7th Hoppin' IPA

After making two partial mash 1 gallon batches of Pliny the Younger, I made a 1 gallon batch of a more standard IPA to start experimenting with different choices for bittering hops. Here is my new 7th Hoppin' IPA recipe:

2 lbs 2-row (70% efficiency)
Mash at 148* for 60 minutes
Mash at 148-168* for 30 minutes
6 oz DME
7g Magnum @ 60
14g mix Citra, Centennial, Simcoe, Amarillo, Nelson Sauvin, and Mosaic @ 20
7g mix Citra, Centennial, Simcoe, Amarillo, Nelson Sauvin, and Mosaic @ 15
7g mix Citra, Centennial, Simcoe, Amarillo, Nelson Sauvin, and Mosaic @ 10
7g mix Citra, Centennial, Simcoe, Amarillo, Nelson Sauvin, and Mosaic @ 5
7g mix Citra, Centennial, Simcoe, Amarillo, Nelson Sauvin, and Mosaic @ 2

I ended up with 1.1 gallons at 1.062 OG. IBUs calculate to 177. I pitched ~50 billion cells; mainly US-05, but I used a little bit of a WLP090 starter to hydrate it. I plan to ferment for a week and then dry hop with 14g of my 6 hop mix (although that may change as I'm doing some experimentation with dry hops in Bud Light Platinum) for a week in secondary. I plan to ultimately do a few 1 gallon batches with the same recipe, the only difference will be the bittering hop. I want to eventually try it with CTZ, Warrior, Bravo, and Apollo.

Gravity was down to 1.008 after less than a week. I got 3 L after straining. I split it into two 1.5 L bottles for dry hopping. I plan to dry hop for 1 week before bottling. I'm dry hopping one bottle with 1.5g each: Citra, Centennial, Simcoe, Amarillo, and Nelson Sauvin. I'm dry hopping the other bottle with 10g of old leaf hops I'm trying to get rid of that is a combination of Citra, Centennial, Simcoe, Amarillo, and Cascade.

I did the same exact batch tonight with the only difference being that I used 7g CTZ @ 60 min.

I bottled the Magnum batch, gravity was down to 1.007. I started dry hopping the CTZ batch.

ianmatth said:

After making two partial mash 1 gallon batches of Pliny the Younger, I made a 1 gallon batch of a more standard IPA to start experimenting with different choices for bittering hops. Here is my new 7th Hoppin' IPA recipe:

2 lbs 2-row (70% efficiency)
Mash at 148* for 60 minutes
Mash at 148-168* for 30 minutes
6 oz DME
7g Magnum @ 60
14g mix Citra, Centennial, Simcoe, Amarillo, Nelson Sauvin, and Mosaic @ 20
7g mix Citra, Centennial, Simcoe, Amarillo, Nelson Sauvin, and Mosaic @ 15
7g mix Citra, Centennial, Simcoe, Amarillo, Nelson Sauvin, and Mosaic @ 10
7g mix Citra, Centennial, Simcoe, Amarillo, Nelson Sauvin, and Mosaic @ 5
7g mix Citra, Centennial, Simcoe, Amarillo, Nelson Sauvin, and Mosaic @ 2

I ended up with 1.1 gallons at 1.062 OG. IBUs calculate to 177. I pitched ~50 billion cells; mainly US-05, but I used a little bit of a WLP090 starter to hydrate it. I plan to ferment for a week and then dry hop with 14g of my 6 hop mix (although that may change as I'm doing some experimentation with dry hops in Bud Light Platinum) for a week in secondary. I plan to ultimately do a few 1 gallon batches with the same recipe, the only difference will be the bittering hop. I want to eventually try it with CTZ, Warrior, Bravo, and Apollo.

Click to expand...

:cross:

Only seven?!

I once made an IPA with 13 hops, and Lagunitas IPA claims to use 43 different hops. By a more standard IPA, I mean in terms of gravity. Citra, Centennial, Simcoe, and Amarillo are pretty much standard for me at this point as far as flavor/aroma hops, now I'm trying to determine which hop should be standard for me as far as bittering. 7th Hoppin' just has a great ring to it, so I have to add 2 more hops. There are still quite a few great flavor/aroma hops I haven't tried yet, so they might get thrown in the mix in the future.

I brewed another two 1 gallon batches last night, this time to compare Warrior and Bravo as bittering hops. I used about 50% more hops, but had a lot of boil off, so I had to add to add 4 cups of water at the end to get my gravity closer to 1.060. Gravity for each batch was 1.058. I pitched about 70 billion cells of WLP090 into each gallon. It's a really fast yeast, so I plan to rack to secondary after 4 days.

I racked to secondary. I'm dry hopping each gallon with 3g each of Simcoe, Amarillo, and Centennial leaf hops, and 3g each of Citra and El Dorado pellets. Gravity was down to 1.017 after a little less than 4 days. I usually get much better attenuation, so I'm going to blame the partial boil for that.

