13 hop QIPA (AKA Plinyfish Heady 120)

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ianmatth

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After making a starter of some WLP099 Super High Gravity Ale Yeast, I decided it was time to try making something that resembled Dogfish Head 120. However, I used the malt bill of Pliny the Younger and Conan yeast to start it, plus I used some aspects of Pliny and Heady's hop schedule.

1 gallon:

3 lbs 2-row
3 oz CaraPils
1.5 oz C40
Mash at 145* for 75 min
Mash at 155* for 10 min
Sparge at 168*
1 oz Polaris, 1/4 oz CTZ, 1/8 oz each Apollo, Bravo, Warrior, and Millenium @ 120
1 oz CTZ @ 45 (like PTY)
1/2 oz Simcoe @ 30 (like PTY)
Whirlflock @ 15
1 oz mix of Citra, Simcoe, Centennial, El Dorado, Amarillo, Galaxy, and Stella @ 15
3/4 oz mix of Citra, Simcoe, Centennial, El Dorado, Amarillo, Galaxy, and Stella @ 5
1/4 Apollo @ 5 (like Heady)
3/4 oz mix of Citra, Simcoe, Centennial, El Dorado, Amarillo, Galaxy, and Stella @ 0
1/4 CTZ @ 0 (like PTY)
30 minute hop stand
1/2 oz mix of Citra, Simcoe, Centennial, El Dorado, Amarillo, Galaxy, and Stella @ 180* Aroma Steep 30 min (like Heady)

OG is 1.080, and the IBUs calculate to an absolutely massive 1200+. I pitched 70 billion cells of Conan to start things off.
 
I heard Dogfish Head 120 costs $10 per 12oz bottle. Even with an oz for dry hopping the hops cost less than $10. Malt was less than $4, sugar will run less than $3, and yeast was free. I used hop bags so there isn't much hop trub left in the primary. I should end up with at least 8 beers, so that is ~$2 per beer. It probably was overkill with the hops, but since this beer will potentially have twice the ABV of PTY, I wanted it to have twice the hops. I also wanted it to have a ridiculous amount of late addition hops to have that Heady hop burst taste.
 
Smells amazing already. It was fermenting like crazy at 63* 12 hours after pitching the Conan yeast.
 
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I lost much more wort from the boil off (which I expected and accounted for) than to the hops. I had the hops in a hop bag and I squeezed out the bag when I removed it from the wort. The true test will be how much beer I get when I bottle it.
 
True that. The last one gallon big beer I made (Abbey, 1.080 OG) only gave me 7 bottles, the yeast cake was epic. I wished I had another Belgian/Abbey style lined up so I could use it on a full five gallons.
 
Gravity was down to 1.020, so I strained the beer into a gallon jug. I only lost about 1 cup to the trub. It tastes awesome, total fruit bomb. Looking at my WLP099 I didn't think I had 70 billion cells, it was about 10 ml of compacted solid yeast, so I'd say it was ~40 billion cells. I decided to split the batch in half and use about ~40 billion cells of WLP045 Scotch Whisky Yeast on the other half just to see how strong it is. I added 45g of sugar to each half, bringing the gravity up to 1.030.
 
WLP099 was down to 1.021 and WLP045 was down to 1.022. I added 40g sugar to each bringing the gravities up to 1.029 and 1.030. I'm also raising the temperature up to 66* from 63*.
 
Gravity was down to 1.012 so I added 90g of sugar to each and brought the gravity back up to 1.029. So far the OG calculates at 1.123. I'm going for 20% ABV, so as long as the yeast can handle it, I'm going to take it up to 1.150. That would put ABV over 20% (I use the alternate equation since it is more accurate for high ABV beers) as long as I can get FG down to 1.022. I was thinking about trying to push the yeast to it's limit, but I'm not a big fan of the taste of fermented sugar, so I don't want the beer being more sugar than malt. In fact I'm even thinking about adding DME in addition to the sugar next time since going to 1.150 calculated OG with only sugar would put it at 50% attenuated sugar if the sugar attenuates 100% and the malt gets 2 more points of attenuation. 3 more additions should get me there, so I should be able to start dry hopping in a few days.
 
