Back to Brewing - 10 Gallons of American IPA

It has been a long winter.  The cold that shook the south put me in a serious hibernation mode.  It was all we could do to get out of a warm bed every morning, get to work, get home, get dinner, get cozy, get in bed, repeat.  The last couple of months I've done very little in the way of anything extracurricular.  I needed a break from brewing and frigid temps only further encouraged me.

Well it's started warming up here again and today was a picturesque day to brew a batch of beer.  Temps swelled into the upper 60s while the ground temperature (and ground water temperature) is still recovering from winter and in the 40s (ground water temp coming out of our faucet is almost exactly 50F).  There were 8 ounces of various hops residing in my freezer that I thought would go towards a delicious IPA.  Dry yeast was an easy way to get back into the swing of things and US-05 is always a good yeast.  All I needed was water and grains.

I've read all kinds of good things about floor malted Marris Otter.  I know it's not an American malt, but it gets rave reviews in all beer styles, including IPAs.  Here is how the scene unfolded:

24# Floor Malted Marris Otter
1# Carapils

Mash at 151F for 60min
Raise to 170F for 15min

Preboil OG on 13 gallons (only 1.046...I missed my goal so added some DME to bump it up to 1.051)

2 oz. of Northern Brewer (10.6%AA) at 60 min
2 oz. of Chinook (11.8% AA) at 15 min
1 oz. of Willamette (4.7% AA) & 1.3 oz. of Simcoe (12.2% AA) at 5 min
1.7 oz. of Simcoe (12.2% AA) at 0 min

The beauty of this time of year is ground water temperature.  I use an immersion chiller with a recirc pump to push my hot wort across my cold coil.  I was able to chill this 10 gallon batch to 60F in 20 minutes. That's some serious chillin, Batman!

A nice addition to my brewhouse is a 16 gallon plastic fermentor I grabbed off of MoreBeer.  It's german made and seemingly of very good quality.  The plastic makes it easy to move 10 gallons around, and the wide lid makes it easy to clean.  I've read very good reviews on these fermentors, so hopefully it serves me well.

Picture time!

The mash.  My 10 gallon batches really push the limits of my 12 gallon mash tun.

Hop Spider in action.

The fermentor.  I'm excited about this addition to the brewhouse.

One of my favorite ways to end a brew day.

I plan to dry hop this batch of brew with another 2 oz. of Simcoe hops.  Hopefully I will be kegging this batch up in about 2 weeks and tasting within a month.

My old hop stash is all gone.  My next couple of brews will be a little funkier (Belgian Wit?, Bavarian Hefeweisen?).

I know I'm bad about keeping my blog up-to-date.  But between a renewed passion for brewing, and a lot of excitement in daily life in Fayetteville, I hope to be writing again soon.