American IPA Stone Ruination Clone

Took another reading, its at 1.024 now. So obviously, its steadily going down. Today the temperature upstairs finally hit 70* (its been cold and rainy here in WI). What would you guys suggest I do? Leave it sit in the secondary for another week or so? I plan on checking the gravity every 2-3 days (Was 1.028 on Sunday, 1.026 on Wednesday-this was when I decided to move it to a warmer temp than 65*-and 1.024 today). I understand the aroma hops will diminish.. Can I dry hop it again, or is that a no no? Just curious what to do in this situation, its the first time I've run into the problem of not hitting my FG within 2-3 weeks.

Thanks for any help/advice.

Just bottled this last night, it taste so good, I could almost could have drank it flat all night long.

paarman, I had a similar issue as you with this brew. After I hit 1.020 I had to stir it to get the gravity down more. Once I did that, it come down another .10 after a few days.

Spark plug, thanks for the advice... I gave it a swirl about a week ago, unfortunately my FG ended up being 1.020 said and done, sat at that for about a week. Bottled it on Friday, I'm going to give it a taste tomorrow out of one of my sampler bottles.. Like you said above, it tasted great flat, can't wait to see what it tastes like carbed!

Tried my first bottle tonight.. Pretty damn tasty. After thinking about it, I'm kind of glad the ABV dropped down to ~6%... Makes it more of a sessionable beer. Pretty happy with this recipe, I will enjoy it this summer for sure!

tried mine last night, 2 weeks in the bottle, pretty damn good, has a nice dry taste/feel to it, needs a little more carbing though, another week will do it wonders!

So I don't have enough pale malt (I have 7 lbs and the LHBS is closed tomorrow on the 4th) to make this but I have regular 2-row, Vienna malt, Maris Otter and pilsen malt. Can I use any of these either in combination with the 7 lbs of pale malt or 14 lbs of another malt? Is the IBU's for this recipe suppose to be over 90 for a 5 gallon recipe?

RichBenn said:

I've been drinking this for several weeks now. Mine used mostly Pale Ale malt instead of regular 2-row. I now think that is a mistake for this brew. While still good, the slightly maltier profile of the Pale Ale malt keeps it from being exactly like Ruination. And like I surmised, it goes down way too easy for an 8% brew.

Rich

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So I am a bit confused. Does pale ale malt have a maltier profile than standard 2-row? I thought it might be the other way around. I have plenty of regular 2-row that I could use for this recipe but I am short on pale ale malt.

For my third question on this recipe...would doing 1/2 of the magnum addition as a first wort hop be a good idea? I am not a fan of IPAs but my wife loves them and I would like to make a good attempt with this recipe.

msa8967 said:

So I am a bit confused. Does pale ale malt have a maltier profile than standard 2-row? I thought it might be the other way around. I have plenty of regular 2-row that I could use for this recipe but I am short on pale ale malt.

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"Pale Ale", like most other malts we use for ales is 2-row, technically, but it's used to describe a slightly darker (3 vs 2 lovibond) malted barley. It's a little bit like Maris Otter, which is even maltier, I'd say.

As sold, US and Canadian generic "2-row" is the lightest malt sold for making ales.

You can use pale malt and 2 row interchangeably, very slight differences

Thanks for answering my question.

I brewed this last night, it was my first attempt at a higher-gravity beer like this. However, I missed my O.G. by a mile, and I'm hoping someone might be able to offer a possible explanation.

I brewed the recipe as listed, with 2 very minor modifications: I added 1 lb of dextrose to the boil, and I used 1.75 oz of Warrior for the bittering addition instead of Magnum.

As I was chilling (I recirculate through a plate chiller back into the kettle until I reach 70° F), I took a gravity sample. It was 1.060.

Huh!?! The recipe claims an O.G. of 1.077, and I added an extra pound of dextrose, so I should've been even higher.

This is the most grain I've ever mashed with, and BeerSmith directed me to mash with 19 quarts of water, at 148° F. I stirred quite well (or so I thought), and I even popped the lid and gave it another good stir 20 minutes into the mash (I never do this). So how did I miss my O.G. so badly? Where did all those extra sugars go?

I batch sparged with 4.75 gallons of 170° water.

I'm quite disappointed, but I'm hopeful the beer will still turn out nicely.

Check This Out!!!

This is my third batch after about 8 hours in the ferm chamber. Couldn't be happier...

Bkorver,

Big deal...just some water boiling next to your carboy. So what?

Just kidding...that's a heck of a ferment!

John

6 gallons. Going crazy! Smells awesome, can't wait to try it.

Was thinking of throwing in some simcoe at flame out I enjoy the piney aroma. Would this clash with the centennial?

vutoq said:

Was thinking of throwing in some simcoe at flame out I enjoy the piney aroma. Would this clash with the centennial?