Added 35g DME to each bringing gravities up to 1.028 and 1.029. OG calculates to 1.129.
 
Added 40g DME to each bringing gravities up to 1.030. OG calculates to 1.137.
 
Added 35g DME to each bringing gravities up to 1.029 and 1.030. OG calculates to 1.143.
 
Interested how this will go. 5- 1/2 6oz's of hops in 1 gallon, could be disaster or brilliant. Would be pricey if you were buying 1oz bags, but in bulk there's wiggle room. Would you like some beer with your hops? ;) Glad to see you're step-feeding too, should help the yeast along, also with that target gravity you might consider acclimated champagne yeast for conditioning or uvaferm encapsulated yeast in champagne bottles? Neat little trick is to put stainless steel screen over some encapsulated yeast in those plastic champagne bungs and let them condition on their side, then when they're ready chill them very cold, remove the plastic bungs and cork them properly with cages. I dunno if that's more of an investment than you're willing to make, but it would be awesome, plus, something this strong will need a LOT of age to not taste like straight-up booze.
 
Added 35g sugar to each bringing gravities up to 1.030. OG calculates to 1.150. I'm probably going to check gravity about once a day now. Once it hits 1.022, that will put ABV at ~20%. At that point I'm going to keep bumping the gravities up to 1.025 until the WLP045 slows down because I want to see how much further I can push it.

I tasted a little bit of the WLP099 iteration, a beer like this needs A LOT of hops, and while it may not have been the most efficient use of hops, I didn't use too much. The beer tastes a little sweet, but it hasn't finished attenuating. It also has a lot of fermented sugar alcohol taste so in the future I will probably use DME until it slows down and then switch to sugar. I might also see if dextrose gives a better taste than sucrose. Scottland says you can't bottle condition a beer with this high of an ABV, but I would like to give it a try and maybe champagne yeast or uvaferm could get the job done better than adding a little more WLP099, although I think I can get the WLP099 iteration to carbonate if I don't push it to it's limit.
 
Champagne yeast wont carb the beer I wouldn't think. At that abv I dont think anything would as slow as it has to work.
 
Gravity is down to 1.022, but I decided to not go any further. After reading scottland's DFH 120 clone thread (https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f12/dfh-120-minute-clone-259314/) most people are now trying to get similar recipes down to 1.010 FG as 1.020 doesn't seem dry enough. Also, most people are calculating ABV based on the standard formula (which would currently put my beer at 16.8%). I already took this beer off the main yeast cake before adding the WLP099 and WLP045, and the yeast cakes don't look so bad right now, so I think I'm going to take the temp up from 68* to room temperature (low 70s) and try to get them as dry I can before transferring each iteration to a 1.5 L bottle for dry hopping.

I plan to dry hop with a pellet mix of 12 hops (I'm out of Warrior) for 3-5 days, transfer again and do two 3 day dry hops with Citra, Centennial, Simcoe, and Amarillo leaf, and finish with a final 3-5 day dry hop of Citra leaf. Each dry hop will be 12g in total, so that would be equivalent to 10 oz if 4.5 gallons made it to secondary.

I'm definitely going to try carbonating after that. I might try a few bottles with champagne yeast and a few bottles with WLP099 to see what works better.
 
I started dry hopping the WLP045 iteration a few days ago. Gravity on the WLP099 iteration is down to 1.017 so I'm taking it up to 74* to see if I can get it a few points lower.
 
Gravity on the WLP099 iteration is down to 1.014. It tastes very good. Big hop flavor and not too much alcohol/sugar taste. I gave it one last stir and am probably going to start dry hopping it tomorrow.
 
Started second dry hop on WLP045 with 1/8 oz each Citra and Centennial leaf. Started 12g dry hop pellets mix with WLP099. Gravity is down to 1.012.
 
