Diiiirrrrttty