Number three: the rye-out APA

OK, our first own "original" recipe. I tried to take more measurements today. We calibrated the kettle with a steel ruler.

The mash went really smoothly, the temps stayed within a degree of 66 for the whole 90 mins. We mashed-out at 78 for ten minutes. I took the first gravity reading after that, was 1.048 (expected was .046). After that the FWH-hops, 36 grams of 12.5% Citra. I took another reading at flame-out, this time stirring well before scooping the sample. It said 1.062 (expected 1.060). So pretty consistent?

We chilled down to 90, then added more hops for a 15 minute hop-stand. We got 28- liters to fermenter, couldn't fit all of the planned 30 liters into the bucket (how dumb is that not know how much your fermenter will fit?) I pitched two bags of rehydrated US-05, that's quite a lot of yeast, but I planned to pitch to 30-liters.

There was some discussion about the evaporation rate, which was quite big last time, but this time the whole evaporation was only 9 liters. Efficiency into boil was 83% and Efficiency of ambient wort 83,6%, which were surprisingly high?

In a week I'll throw in 40 grams dry hops.

A nice day again

And yes, I'm really impressed with the BIABicus! A noob like me can just enter a recipe and hit the target gravities that well! It's awesome.

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It's now been fermenting for 5 days and I added 50 grams of dry hops in a bag weighted by a few marbles, so it sank to the bottom. All in all that's 196 grams of hops thus far The beer tasted really, really nice. It was so surprisingly citrusy that it was like some old-time lemonade. Otherwise the hop strenght had smoothed out a lot, I even started to think that the FWH-addition could have been a bit bigger. The gravity was already 1.014 (that's a 76% attenuation and 6.3% ABV). In a week we'll bottle it. Can't wait to taste the finished product!

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onkeltuka wrote:It's now been fermenting for 5 days and I added 50 grams of dry hops in a bag weighted by a few marbles, so it sank to the bottom. All in all that's 196 grams of hops thus far The beer tasted really, really nice. It was so surprisingly citrusy that it was like some old-time lemonade. Otherwise the hop strenght had smoothed out a lot, I even started to think that the FWH-addition could have been a bit bigger.

Congratulations! Based on your comments, I'm assuming you have used all Citra hops. I did a Citra APA a few months ago that was an excellent Summer beer. I loved it and received a lot of compliments from members of my brew club, several of whom aren't big APA/IPA fans. However, I think the next time I use Citra it will be mixed with some other hops. I have several ounces of Citra, Amarillo, and Cascade, so I expect I have a unique IPA coming my way.

onkeltuka wrote:The gravity was already 1.014 (that's a 76% attenuation and 6.3% ABV). In a week we'll bottle it. Can't wait to taste the finished product!

US-05 is really nice for APAs (and many other brews). It works quickly and cleanly and attenuates well, especially with your 66C mash temp. It's pretty tolerant of a range of fermentation temps as well. Do you have any kind of fermentation temp control? You could start an APA like this as low as 16C, letting it then rise, or start as high as 18 or 19 for maybe 3 days. Regardless, it sounds like you've got a very enjoyable brew. Enjoy it before the cold weather rolls in up there.

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OK, drinking the stuff already. I must say the hops are CITRUS-Y! Could have gone with even more dry-hops. Now I did it with 15/15/20 Citra, Willamette, Amarillo, next time could do 20/20/50, to accent that resiny Amarillo taste a bit more over the citrus. Otherwise the taste is really light and easy (even a bit too easy) drinking, there could be a bit more backbone to it, I'll add 10% Crystal 100EBC next time as well.

Calculated it has 6.6% ABV, FG was 1.012. You can't taste the alcohol one bit but it gets you drunk fast, which is not a bad thing either There was still a lot of yeast floating around when we bottled it, could have waited a week more at least. And maybe use slightly less yeast to begin with, although that'll change the flavour too?

Overall, a great experience doing a recipe from the ground up, a great learning experience. I already have two recipes to brew again (this and the Schwarzbeer), it's difficult the find the time and resources to do it all! Positive problems.

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Thanks Mally! The onkeltuka nickname goes way back to teenage years, when I had a really wild hair style. It doesn't really translate well... Finnish is a weird language, I have often times hoped to be able to hear how it sounds to a foreigner. It keeps surprising even me sometimes, it just dawned to me a couple of weeks ago that our word for "world", "maailma" is literally "earth-air"...

I've been trying to learn Russian as well this summer, that's a difficult too. But it's always easier to speak foreign languages after a couple of (home) brews

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