Our third batch of beer will be a strong India Pale Ale aged with oak chips. Below we have our brewing information, pictures, and a few videos. We brewed on October 4th, bottled on October 26th, and the beer should be ready to try by Thanksgiving.
| Date of Brewing: | October 4, 2003 |
|---|---|
| Batch: | 003 |
| Name: | - |
| Style: | India Pale Ale (IPA) |
| Volume: | 5 gallons |
| Recipe Source: | Our own version of Palilalia India Pale Ale from The New Complete Joy of Home Brewing found on page 180. |
| Ingredients: |
|
| Time of boil: | 1 hour |
| Hops: | Boiling hops added after removal of grains and addition of malt extract. Finishing hops added 1 minute before sparging. |
| Temperature of wort when yeast pitched: | 75° Fahrenheit. |
| Beginning specific gravity: | 1.085 at 70° Fahrenheit, 1.086 corrected = 12% ABV mark, 20.6° Plato. |
| Date of transfer to brightening tank: | October 12, 2003 |
| Date of bottling: | October 26, 2003 |
| Bottling agent: | 1 1/4 cups Crosby & Baker Ltd. Munton's Light Dried Malt Extract |
| Specific gravity at bottling time: | 1.027 at 70° Fahrenheit, 1.028 corrected = 4% ABV mark, 7° Plato. Approximately 8% ABV. |
| Date of first taste: | - |
| Taste Evaluation: | - |
| Notes: |
|
Our ingredients
Weighing the Pale Ale Malt.
This is 0.5 pounds.
Rob crushes the grain with a rolling pin.
Break the grains, but do not pulverize.
The Pale Ale malt steeping in the hot water.
Time to add the Crystal Malt.
Removing the mash from the pot with a kitchen strainer.
The dry malt extract, hops, and gypsum have been added.
It is like syrup. This will have a high alcohol content.
The spent grains.
They were sweet and light, but are now very bland and have darkened.
The sludge that got stuck in the filter while sparging into the carboy.
Rob checks the temperature of the wort.
Notice the consistant cloudy brown color - this changes drastically.
Rehydrating the yeast in 105 degree water. This makes it more active.
Pitching the yeast.
Swirling the wort afterward will get all the yeast off the sides of the carboy.
The wort sits in my nice warm closet. Where it will stay for a couple of weeks.
An hour after it was cloudy brown, it has formed a thick layer of sediment on the bottom and the top has gotten very dark.
Quiet, dark, and serene. The closet was closed and left alone.
This was taken 22 hours later when the door was next opened.
There is 4 inches of krausen (foam) on the top from the fermentation.
The yeast have stirred it up and made the wort a much lighter cloudy brown.
It is bubbling VERY rapidly.
18 hours later we are ready to suck off the krausen with a sanitized tube and wet/dry vac.
This prevents the beer from absorbing off-flavors from the overly bitter resins that form on top in the first days.
Time to steam the oak chips.
The steam sanitises the chips and brings out the flavor.
Pitching the oak chips.
This will give the beer the flavor of being aged in oak barrels for weeks.
24 hours later. The beer has quieted down and forms new layers.
There are three distinct layers, the dark and clear top, the murky lighter middle, and the sediment on the bottom.
The yeast is still floculating in the murky regions, but the dark regions appear still.
There is a little bit of krausen on top, mixed with oak chips.
You can see an oak chip floating near the top, this one sank to the bottom shortly afterward.
What appears to be a stream of murk with active yeast bridges the middle layer to the top of the wort. Very strange. We do not know why this is happening.
Now there are two distinct layers of sediment on the bottom.
A week after brewing, the beer has darkened and it ready to be transferred to the brightening tank.
The oak chips floating on top.
Ryan takes a taste - very good!
Siphoning the beer into a sanitized bucket.
It is quite thick and moves slowly.
Done. You can see the sediment and oak chips left behind in the carboy.
A close up of the scum.
Looks like chocolate swirl ice cream really..
After thoroughly cleaning the carboy, we transfer back.
Lovely beery smells.
Rob's shirt says "51% of all RIT first year students consume 0-2 drinks at social events" - I wonder if Rob and I can change that...
Snug in its newly cleaned home, the beer will finish fermenting and clearing for another couple of weeks.
Bottling time!
Rob fills the bottles.
Eric gives Rob and I a hand by capping. Visions of sweatshops filled with little asian computer science students dance in my head...
(High resolution versions can be found here.)
Videos in raw AVI format. Between 3.5MB and 6MB each. Should work on mplayer, xanim, QuickTime, and Windows Media Player.