Haven't posted in a while, brewing this today

Hey all - I haven't posted in a long LONG time so I figured it was time to get back on. Here's what I'm brewing today:

Fruit Salad IIPA (~5.5 gallon batch)
(My efficiency has sucked lately and this is no exception, only got 68%)

Mashed with a 1.25 qt/1 lb ratio for 90 minutes, collected about 8.5 gallons. Started mash at 151 and dropped to 149 by end.
15 1/2 lb Briess Two Row
3/4 lb Special Roast
1 1/2 lb sugar

1 1/2 oz Calypso (17% AA) @ 60 minutes
2 oz Belma (10.9%) @ 5 minutes
1 oz Citra (12.9%) @ 5 minutes
2 oz Chinook (12.4%) @ whirlpool
2 oz Mosaic (11.5%) @ whirlpool
1 oz Citra @ whirlpool
1/2 oz Chinook @ hopback
1/2 oz Mosaic @ hopback
1/2 oz Citra @ hopback
1 oz Chinook DH in primary
1 oz Mosaic DH in secondary
1 oz Citra DH in secondary

Pitching 2 packs of S-04

This is NOT a tested recipe so I'm not guaranteeing anything if anyone sees this and tries it, but I figured I'd share.

All these hops sitting out in the kitchen right now makes the house smell like melon, stone fruit, berries...and cat pee

Sounds nice! Good luck with your brew & welcome back to the community!

Remember not to forget to post tasting notes.

Singletrack said:

Remember not to forget to post tasting notes.

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I will certainly do that. I've been trying to hit on a good IIPA recipe for a while and I just haven't quite gotten there.

The last two home brewed IIPAs I tasted were hot. I admit one of those was mine. (Damn, that hurt.) Keep fermentation temps under control. In my case that meant ramping up later then usual. I don't use S-04, so maybe this isn't a problem for your beer, but...

Singletrack said:

The last two home brewed IIPAs I tasted were hot. I admit one of those was mine. (Damn, that hurt.) Keep fermentation temps under control. In my case that meant ramping up later then usual. I don't use S-04, so maybe this isn't a problem for your beer, but...

Click to expand...

Fermentation temps are always a concern...I use a swamp cooler/frozen bottles in the water to keep things cool. The first couple days of fermentation involve a LOT of swapping out bottles and ice packs to keep the thing cool. Thing is, I've found of all dry yeasts S-04 is the WORST when it gets too warm, but if you can keep it cool enough (63-65 in my experience) it's a great yeast that quickly drops clear, whereas US-05 seems to hang around and leave things "yeasty" for a long time (not just in appearance, but even flavor as well). The IPA I'm drinking right now still has a bit of US-05 suspended in it after a couple weeks in the keg - otherwise I'd have gone with it.

If aging for a couple months it's not an issue as it will finally drop clear but obviously, you don't want to age an IPA/IIPA that long.

If anyone's following this...an update - I've been trying to be more patient with my beers lately as I definitely can tell an improvement when I leave them go over a month, rather than kegging them within 2 weeks. This just went to "secondary" tonight. I decided to up my original dry hop schedule - the primary had 2 oz of Chinook for a week, and the 2nd dry hop is 1 1/2 oz each of Citra and Mosaic. (So rather than 3 oz total of dry hop, it's 5 oz...and I finally hit the 1 pound of hops in a 5 gallon batch mark too!) I put secondary in quotes as the plan is 5-7 days only in the secondary before racking to the keg - I think most people if they use a secondary will go at least as long in the secondary as the primary and this won't be nearly that.

Notes at this point - success in the temperature management department as it doesn't have a "hot" taste or weird esters (which I've definitely had with S-04 before...I love this yeast but it just plain gets nasty when it hits high 60s early). The sugar feeding in primary would bring my "original" gravity to 1.079 which was a bit below where I originally wanted it...but I'm glad that's all the higher it was, as between mashing pretty low, no crystal malts, a substantial sugar feeding, warming the ferment after a week or so, and shaking the fermenter a few times to keep the yeast going...it's at 1.009 now. I'm amazed that S-04 knocked this down that far - it's solidly over 9% ABV! 88% apparent attenuation on S-04 - does that sound out of the ordinary? I did pitch two packs so there was plenty of yeast. Regardless, at this point the only complaint I'd have is that it just doesn't seem to have enough hop flavor/aroma. This is something that I've got to figure out as it's driving me nuts. Hopefully the 2nd dry hop will kick it up closer to where I want. My Citra smelled like straight cat pee when I opened the bag this evening...as one who has cats, I can't believe how much I love that when it hits me in hops, but I do!