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I dry hopped with simcoe, magnum and Columbus, so I'll let you know.

I've never heard of using magnum as an aroma hop. What aroma does it give off?

m3n00b said:

I've never heard of using magnum as an aroma hop. What aroma does it give off?

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Good question! It's partially an experiment to see how dry hopping with the bittering hop compliments the aroma alongside the other late addition and aroma hops. Could be a mess, who knows?

I brewed the extract version of this a few weeks ago. I used Briess pilsner extract instead of light extract. The FG was 1.014. I have to say it is still pretty sweet. I'm wondering if this extract recipe wouldn't do better with a swap of 10% of the DME with simple sugar.

Hope character is great, its just not as drinkable as I hoped.

I just made this but had an original gravity of 1.034...yea really off. This is my first all grain attempt which had lots of hiccups along the way but I dont know what would have cause such a difference in OG. Any idea what could be causing this? Perhaps my lautering schedule wasnt right? I mashed for just over an hour and the first iodine test showed that there was good conversion.

Can you post your recipe along with mash, sparge, and boil volumes and times?

I followed the original recipe as close as possible. My mash temp set around 148-150, lower then I anticipated and I tried adding some more hot water, might have added to much. After an hour in had converted so I began run off till clear and added more hot water once most had drained. And I boiled for about an 1 hour, with 6.5 gallons.

This is going to sound stupid but, you milled the grains, right? I only ask because believe it or not, I've seen cases where the person hadn't actually milled the grain and they were trying to mash with unmilled malt.

Assuming you milled the grain properly, the usual culprits are mash temperature (sounds like yours was good), mash technique (thoroughly stirred, all dough-balls broken up), sparging, or even a simple misreading of the hydrometer. Maybe the sample you took was from a thinner portion of the wort as the heavier sugars settled to the bottom or something.

I milled the grains at the homebrew store...I have a feeling it might be stirring, or maybe sparging. My set mash temp was about 148, a little lower then 152. Thank you for the info though that was really helpful, Im going to double check the hydrometer reading right now!

TheWhiteGandhi said:

I followed the original recipe as close as possible. My mash temp set around 148-150, lower then I anticipated and I tried adding some more hot water, might have added to much. After an hour in had converted so I began run off till clear and added more hot water once most had drained. And I boiled for about an 1 hour, with 6.5 gallons.

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The extra water definitely could be part of it, depending on how much more you added. If you read the recipe out of BYO, which was allegedly provided/confirmed by Stone, it calls for a 90 min boil, which would have reduced the volume, hence raised your SG. Still, you are far off the expected. What was you final volume of wert? Do you have your mash and sparge volumes handy? Or maybe this was a no sparge effort?

Just in case there's any doubt, this is an amazing recipe. This beer immediately became my favorite brew. I'm torn between drinking it myself because it's so delicious, and trying to make it last as long as possible so I can share it with my fellow beer snobs and have them marvel at how good it is.

I'm already working this recipe into my schedule to make it a regular on one of my taps. It really is fantastic.

First pint out of the keg. Well, second actually. First one had some crap in it from the gelatin...

Is this recipe set up for 5 gallons into fermenter or 5 gallons packaged?

I usually end up with just under 6 in the fermenter, 5.5 to secondary, and just a touch over 5 in the keg...

Brewing this today using the BYO recipe. Since I don't have scales, I'm rounding up the poundage.

15# 2-row
1# crystal 15

Hop schedule the same.

Brewed this on Saturday. Numbers were spot on, but the trub didn't settle as much as expected so a lot went into my bucket. This is easily the most active fermententation I've had. A consistent bubble started within four hours of pitching, and by Sunday night had started blowing off and is still blowing off this morning. I changed out airlocks yesterday and the beer smells fantastic.

MTate37 said:

This is easily the most active fermententation I've had.

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It's funny you say that because I brewed this and it was the least active fermentation I've ever had. I didn't see my blowoff bubble once and high krausen lasted for over a week.

Fordzilla said:

It's funny you say that because I brewed this and it was the least active fermentation I've ever had. I didn't see my blowoff bubble once and high krausen lasted for over a week.

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I am kind of pushing the limits of my 6.5 G bucket with a little under 6 G, but the flow through the blowoff has been pretty non-stop for since Sunday. I was expecting that it would have slowed a little by now.

My LHBS was out of Wyeast American Ale so I'm trying American Ale II. I made a 1.5 liter starter with two packets, per yeastcalc.com.

I brewed this from the BYO recipe in early september. The final product was not exactly what I was hoping for. Some very off flavors, astringency/bitterness.
Here are some details about the brew and what I think might have gone wrong.
We had an OG of 1.054 (a bit low) and a FG of 1.013. I allowed 2 weeks in primary, and 1 week in secondary. Dry hopping was done in secondary, in a cheesecloth bag (we jammed the bag through the top of a 5 gal better bottle, I strongly recommend against this, as it didn't really want to squeeze through, in hindsight a much larger bag would probably take care of this). Beer was then kegged and force carbed for 1 week. Here are some theories about why this didn't turn out so well. Any feedback appreciated.