Started 2nd dry hop on WLP099 with 1/8 oz each Citra and Centennial leaf. Started 3rd and final dry hop on WLP045 with 1/4 oz Citra.
 
Added the 3rd and final dry hop on WLP099 with 1/4 oz Citra. I have some dry champagne yeast and am going to try to start bottle conditioning these in about 3-5 days. My plan is to pitch the whole packet (claims it's good for 5 gallons) into a 160 ml wort with 16g sugar, wait for some active fermentation, and hope it can live through the high ABV long enough to create some carbonation in what I think should be 8 bottles (I drank about a bottle for my tastings, so it looks like I'll get 9 bottles out of my gallon batch).
 
I meant to ask how you were taking gravity readings. Hydrometer in vessel or returning samples? Did you purge the headspace with co2 after or trust that the new activity would take care of it, or maybe just not worry because a blanket of co2 was already there? Just curious for my own future experiments. Fun project so far, hope it finishes nicely for you.
 
I used a hydrometer basing 21+% ABV off the Alternate formula on brewersfriend.com. Standard formula would still put ABV at 18+%. I had to constantly take measurements, so if I hadn't returned the sample, I would have finished the beer before it was ready. I made sure to sanitize every single time, but I don't get crazy about oxidation. It was actively fermenting the whole time it was in primary, so it was constantly blowing CO2 through the airlock. I never let it sit open for any longer than I had to, and in secondary I would give it a little shake after closing it back up and was always able to get a few bubbles from the airlock, so I assume there was still some fermentation and CO2 being produced. Since I plan for my sugar/yeast combo to be active when I bottle I figure it will create enough CO2 to push out any oxygen at that point as well. I also have oxygen absorbing caps.
 
How, if you don't mind my asking, do you think this will bottle condition if at all? I'm not sure with those gravities it's possible in less than a year or more in ideal conditions.
 
No idea, but it's a full packet of champagne yeast and it only has to attenuate 16g of sugar. My assumption is that since it will be active before I pitch it, it will actually convert most of that pretty quickly before the 18-21% ABV environment kills it or significantly slows it down, so I don't think giving it a year vs giving it 6-12 weeks would make a huge difference. I might give it 6 weeks tops, but I really don't think I'm that patient. At the very least I'm sure I'll drink one of the beers after 3 weeks.

I've had plenty of 1.080 OG batches carbonate perfectly in less than a week, although I will say 2 weeks is ideal for most of my 1.060-1.090 batches with my current methods (not sure why, but doing primary fermentation in the kettle drastically improves carbonation time). This beer is twice the ABV, but I used a yeast that can handle twice the ABV of most American yeasts (WLP099 can handle 20+% ABV, and WLP045 can obviously handle it as well), plus I'm pitching a full packet of champagne yeast for ~8 beers.
 
This sounds like a fun experiment. Looking forward to hearing your results. I've been considering doing something either similar to this or the Eisbock method.
 
Bottled the beer tonight. Could have filled 8 bottles, but I would have been slightly under-filling, and I felt the proper fill was extremely important if I wanted them to carbonate. So ultimately I would say I got 9 bottles out of this gallon batch since I drank about a bottle worth throughout all the tastings, I filled 7 bottles of really clear beer tonight, and I put a bit less than a bottle through a coffee filter (the trubbed up part) that I am drinking right now.
 
I've done some high gravity experiments with the WLP099 and it's a champ ABV wise, but the attenuation is low compared to other strains in my experience. I'm interested I. If you get this carbonated. I've had problems with carbonation over 18%. There are some interesting articles on co2 and other gaseous solubility in alcohol solutions over 20%. Took some out of bottles and diluted it down, carved up no problem at about 16%. Interested in what you end up with.
 
I opened a beer today. It had zero carbonation after 3 weeks in the bottle. It tastes great, but it would have definitely needed longer than 3 weeks. I've got 6 bottles left. I'm going to give it another 3 weeks and see if anything happens.
 

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