Specialty IPA: Rye IPA Denny Conn's Wry Smile Rye IPA

kevdoggx said:

I hate to go back to the beginning of this thread, but I just found this recipe and the first few posts gave me a bit of confusion. The OP said SG would be 1.085, which is in line with my calculations and every program that I've plugged this recipe into. But Denny, you yourself said you had some fermenting that came out at 1.073. What is the reason for the discrepancy between the gravities? Does it have something to do with the rye?

Thanks for the clarification!

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Excellent question, I had the same concern. Start reading here:

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f69/denny-conns-wry-smile-rye-ipa-84515/index4.html#post2164844

Basically you want to scale the recipe to an OG of 1.073 with 70-75 IBUs. Nothing special about the rye in terms of throwing off the gravity or anything.

Thanks dude! I guess I just hadn't read far enough before I decided to ask

Now to try and improve on my mash efficiency, which is a whole different story...

Just out of curiosity, was there ever any explanation as to why this recipe was misprinted? Everywhere I've seen this recipe on the internet, it shows the same grain bill. Not that it matters, if scaling the recipe does the trick, but I thought it was strange.

I was thinking of making this into a no-sparge brew day. Use first runnings for Denny's wry-ipa. Then use sparge + DME to make some kind of mellow brew. Being a newbie with only ~12 all-grain batches under my (growing) belt, I was hoping for some advice...like, is this even a good idea? Will I get enough fermentables from the second runnings to even make this a decent endeavor? I'm just kind of cheap and with such a huge grain bill was hoping to stretch it to 2 batches.

Thank you in advance for any/all advice and pro-tips!

James.

There's not enough grain imy recipe to make it no sparge. You'd need to recalculate the grist bill.

It's not every day you get to bump a great recipe thread with a pic of it after being brewed by a pro brewer, and presented as a special brew for the AHA Conference award banquet.

Cheers, Denny!

Actually, it was brewed by a pro brewer and 2 homebrewers. A friend and I helped out on the brew.

Denny said:

Actually, it was brewed by a pro brewer and 2 homebrewers. A friend and I helped out on the brew.

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Hey, and you got your picture on the bottle! Sweet!

passedpawn said:

Hey, and you got your picture on the bottle! Sweet!

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I'll have you know Denny is much more handsome than Bigfoot, but Denny's hair is indeed longer.

SkipperNC said:

I'll have you know Denny is much more handsome than Bigfoot, but Denny's hair is indeed longer.

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Damning with faint praise.....

Question for Denny... is 1450 your go-to yeast or do you just use it on specific recipes?

looking forward to brewing this, and am adjusting the recipe to my equipment, but we really need to know what the end of boil volume is. "batch size" and "boil volume" is a little vague. how much kettle trub was there? what was the boil off rate? knowing the end of boil volume is essential for getting the right OG on another set of equipment.

i'm assuming batch size here of 5 gal is what was transferred to fermenter? assuming a 15% boil off rate, there would be 5.44 gal end of boil, and .44 gal of trub, transferring 5 gal to fermenter.

i'd rather not make assumptions, and want to brew this recipe as close to the original as possible. any insight?

thanks!

essential to getting the correct OG / IBU ratio

jkendal said:

Question for Denny... is 1450 your go-to yeast or do you just use it on specific recipes?

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I use it for about 90% of the American styles I make. AIPA, APA, Am. brown, porters....

laserghost said:

looking forward to brewing this, and am adjusting the recipe to my equipment, but we really need to know what the end of boil volume is. "batch size" and "boil volume" is a little vague. how much kettle trub was there? what was the boil off rate? knowing the end of boil volume is essential for getting the right OG on another set of equipment.

i'm assuming batch size here of 5 gal is what was transferred to fermenter? assuming a 15% boil off rate, there would be 5.44 gal end of boil, and .44 gal of trub, transferring 5 gal to fermenter.

i'd rather not make assumptions, and want to brew this recipe as close to the original as possible. any insight?

thanks!

