Small batch hopbomb?

So.. my regular fermenters are full, and I have the itch to brew. I was poking around in my brewing closet and in the back were my old Mr. Beer kegs. On the top shelf, I also spyed some leftover pale LME. I knew I had an OZ of northern brewer hops in the freezer. And.. the wheels started turning.

I'm thinking of brewing up a really big hop bomb, along the lines of Ruination or Hop Stupid, but in a small batch.

Heres my plan.. lemme know what I should tweak! Im not looking for a perfectly balanced beer, or a beer with a lot of complexity. This one is all about being big, bad, bitter and hoptastic.

2.5 Gallons water with an expected 1/2 gal boiloff for a 2 gallon final batch.

5.4 Lbs pale LME
.5 lb brown sugar
Nottingham Dry yeast (11.5 grams) rehydrated, no starter
60 minute boil, no specialty grains (though I could be convinced to add a bit, just have to get some from the LHBS, I have most of the rest of the ingredients sitting around and was trying to avoid a trip.)

Hop schedule:

.5 oz Northern Brewer @ 60
.5 oz Northern Brewer @ 30
1 oz Centennial @ 15
.5 oz Centennial @ 5
.5 oz Centennial @ dryhop after 2 weeks in primary.

I ran it through the tastybrew calculator and came up with 99 IBUs and 8.3 ABV. Thats in the ballpark of a IIPA, but Im not entirely sure I have enough malty goodness there to counter the farily high level of bitterness. I figure I'd be essentially pitching double the amount of yeast necessary for a regular batch, but it would even out due to the high OG.

Thoughts?

Nothin? Im brewing in about 12 hours.

Hrm...

That seems like a lot of fermentables for 2 gallons. After plugging it into beersmith, I got a OG of 1.108. I checked these numbers by hand, and I get 1.114. With a FG of 1.027, you'd end up with a beer with ~11% abv. Assuming of course your yeast could do that.

If you really want to do this, tone down the fermentables, i.e. no brown sugar and use about 2.5-3lbs of the LME.

If you want to keep the Brown sugar for taste or color, then I'd recommend only using 2lbs of LME.

I would do this:

2lbs LME + 0.5 lbs B. Sugar : Boil 60 min.

... and add hops like you suggested. (Beersmith says expected IBU of 125, which, as you rightly put it, is a hop-a-bomb.)

Good luck!

ps- I just realized you might want extra maltiness to offset the hoppiness. I don't know much about that, maybe it will work? Hopefully others will chime in on that.

Here, I knew I've seen this somewhere, I stole it from another thread:



So, with an IBU of 125, which is off the charts!, maybe an SG of 1.1** could work.

Ok I need to go to bed, but I'm procrastinating, here's a new picture of where you're proposed beer is.

Yowza. Those gravities are quite a bit higher than what I had anticipated. I'd like to leave the brown sugar in, so I'll cut the LME back. Grr.. wish I had a larger fermenter open.

Revised:

3.4 lbs LME
.5 lb brown sugar


same yeast, cutting the hops by .5 an oz at the 15 minute mark.

thanks for the advice!

Update!

When bottled, this thing was scary. Very, very alcoholy both on the nose and in the taste, and was extremely bitter. 3 weeks later in the bottle, carbed up, its still strong, but in a good way. One note... yes. But its a tasty one note. Its a simple IIPA, and it worked. The only danger is that due to the lack of steeping grains or partial mash, the mouthfeel is a little thin, which has the unfortunate effect of making you think you are drinking a far, far weaker beer than you actually are

Just saw this thread as it popped back up to the recent thread list. I was going to suggest you at least throw some carapils in there for mouthfeel, then I realised the thread was from July and it was too late.

Awesome, it was fun reading this thread.
What were your final numbers SG/FG?