Pacific Gyre GF IPA

With great cause for optimism about my most recent GF IPA, I reckon I'll brew another one in a slightly different direction just to build up a stock-pile of solidly drinkable non-experimental GF homebrews. I'm really curious about chinook hops, so I threw this recipe together:

2 lb sorghum extract
2 lb rice syrup solids
1 lb D-45 candi syrup
1 lb sweet potato
0.5 lb buckwheat honey

hop schedule (edited 4/19/12)
0.5 oz willamette at 60 min
0.75 oz chinook at 25 min
0.75 oz chinook at 5 min
0.5 oz chinook, dry hop for 5 days at the end of secondary fermetation

Nottingham Ale yeast

Sweet potato should be pureed and step-mashed as describe in http://www.jbc.org/content/44/1/19.full.pdf prior to the boil.

Target OG: 1.067
Target FG: 1.016 (6.8% ABV)
Target IBU: 74.7

I've heard that chinook can be harsh as a bittering hop, so I'm relying on willamette for the 60 min addition and using the chinook for flavor and aroma. I'm intrigued by all the descriptions I've read of chinook's supposed "piney" character, though many years ago when I used to drink Arrogant Bastard, I don't recall noticing any obvious piney notes to it. However, since I'm still learning a lot about hops, I'm wondering if any of y'all have brewed with chinook and if you think my hop schedule is over-doing it (or under-doing it!).

I haven't brewed a lot with chinook, however I just orded a pound from Niko Hops. So that will soon change. Maybe try copying the hopping schedule from Arogant Bastard IPA.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f12/can-you-brew-recipe-stone-arrogant-bastard-176191/

And I'd dry hop to get that lovely aroma going. Obviously adjusting for your brew's gravity.

Definitely gonna dry hop. That AB hop schedule looks intense...not sure I want a 90-minute boil, but maybe I'll bump the IBU's up a bit, and maybe also simplify the additions down to 60, 25, and 5 (and dry-hop), rolling the 20-minute and 15-minute into the 25-minute addition.

Please let me know how you go with those hopping times as I'm looking to do something like this in a few weeks time.

Updated the hop schedule in the OP.

Brewing this as I type! Surprised at how grapefruity the chinook smell...I'm hoping that fades and lets the piney character I've heard so much about come through.

Went into secondary today with a little bit more than 0.5 oz of chinook dry-hops. The hydrometer sample is grapefruity as all get-out. Whoever described chinook as "piney" needs their head examined!

In any case, this is much more bitter than my previous IPA, yet there's an interesting sweetness beneath it (even though it's already at the bottom end of target FG, 1.014). Good, but not great; we'll see how a week of secondary and a few weeks of bottle-conditioning do for it.

Bottled today. FG was 1.010, for a whopping 8% ABV! Taste has mellowed considerably...I'm officially in love with chinook, what a complex hop! Fruit up front, but subsequent tastes bring smoky herbal earthy notes. I'd love to try this hop in a smoked beer...maybe I'll have to fire up the grill and smoke some malted buckwheat? Or perhaps just throw in some smoked black tea.... Anyway, there is no twang to this one, but the body feels a bit light and sweet. Would probably benefit from the addition of some grains, might help add complexity to the malt.

8%? Nice! Looks like you got yourself a "big" beer!

I stove-top roasted my millet for the dunkel and there was a TON of smoke, but it didn't burn. However, I noticed the day I was going to brew, after I had let it sit in a porcelain bowl (no paper bag for wafting), that it smelled a lot like smoke. I'm hoping that flavor got captured in the beer but that may work for you too.

Just popped this recipe into Brewing Assistant on my phone and even with a full ounce of Williamette at the start of the boil I only get an IBU of 43.

Does that sound right?

3 gallon batch!

igliashon said:

3 gallon batch!

Click to expand...

OOoooooo

This is finally carbed, and tasting great! Two non-GF friends have remarked "this doesn't taste gluten-free", and one even compared it to a Lagunitas IPA! I definitely get a bit of Arrogant Bastard, the maltiness is big, round, and a little syrupy (as it should be in an 8% beer). More balanced than the Grapefruit IPA, and better-looking too (because I actually put it through secondary). The malt base was good, definitely a candidate for repeating, but I wish I could have doubled the dry-hops. I also wish I had bittered with something stronger, like Nugget or Columbus, and used the Willamette in tandem with the Chinook for flavor and aroma. Next time I brew this, I will make those changes.

Also, I think the Tinseth formula for IBUs is not working for me, it's giving inaccurately-high results. This is not a 70+ IBU beer, probably more like 50ish. Gonna switch to "Average" in Hopville.

What is your malt base? I don't see any malted grains in your recipe. Is it the sweet potato?

Ha ha, yeah, I used the word "malt" pretty loosely...what's a better word for the mixture of rice extract, sorghum extract, candi syrup, and sweet potato that I used?

igliashon, I have a few questions on the preperation of the sweet potatoes that you used for this recipe.

From the article you posted it seems like they are making a syrup out of them, did you do that ahead of time and then dump that in to the wort at the start of the boil? Or was it more like steeping them and removing the "pulp" and then boiling like any other grain?

Also, how much do you think the recipe would differ without the use of the sweet potatoes? If you were to leave them out what would be a good replacement?

Camnavo19 said:

From the article you posted it seems like they are making a syrup out of them, did you do that ahead of time and then dump that in to the wort at the start of the boil? Or was it more like steeping them and removing the "pulp" and then boiling like any other grain?

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The latter. I'm actually going back to experimenting a bit with sweet potatoes, just because the few beers I brewed with them last year were so good. What I've tried most recently (and what I think might work better than the way I did it in this recipe) is to bake the sweet potatoes at low heat for a long time, wrapped in foil, and then open the wrapping and roast them at high heat to get a little caramelization of the sugars going on. I prepared two potatoes in this way, and both were exuding a sweet syrup by the end of the roasting. I collected the syrup and then chopped up the potatoes and put them in the wort along with the syrup, to steep as the water came to a boil.

Next time, I think I'll roast just like that, but then freeze the potatoes so they're solid enough to chop in a food processor. They were too mushy to chop into anything smaller than big chunks when they were fresh out of the oven.

Also, how much do you think the recipe would differ without the use of the sweet potatoes? If you were to leave them out what would be a good replacement?

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Possibly banana...I want to try roasting bananas as well, probably in their skins, to see what happens. Both sweet potatoes and banana have amylase, but not enough to convert other starches. Butternut squash might also work if you don't want to do sweet potatoes, but I'm not sure if it turns sweet when cooked low the way sweet potatoes do.