Month: February 2012

Harvest IPA – August 2011

Posted on by AuSable

Here is the recipe that I came up with, to use the hops harvested from the garden. Since I thought going with more of an IPA style beer would really highlight the fresh hops in the final beer.

Recipe:

  • Pale Malt (2 row) UK – 11.5 lbs
  • Caramel/Crystal Malt 40L – 1.5 lbs
  • Cara-pils/Dextrin – 0.5 lbs

——
Total 13.5 lbs of grain

Yeast: Wyeast American Ale #1056 smack pack

1 tsp of Irish Moss added 15 mins before chiller was started
2 ½ tsp of Fermax Yeast Nutrient added to the Primary

Hop Additions:
1st addition – Centennial – 1 oz. – 60 mins
2nd addition – Cascade – 1 oz. – 30 mins
3rd addition – Centennial – 4 oz. Fresh – Secondary fermentor

6 gallons with O.G. of 1.046

In the primary for 7 days at which point it had a gravity of 1.022. Racked the batch to a secondary, and added 4 ounces of the fresh centennial hops. I then let in sit in the secondary for just a week short of two months. F.G. 1.012 and it was kegged and bottled (into about a half dozen bottles.) on October 7th, 2011.

Update January 10, 2012: Having now had a few pints from the keg (which I forced carbonated), I have to say that this is best beer that I’ve brewed to date. Is the beer a bit hoppy? You bet, but it’s not like I was surprised, since I did used 6 ounces (2 oz dried/4 oz fresh) of hops in the batch for a total IBU of ~63. My only gripe is that my brewhouse efficiency still totally sucks at the 60% range, which is a sorry state of affairs. But at this point, it’s just the cost of doing business for me.

Hop Harvest and Drying Process 2011

Posted on by AuSable

Once again the centennial hop plant has produced enough of a cone crop to use in a batch of homebrew. Check out the article on the Harvest IPA that I made, for more details on the homebrew batch.

But after all the picking was done, I had 1 lb and 4 ounces of fresh centennial cones to use however I choose. I used 4 oz of fresh hops to add to the secondary fermentor of the Harvest IPA. While the rest of the cones were placed on drying frames in the basement, and left to dry for about three days.

After the three days had passed, what started as 16 ounces of fresh hops became 4 ounces of dried hop cones. Talk about a loss in water weight! And of those four ounces, I divided them up into one ounces packets and vacuum sealed all four of them. And with the cones vacuum sealed, they’ll be sitting in the kegerator until I brew up another batch of beer in 2012.