I pulled a little bit of each to taste before added priming sugar tonight. The batch bittered with Warrior was similar to Magnum, being that both were smooth, but didn't have a lot of character. The Bravo batch had a lot of character, but from my recollection the CTZ batch had a lot of character, but was smoother than the Bravo batch, but since I used 50% more hops for the Bravo batch, it was a partial boil, and had much less attenuation, it is not a valid comparison. I would have to drink similarly brewed beers head-to-head to really determine the difference. When I drank the finished CTZ and Magnum batches head-to-head, I definitely had a preference for the CTZ because I felt the Magnum didn't have much character. I'll wait until the Bravo and Warrior batches are fully finished before I make a determination, but at this point I will say they are quite different, and while I could see my tastes changing, my current preference is for the Bravo. And my best assessment of a ranking thus far for the 4 hops I have experimented with for bittering is CTZ, Bravo, Warrior, and Magnum. I plan to do a head-to-head with Polaris and Apollo in a few weeks, and then I might have to do some run-offs with the respective winners after that.

I did an Apollo vs Polaris batch last night. Got a ton of boil off, but didn't want the attenuation issue I had last time from adding water, so I kept the OG at 1.088. I used 5.5g Apollo vs 4.7g Polaris for the 60 minute addition. Here is the recipe:

3 lbs 2-row (~80% efficiency)
Mash at 144* for 60 minutes
Mash at 156* for 10 minutes
Sparge at 168*
5.5g Apollo vs 4.7g Polaris @ 60
7g mix Citra, Centennial, Simcoe, Amarillo, Galaxy, and Green Bullet @ 20, 15, 10, 5, 2, and 0
15 minute hop stand
1.088 OG
~178 IBU
Pitch ~100 billion cells, combination of WLP090 and Safale US-05

Gravity was down to 1.022 so I let the temperature come up to 76*, however gravity was still at 1.022 after 24 hours. I'm going to give it another 48 hours, shaking it a few times a day, but if it doesn't get any lower I'm probably going to add some WLP099 Super High Gravity Ale Yeast. It is 9.4% ABV with 75% attenuation at this point, but I like dry beers so I don't want to take it to secondary and start dry hopping until I can get it down to 1.018.

After another 2 weeks in primary at 76* with a lot of shaking I finally got the gravity down to 1.019. I transferred to secondary and am dry hopping each gallon with 1/4 oz Citra, 1/8 oz Centennial, 1/16 oz Simcoe, 1/16 oz Amarillo, all whole leaf hops.

Let me ask you something, how are you testing out hop flavors by using 7 in the same recipe?

Heating to over 70* and shaking the **** out of your fermenter is not the best method. Oxidation and fusel alcohols come to mind

You also mentioned Lagunitas using 43?!?!?! hops in there IPA??
Jamil had an interview with the head brewer who told him his recipe was spot on

Here it is...

Lagunitas IPA: 6 gallon post-boil volume
O.G. 1.060 F.G. 1.020 (Target 1.018) IBU's 46.8 (Rager)

10.9 lb. American 2-row
.87 lb. Wheat Malt
.82 lb. Munich 10L
.55 lb. Crystal 60L
1.3 lb. Crystal 10L (brewer stated Crisp Crystal 15L)

Mash temp 160. (Jamil suggested reducing to 158) Burtonize H20.

Boil 60 minutes
4 g. Summit 18.5% 60 min
10 g. Horizon 12% 60 min
23 g. Willamette 4.7% 30 min
11 g. Centennial 10% 30 min
34 g. Cascade 5.75% 1 min or knock-out

Dry hops: 21 g. Cascade, 21 g. Centennial for 5 days (brewer cold crashed and left in for 7 days)

Yeast: WLP 002 or WY 1068 London ESB
Ferment at 66 for 3 days, ramp over 3-4 days to 70

I already tested all the late addition hops individually. As I said in the first post, these batches are being made to experiment with different choices for bittering hops.

As far as raising the temperature to 76*, the beer had already pretty much fully attenuated down to 1.022 at that point. In his Dogfish Head 90 clone thread scottland said temperature isn't critical after two weeks, anywhere between 50*-80* is fine at that point, so I assumed that would be the case after the vast majority of attenuation had occurred, although maybe I shouldn't have shook it. In reality it wasn't worth the 3 extra points, I was just anal about getting gravity under 1.020 before transferring to secondary. The beer maybe not be as good as it would have been if I would have just transferred to secondary when it was down to 1.022, but I'm sure it will be fine and I'll be able to tell whether I like Apollo or Polaris better as a bittering hop.

Check what the label says: http://lagunitas.com/beers/ipa/

I bottled a few days ago. When I transferred the Apollo vs Polaris batches to secondary I had added a little bit of a carbonbated dry-hopped starter beer (1.002 FG, dropped the overall gravity to 1.018 from 1.019) I had original made to build up some old WLP099 High Gravity Ale Yeast. I guess it had a lot of active yeast because after a week in secondary, the gravity is down to 1.002. I've never seen anything like that. It had a sweet high-alcohol kind of taste coming out of secondary and is well into the Triple IPA range at 11.75% ABV, so it may not be the best experiment to discern between Apollo and Polaris.