Two Hours IPA - My Dogfish Head 120 Minute IPA-esque beer

I've been thinking about a Dogfish Head 120 Minute-like beer for awhile. I've finally gotten to a point that my plans have been written up. I've based some research off of the Dogfish Head website, off of the other 120 minute clone recipe .

I'd love to get feedback on this!

Two Hour IPA - A Dogfish Head 120 Minute-esque experiment

Target OG - 1.201 (after invert sugar additions)
Target FG - 1.044
Alcohol by volume - 20.93%
Approximate calories per 12oz - 665.89
Estimated IBUs (Tinseth method) - 120.44

Extract due to grain - 1.137 (78.1%)
Extract due to invert sugar - 1.065 (21.9%)

Grain Bill
Pale malt (2-row; Maris Otter) - 25lbs
Invert sugar - 7lbs

I plan on brewing five gallons of 1.137 wort on the first day. I will pitch a large amount of WY1056, a third generation cake. I plan on oxygenating for five days using my pure O2 setup. Each day, a gravity reading will be taken to ensure that active fermentation is still taking place to dimish the small chance of any oxidation. I will also be using 7 lbs of table sugar. The table sugar will be inverted by making a syrup solution, adding citric acid powder at a rate of 1 gram/2 lbs of sugar. The syrup will be heated to at least 270F on the stovetop. This will be pressure canned in pint-sized cans. A can will be added once a day until the gravity points begin to stay stagnant. Hopefully I'll get to utilize all of the cans. When the WY1056 begins to slow, I will pitch WL099 Super High Gravity Yeast. I expect that the WY1056 will ferment up to approximately 10-11%abv per Wyeast. A large starter (2+ gallons will be prepared for the WL099 strain). My goal is to keep to adjuncts (sugar) under 20% of the total extract. Who knows, maybe Beano will make an appearance.

Hop Information
3oz of Columbus (14%aa) will be used for dry hopping. Equal amounts will be spread over three weeks starting when the beer is added to secondary. After a few weeks on the dry hops, the beer will be racked to tertiary for bulk aging.

I apologize in advance for the bad formatting of the hop additions.

OK, its now official, you are completely insane. Thats one heck of a recipe, I'd be interested in trying that even though I am not a hop head.

You know I will want to be around when this thing makes it's debut...

Everything looks solid to me. I am glad you are finding a use for those 21% AA Columbus. Put me on the list of "can't wait to try it".

I'm looking forward to this brewday. I'll make sure to post in advance when it will be and we can grill out/brew over at my place. It will need to be at least two weeks, possibly three.

This demands pictures. Please take pictures of your brew day.

Just when I'm starting to get some confidence I happen upon one of these threads.

A couple of updates and clarifications:

Yeast nutrient will be added to secondary when the WLP099 is pitched.
The grain bill will be 50% MO and 50% pilsner. DFH apparently uses a lot of pilsner malt, but you can't beat the "maltyness" of MO

This is ridiculous; when are you planning on beginning this project?

I would like to see how this one turns out as well.

I need to build up my WY1056 slurry first. My tentative plan was to begin this on 2/7 or 2/14, but a couple of work trips have popped up. I'm now thinking the first Saturday in March might be a good option.

Cojones. This guy's got more Balls than Obama on inauguration night.

I love that it has as many calories as a filling lunch and more IBUs than a normal human can taste.

This is going to be superb. If this turns out, us North ATL brewers should all pitch in and do a larger batch.

I'm planning a very similar 120 min clone on Feb 7th. I can't decide whether I want to pitch the 099 yeast at the start of fermentation or a few days in as you have suggested. Seems to me pitching later in the fermentation is probably not a good idea because of all the existing alcohol.

Do you understand how the homebrew chef guy did it? It wasn't clear to me which yeast was pitched when and why.

Other than that I plan to use some of my nugget in the hopback and reduce some of the dry hopping.

I wouldn't start with the WLP099, it isn't known to have a good flavor profile... Provided you have enough cell count (i.e. HUGE starter) and add nutrients when pitching the WLP099, there shouldn't be an issue with alcohol in the least.

I'm really looking forward to doing this within the next month. Let me know how yours goes.

Yea, I'm basically coming to the same conclusion. Guess I will start with the California yeast and pitch the WLP099 in 5 days or so.

As for the starter, I figured I would do a 2-3 vial 5 liter starter. I also plan to pitch a little nutrient every oxygenation, so hopefully all will be well.

Your technique sounds good, but I don't plan on using 2-3 vials. Instead, I'm starting with a 2000 mL starter on the stir plate and stepping up to something like 2-3 gallons (or possibly even a 5 gallon batch), thoroughly oxygenated of course.

notwoohoo said:

I will also be using 7 lbs of table sugar. The table sugar will be inverted by making a syrup solution, adding citric acid powder at a rate of 1 gram/2 lbs of sugar. The syrup will be heated to at least 270F on the stovetop. This will be pressure canned in pint-sized cans. A can will be added once a day until the gravity points begin to stay stagnant. Hopefully I'll get to utilize all of the cans.

