I've been working on variations of Ghostfish Brewing's Grapefruit IPA since Igs first published his blog post in Jan 2014. I've since moved to All Grain in the process and here's what I did a week or so ago.
The recipe: https://www.brewtoad.com/recipes/grapefruit-ipa-v5
11.0 lb Pale Millet Malt
3.0 lb Light Roasted Millet Malt
1.5 lb Crystal Millet Malt
1.5 lb Vienna Millet Malt
1.0 lb Buckwheat Groats (Bob's Red Mill)
Hops
Amount Hop Time Use Form AA
1.0 oz CTZ 60 min Boil Pellet 13.2%
1.0 oz Cascade (US) 15 min Boil Pellet 4.5%
1.0 oz Centennial 10 min Boil Pellet 10.5%
0.5 oz Cascade (US) 5 min Boil Pellet 4.5%
2.0 oz Falconers 7C's 5 days Dry Hop Pellet 11.0%
I did a 2.5 hour mash in the mid-150Fs with Termamyl amylase. Temps jumped around a bit however... I use a 10 gal Igloo with a BIAB setup and I really had a hard time keeping the temps up so I was adding boiling water at times, increasing the water to grist ratio higher than I would have liked. I had a SG of around 1.056-57.
Some takeaways:
-My new hop spider really reduced the amount of trub in the kettle making transfer a lot cleaner and probably saving me some wort due to less waste at the bottom. The GF batches are very sludgy as is, no need to add more hops to the sludge!
-My efficiency leaves much to be desired. I will attempt a step (down) mash of 170F for 60 mins then drop the temps to 152F and add my enzymes then and rest for 1-2 hours. Thanks to "Glutarded Chris" for his x-beeriment in this area.
-The buckwheat really seems to have been a major improvement. The body of the beer is getting better (not as thin) and the head retension is much much improved! See picture attached. All my previous batches were very thin and the head basically went poof! within minutes and 5 minutes later you're looking at what appears to be flat beer (plenty of carbonation, just no lasting head).
-In an effort to stop fermentation early around 1.018, I racked from primary directly into a CO1 primed corny keg then cold crashed in the fridge with my Falconers Flight dry hops dropped in (I used a hop sock for this). I wanted to stop fermentation early because the US-05 really over attenuates and I wanted a higher FG than US-05 typically allows. The nice thing about the corny keg over a secondary fermenter with an airlock is that there's no starsan sucked into the batch. I also reduce o2 to nearly nil with the CO2 primed keg. I also have one less vessel to clean and one less transfer to do (secondary to keg). This may be a normal step in my process from now on.
Where are we now?
The beer needs another few days of carbing then it needs to age about a week but I pulled a sample today and its already tasting pretty good. There's a creamy aspect to the taste that I think is the buckwheat. I like it a lot and I think the next batch will be the same recipe, but I will just do a step mash that seems to hold promise for better efficiency. After that I will attempt a darker beer.
The recipe: https://www.brewtoad.com/recipes/grapefruit-ipa-v5
11.0 lb Pale Millet Malt
3.0 lb Light Roasted Millet Malt
1.5 lb Crystal Millet Malt
1.5 lb Vienna Millet Malt
1.0 lb Buckwheat Groats (Bob's Red Mill)
Hops
Amount Hop Time Use Form AA
1.0 oz CTZ 60 min Boil Pellet 13.2%
1.0 oz Cascade (US) 15 min Boil Pellet 4.5%
1.0 oz Centennial 10 min Boil Pellet 10.5%
0.5 oz Cascade (US) 5 min Boil Pellet 4.5%
2.0 oz Falconers 7C's 5 days Dry Hop Pellet 11.0%
I did a 2.5 hour mash in the mid-150Fs with Termamyl amylase. Temps jumped around a bit however... I use a 10 gal Igloo with a BIAB setup and I really had a hard time keeping the temps up so I was adding boiling water at times, increasing the water to grist ratio higher than I would have liked. I had a SG of around 1.056-57.
Some takeaways:
-My new hop spider really reduced the amount of trub in the kettle making transfer a lot cleaner and probably saving me some wort due to less waste at the bottom. The GF batches are very sludgy as is, no need to add more hops to the sludge!
-My efficiency leaves much to be desired. I will attempt a step (down) mash of 170F for 60 mins then drop the temps to 152F and add my enzymes then and rest for 1-2 hours. Thanks to "Glutarded Chris" for his x-beeriment in this area.
-The buckwheat really seems to have been a major improvement. The body of the beer is getting better (not as thin) and the head retension is much much improved! See picture attached. All my previous batches were very thin and the head basically went poof! within minutes and 5 minutes later you're looking at what appears to be flat beer (plenty of carbonation, just no lasting head).
-In an effort to stop fermentation early around 1.018, I racked from primary directly into a CO1 primed corny keg then cold crashed in the fridge with my Falconers Flight dry hops dropped in (I used a hop sock for this). I wanted to stop fermentation early because the US-05 really over attenuates and I wanted a higher FG than US-05 typically allows. The nice thing about the corny keg over a secondary fermenter with an airlock is that there's no starsan sucked into the batch. I also reduce o2 to nearly nil with the CO2 primed keg. I also have one less vessel to clean and one less transfer to do (secondary to keg). This may be a normal step in my process from now on.
Where are we now?
The beer needs another few days of carbing then it needs to age about a week but I pulled a sample today and its already tasting pretty good. There's a creamy aspect to the taste that I think is the buckwheat. I like it a lot and I think the next batch will be the same recipe, but I will just do a step mash that seems to hold promise for better efficiency. After that I will attempt a darker beer.
