AG#6 - IPA

Sun 30th October 2011

Another slightly damp but not too cold late autumn day just begging for a brew, so I unselfishly obliged !

This brew will be an IPA, adapted from a recipe I found whilst looking for a most elusive recipe for Fuller's Bengal Lancer. Suffice it to say UI didn't find a recipe directly but stumbled upon one "in the style of" it, which is as close as I came to finding it.

The recipe called for some 125g of Fuggles hops, with a late addition of the same at 20 minutes and flame out. I didn't want it quite so bitter so used 76g up front, with Styrian Goldings at 20 minutes and the rest of my Fuggles pack at flame out, 20g.

Grain

Brew monkey a-mixing

4500g Maris Otter pale malt
150g Amber Malt
150g Flaked Barley
150g Torrefied Wheat

Mash

Seasonal dress for the mash tun :)

Mash temperature: I went for 68'C and lost about half a degree over the 90 minutes which is great!











Hops


76g Fuggles @ 90mins
20g Styrian Goldings @ 20mins
20g Fuggles @ 0mins







Boil

The sparge this time only eventually got down to a hydrometer reading of .990 when I'd drained the HLT, and I liquored back a little during the boil due to evaporation loss, so expecting this to be fairly strong, close to the 5.3% Bengal Lancer gets in the bottle. Good old trusty Electrim boiler maintained a solid 99.6'C to 100'C for the whole boil. If only it was 30Lcapacity instead of 25L :) Touch and go again with the pre-boil foam up, but quick a blast from the hose, on sprinkle rather than power-hose this time, sorted that out.




Yeast

White Labs WLP002 English Ale yeast pitched at 23.5'C

Gravity

QBrew said the OG should be up around 1.061, but I got a temperature corrected 1.053, so looking for it to ferment down to 1.013 to give an ABV of 5.3%. Must look into why the gravity is always quite a lot lower than expected. It could be due to too much liquoring back during the boil, too thin a mash, or perhaps, as previously mentioned, too fast a sparge though this time it was 1L per minute which should be fine.

Quite a nice colour this one. Amber, due most probably to the amber malt:

Fermentation update

Dropped down to 1012 which gives and ABV of  5.4% - about right for an IPA :)

Bottled it looked like this - I used half a cup of DME boiled in about 400ml of water. Slightly cloudy because of this I dare say, as it was very clear before bottling.

Can't wait til this one is ready. Will give it about two weeks to condition then get stuck in!