1. Lots of trub in primary fermenter. We weren't able to chill the beer rapidly (using a copper chiller, but water supply was not so cold, as it was a hot day). I'm guessing we didn't really separate out the "cold break". Im very new so I could be using the wrong terms or be mistaken about this. Beer sat on a thick layer of sediment for 2 weeks. This is my best guess for the cause of the problem.

2. Sparge temp. I think we intended to heat the sparge water to 175, but it got up to 185 as we didn't monitor it closely enough. We tried to let it cool for a bit but we didn't really let it drop too much. Still I checked the temp in the mash tun during sparging, and it didn't seem to rise above 165. Wondering if too hot of sparge water might account for the astringency. We only heated sparge to 170 on our next batch.

3. Quality of hops in dry hopping. We had whole leaf hops purchased from a local home-brew store. Im not sure exactly what they are supposed to look like, but they could've stood to be a bit greener I think.

Jason82 said:

I brewed this from the BYO recipe in early september. The final product was not exactly what I was hoping for. Some very off flavors, astringency/bitterness. Here are some details about the brew and what I think might have gone wrong. We had an OG of 1.054 (a bit low) and a FG of 1.013. I allowed 2 weeks in primary, and 1 week in secondary. Dry hopping was done in secondary, in a cheesecloth bag (we jammed the bag through the top of a 5 gal better bottle, I strongly recommend against this, as it didn't really want to squeeze through, in hindsight a much larger bag would probably take care of this). Beer was then kegged and force carbed for 1 week. Here are some theories about why this didn't turn out so well. Any feedback appreciated. 1. Lots of trub in primary fermenter. We weren't able to chill the beer rapidly (using a copper chiller, but water supply was not so cold, as it was a hot day). I'm guessing we didn't really separate out the "cold break". Im very new so I could be using the wrong terms or be mistaken about this. Beer sat on a thick layer of sediment for 2 weeks. This is my best guess for the cause of the problem. 2. Sparge temp. I think we intended to heat the sparge water to 175, but it got up to 185 as we didn't monitor it closely enough. We tried to let it cool for a bit but we didn't really let it drop too much. Still I checked the temp in the mash tun during sparging, and it didn't seem to rise above 165. Wondering if too hot of sparge water might account for the astringency. We only heated sparge to 170 on our next batch. 3. Quality of hops in dry hopping. We had whole leaf hops purchased from a local home-brew store. Im not sure exactly what they are supposed to look like, but they could've stood to be a bit greener I think.

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Stone Ruination is an Imperial IPA. That means 1.075 starting gravity or better. You had 1.054, which is not even where an IPA would be, but more like a Pale Ale.

The amount of hops in an IIPA is so high, it is only supported by a LOT of alcohol from having a high starting gravity. Otherwise, it just tastes bitterly astringent without hop flavor. This is especially true for a light colored beer, which Ruination is.

Forget the trub, some just pour the whole thing in the fermentor with great results. Also, if your mash temp didn't get over 170, it wouldn't be the problem (I mash out with 204 degree water in a batch sparge to get the grain up to 165-168. After that I used 170 degree water.)

Boiling with some grain particles in there from the runoff can cause astringency (you did vorlauf, right?).

Without tasting it, I couldn't say for sure, but my bet is on the original gravity being low, upsetting the hop balance way too much.

Thanks thats helpful, as I hadn't thought of that explanation. I suspected we missed OG due to a flawed sparge process. Also we didn't vorlauf but did on our next batch. Things to improve if I give this recipe a second go.

Jason82 said:

Thanks thats helpful, as I hadn't thought of that explanation. I suspected we missed OG due to a flawed sparge process. Also we didn't vorlauf but did on our next batch. Things to improve if I give this recipe a second go.

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Sorry to be so late on checking this, but I feel you may want to be aware of several factors on efficiency. To much to go into here, but water chemistry and grind of grain have huge effects, depending upon your beer style, water, and/or mash technique. Spend some time in the beer science and all grain section. Your taste buds will thank you for it.

I brewed this yesterday and had an O.G. reading of 1.022.. =((( Granted this is my 4th AG batch i still got some kinks to fix. will my batch be okay? just lower alcohol content?

No, it sounds like you did something horribly wrong. Did you remember to mill the grain? What was your grain-to-water ratio during mashing? What temperature did you mash at? What were your volumes at each step (mash, sparge, top-up, post boil)?

You will have a very weak fermentation, if there is even any sugar in there at all. You will have very low alcohol and it will not taste at all like the recipe intended. Let's figure out where you went wrong.