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I don't know which version of the recipe you're using. There's one for 5 gal. finished volume (in the fermenter) and one for 5.5. That's "batch size". Boil volume is gonna depend on your own system. Trub amounts are likewise dependent on if you use pellets or whole hops and how your system handles them. As long as you calculate things to hit 1.073 and 75 IBU you can do whatever your system requires.

Thanks, Denny. I'm using the recipe from this thread. What you are saying definitely makes sense, but IBU calculations vary greatly from software to software and then of course, rager and tinseth, etc.

Knowing end of boil volume and hop amounts, regardless of how many IBUs the software says would be most accurate, right?

laserghost said:

Thanks, Denny. I'm using the recipe from this thread. What you are saying definitely makes sense, but IBU calculations vary greatly from software to software and then of course, rager and tinseth, etc.

Knowing end of boil volume and hop amounts, regardless of how many IBUs the software says would be most accurate, right?

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Sounds like you need to RDWHABH and brew one to figure it out, then again for accuracy with your adjusted findings. Good luck! Don't worry so much just give it a try....

Word

laserghost said:

Thanks, Denny. I'm using the recipe from this thread. What you are saying definitely makes sense, but IBU calculations vary greatly from software to software and then of course, rager and tinseth, etc.

Knowing end of boil volume and hop amounts, regardless of how many IBUs the software says would be most accurate, right?

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I use Tinseth for my hop calcs. It seems to be the most accurate for full boils and when I've had beers analyzed for IBU they've been very close to what I calced using Tinseth in Promash.

The recipe on the very first page of this thread is accurate for 5 gal., although the stuff in bold at the top mis-estimates the OG and IBU. Just use the rest of it and remember 1.073 and 75 IBU.

I just entered the recipe into Beersmith and it's giving me a final gravity of 1.017. Is this correct? The recipe states 1.013?

zach1288 said:

I just entered the recipe into Beersmith and it's giving me a final gravity of 1.017. Is this correct? The recipe states 1.013?

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I don't think Beersmith calculates FG. You have to enter that manually. Just assume 25% of the OG. I.e., if you start at 60 gravity points (1.060), it should finished around 15 points (1.015).

zach1288 said:

I just entered the recipe into Beersmith and it's giving me a final gravity of 1.017. Is this correct? The recipe states 1.013?

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Beersmith (or ANY software) has NO idea what the FG is supposed to be. They look only at the attenuation rating of the yeast, which is only meant for comparing one strain to another. It's not really indication of the attenuation you can expect. The fermentability of the wort sets that. You can get from 60-90% attenuation with the same yeast depending on the wort fermentability, pitching rate and yeast health.

Well.....I totally screwed up my first attempt today. I did a partial mash version and cut the Pale Malt back to 3 pounds. I must have miscalculated how much DME to add (4 lbs) or didn't get very good efficiency (BIAB). My OG was 1.062. I also forgot to add the DME until half way through the boil so my IBUs will be higher than planned. I'm thinking of adding some DME to boost the gravity and help balance out the extra bitterness. I'd like to get to the intended gravity of 1.073 or higher to help balance the extra bitterness from the low gravity boil. Any suggestions?

It's been two days. At this point I'll probably leave it alone and try again next time. My original thought was to boil up 1.5 lbs of DME and add it to primary. Oh, well.

EDIT: 9/10/12 I couldn't help myself. I added the DME.

I've got a question about this brew.

There has been discussion in terms of the gravity discrepancies here and it is a general agreement to brew the beer to 1.073 OG. In scaling the recipe to match this OG, is it a matter of just dropping the 2 row down or scale back all grains? If it is all grains, does anyone have an updated recipe with the amounts? Thanks!

I recommend scaling all grains so the relative % stays the same.

Thank you for your quick reply, Denny. If the hops get here in time (they should but HopsDirect didn't e-mail me a tracking #), we will be brewing 10 gallons of this Friday night!

