1800 IPA: Pseudo-historic IPA recipe

unionrdr said:

Hmmm...sounds like a smooth,rich ale. The hop presence has to be gone by then though. Just bittering at that point.

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And dry hops? Would those have been included in the year long secondary or added after secondary, immediately prior to shipping and serving?

patto1ro said:

Funnily enough, I just got an email from Kristen about the reason for delay in Let's Brew recipes. Blame his kids (they've wrecked two laptops) and his brewery. The good news is that there should be a new recipe soon.

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Speaking of Let's Brew recipes, I've always wondered how far in advance does Kris actually brew these beers before the recipes are posted? I ask because some of these beers (obviously) take many months if not years of aging before they are really suitable for drinking. Is there anyway of knowing how old the beers are when he includes the tasting notes?

gbx said:

For a recipe like this, really really hoppy, highly attenuated and refermented with brett, I didn't think it would be a horrible crime against beer history to use german pilsner malt as modern UK malt is going to be different from burton white malt too. Maybe I should cut it with some MO or GP?

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Honestly, using pils in beer like this isn't the end of the world, given all that it has going on. However, I do think the MO or continental pale basemalt will probably be better tasting and closer to what they were originally using than pils alone.

bierhaus15 said:

Speaking of Let's Brew recipes, I've always wondered how far in advance does Kris actually brew these beers before the recipes are posted? I ask because some of these beers (obviously) take many months if not years of aging before they are really suitable for drinking. Is there anyway of knowing how old the beers are when he includes the tasting notes?

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It depends. Often a few weeks, but sometimes longer.

patto1ro said:

It depends. Often a few weeks, but sometimes longer.

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Oh, well that's disappointing.

bierhaus15 said:

Oh, well that's disappointing.

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You'd really need to ask Kristen.

Ron, do you know when dry hops would have been added to an early 1800s IPA? Would fresh hops added before the year long secondary or did they add them in the cask before shipping and serving? The book wasn't clear on that.

By this time they knew that hops kept beer "fresh", so I would imagine that they were dry hopped in the secondary and dry hopped again when prepared for shipping (considering it took a really long time to travel to India with having to go around Africa).

i like this - might have to steal an idea or two from this thread... quick, to beer smith!

gbx said:

Ron, do you know when dry hops would have been added to an early 1800s IPA? Would fresh hops added before the year long secondary or did they add them in the cask before shipping and serving? The book wasn't clear on that.

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Loftus, writing in the 1850's, recommends 2 lbs per barrel of dry hops when the beer is racked into storage casks, i.e. at the start of secondary fermentation.

patto1ro said:

I lurk a lot. I only post when I think I can contribute soemthing.

Funnily enough, I just got an email from Kristen about the reason for delay in Let's Brew recipes. Blame his kids (they've wrecked two laptops) and his brewery. The good news is that there should be a new recipe soon.

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Now that Let's Brew is back, if anyone is interested I started a Let's Brew thread here https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f12/subp-lets-brew-wednesday-thread-384441/ ...I guess I should have called suabp ...oops

Brewed my 1800's India Pale Aged Ale a few weeks ago, you can read my long break-down of what I'm doing and hoping to find out on my blog here: bear-flavored.com/2013/01/brew-day-and-recipe-1800s-ipa-india.html

Basically, I am planning to age the majority of the batch in secondary with Brett C, and bottle a small portion of it fresh. Then I'll save a few bottles of the fresh portion to drink in a year and a half or so after the Brett portion is bottled. I suspect the long aging process is crucial to determine what the beer actually tasted like back then, probably more so than pils malt vs Maris Otter vs. pale ale malt.

I'm also wondering if the presence of Brett is what made historic IPA taste good at all. I mean, no one ages IPA at all anymore, and for a reason: it tastes terrible aged. Even IPA that's only a few months old can be pretty bad. So the aging process of the IPA seems like a contradiction to me, but I think Brett's ability to rearrange hop compounds could play a key role. Hopefully tasting the Brett portion next to the "plain" portion will be enlightening.

Brewed my 1800 IPA today. This recipe, along with a bunch more, are available in my e-book which you can get for donating $25 to my nanobrewery Kickstarter project. There are also some other cool rewards. Check it out: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1463544393/crooked-run-brewing-a-farmhouse-nanobrewery

i brewed the NB townhall1800 AG a couple years back. hated the first case i drank in the first year after bottling, then, on a lark, i opened a bottle about 13 months after bottling: stunning! the very aggressive hop bittness had mellowed considerably, the beer was perfectly balanced. i am planning to brew it again and INTEND to store it a year or more before opening. have faith in this beer, wouldn't want to touch the recipe, maybe just swap out yeasts to try different things.