Brewed up a batch of this last Saturday...Talk about a bad brew day. I was aiming to make a 10 gallon batch with my 52qt cooler mash tun. I thought I would have enough space if I went with a thicker mash. I maxed out the mash tun and still had a gallon or so of water left. Needless to say it was very hard to try and stir it all together so I'm sure my extraction was bad since after boiling for over 90 min my SG was only 1.063. So I decided to just go with that and ended up with 8.5 gallons. While cleaning up I noticed an oz of Columbus that never made it in for the bittering. So ibu's and gravity are way off but it does seem to be fermenting very nicely with the huge starter of Denny's favorite that I pitched. Hopefully it will still turn out decent but I definitely need to make this one again.

52 quarts is 13 gallons. At 1.25 qt/lb and 32.5 lbs of grain (assuming you doubled the recipe from the OP), online calculators show a mash tun size of 12.76 gallons. At 1 qt/lb, it's 10.73 gallons.

I am assuming this calculator is just a guideline sort of a thing?

bknifefight said:

52 quarts is 13 gallons. At 1.25 qt/lb and 32.5 lbs of grain (assuming you doubled the recipe from the OP), online calculators show a mash tun size of 12.76 gallons. At 1 qt/lb, it's 10.73 gallons.

I am assuming this calculator is just a guideline sort of a thing?

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That's exactly what I was going with and yes I just doubled the recipe from the original post so I'm not sure what was different but it was filled to the brim with about a gallon left over and that was striking with a little over 10 gallons for 1.25qt/lb.

A lot of coolers list the volume under the concave top as part of the total volume. Of course, you can't use that for mashing. I can get about 9.5 gal. in my 48 qt. cooler.

Brewing this now. Used a keg as a mash tun for the first time. Wrapped it in a moving blanket, lost 4 degrees over an hour. Can RDWHAHB cause I'm on call. I'm sure it'll be fine.

Hi everyone I will be brewing this tomorrow. I have a 2L starter that i put on the stir plate monday night and this morning i began to cold crashing in my fridge. But I have read a lot of people having difficulty getting their FG inline with Denny's 1.013. My question is do you all think the 2l starter would be enough? What is the best temp to ferment this fav 50 yeast?

First time using this yeast strain and I want to ensure my fermentation goes well. I also use yeast nutrient in the boil and aerate with O2 to help my fermentations.

I ferment in the low 60s. If you're concerned about your FG being high, drop the mash temp to 150 and let it go for 90n min. instead of 60. Plan on 3 weeks in primary.

I'll be putting this on tap Friday I think. Hyrdometer taste from primary was excellent, very very hoppy. Hoping it has a strong nose when it pours from the tap as well after the dryhop

Thanks again for an excellent recipe.

I've got this all kegged up now. It's not totally carbed but getting there. We ended up doing 10 gallons and the last hop addition (1.5 oz Mt Hood) I wrote as 0.5 so we ended up just DHing the extra hops. They were whole leaf and I ended up clogging my siphon and the keg dip tube. Ugh. All said and done, it is a very delicious beer. The hop combination is very interesting and not like any other IPAs I have had, but not in a bad way. I will definitely be brewing this again.

Questions: 1) Thinking of lowering the % of rye malt. It seems a bit high but then I've never used it. Is it very spicy like rye bread?
2) If I can't get Mt Hood hops from the LHBS, are there acceptable substitutes?

Thanks for responses.

Brew as is then make changes. If you must, use Hallertau in place of Mt. Hood.

OK. I'm up for experimenting. Thanks.

TrubHead said:

Questions: 1) Thinking of lowering the % of rye malt. It seems a bit high but then I've never used it. Is it very spicy like rye bread?
2) If I can't get Mt Hood hops from the LHBS, are there acceptable substitutes?

Thanks for responses.

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1.) don't do it. How do you know it's too much until you try it? I made many test batches of the beer and if less rye made it better, the recipe would have less rye! At least try it as is before you change anything.

2.) Hallertauer