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If you get to 270 you'll be in soft-crack stage, which basically means you've gone beyond a syrup and it will harden when you cool it. I did this with my 999 barleywine and when I was ready to use the sugar I just put the pieces of it in a couple cups of water and brought that back to a boil to kill any bacteria, then I cooled it down and pitched it into the wort. You may need to take into account the extra volume of your sugar additions in your final volume/alcohol content calculations.

Edit: Soft crack means it will be like salt-water taffy, not actually brittle and hard like the invert candi sugar I made (I made it amber instead of clear)

Good call, I'm looking more for a syrup... I'll probably heat to 270F, cut down with H2O to make a thick syrup. Then I will can it up...

Ok, here are the final plans. The brewday has been set for 2/7 and I'm about to order the last of my ingredients from Brewmasters Warehouse.

A big thanks to everyone that provided ideas and feedback, it was quite helpful. I'll try to take pictures of this event.

Two Hour IPA - A Dogfish Head 120 Minute-esque experiment

Target OG - 1.201 (after invert sugar additions)
Target FG - 1.044
Alcohol by volume - 20.93%
Approximate calories per 12oz - 665.89
Estimated IBUs (Tinseth method) - 120.44

Extract due to grain - 1.137 (78.1%)
Extract due to invert sugar - 1.065 (21.9%)

Grain Bill
Pale malt (2-row; Maris Otter) - 12.5lbs
Pilsner - 12.5lbs
Invert sugar (syrup) - 7lbs

I plan on brewing about five gallons of 1.137 wort on the first day. My target amount will depend on the volume of the pre-canned invert sugar solution that I will make prior to brewday. I'll be mashing in the low range to allow for as much fermentability as possible. I will pitch a large amount of WY1056. I plan on oxygenating for five days using my pure O2 setup. Each day, a gravity reading will be taken to ensure that active fermentation is still taking place to diminish the small chance of any oxidation. I will also be using 7 lbs of table sugar. The table sugar will be inverted by making a syrup solution, adding citric acid powder at a rate of 1 gram/2 lbs of sugar. The syrup will be heated to at least 240F on the stovetop. This will be pressure canned in pint-sized cans. A can will be added once a day until the gravity points begin to stay stagnant. Hopefully I'll get to utilize all of the cans. When the WY1056 begins to slow (published alcohol tolerance of 10%, I've gotten up to 11%), I will pitch WL715 Champagne Yeast in the primary (published alcohol tolerance of 17%abv). Afterwards, I'll pitch WL099 Super High Gravity Yeast (up to 21%, hopefully!). I'm trying to avoid the flavor profile of WLP099 as much as possible. When adding a new yeast strain, nutrients will be added as well. Large (3 gallon) starters will be made for the WLP715 and the WLP099. My goal is to keep to adjuncts (sugar) under 20% of the total extract.

The hop schedule is the same as posted before.

Hop Information
3oz of Columbus (14%aa) will be used for dry hopping. Equal amounts will be spread over three weeks starting when the beer is added to tertiary (off of the WLP099 cake, if I do end up pitching it in secondary). After a few weeks on the dry hops, the beer will be racked to a corney, stored at cellar temp (in GA), for a period of bulk aging.

I apologize in advance for the bad formatting of the hop additions.

If anyone in the north Atlanta area wants to participate in the brewday, feel free to shoot me a PM!

That recipe is pure GONZO! You should really consider buying one of those old football games that VIBRATE which causes the players to move around and use it to deliver your hops to your BK. NFL Electric Vibrating Football Tabletop Game NEW - eBay (item 230321436597 end time Jan-30-09 21:41:52 PST) I was watching some movie(American beer I think) and they interview the guy from DFH and apparently that's how they did it. :fro:

I would love to see some pics of your brew day as I am sure the brewing gods highly approve of this project.

Sweet, another one. Good to see folks besides me have caught the big beer bug, because I'm itchin' to brew something similar too. Though, I'm planning to do a measly 2.5 gallons at 17% and boost it to 20% by adding booze.

Jesus...

...regarding dry-hopping, I haven't done much of it myself, but I've heard that if one leaves the same hops exposed to the beer for more than a week, it starts tasting grassy.

Just some food for thought -- but you obvious have your shiz together if you're doing something like this.

Saccharomyces said:

Sweet, another one. Good to see folks besides me have caught the big beer bug, because I'm itchin' to brew something similar too. Though, I'm planning to do a measly 2.5 gallons at 17% and boost it to 20% by adding booze.

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What yeast strain are you going to use for your monster?

Pelikan said:

Jesus...

...regarding dry-hopping, I haven't done much of it myself, but I've heard that if one leaves the same hops exposed to the beer for more than a week, it starts tasting grassy.

Just some food for thought -- but you obvious have your shiz together if you're doing something like this.

Click to expand...

I've dry hopped in a keg for six weeks without any grassy effect. I'd imagine this would depend on the quality of the hops used. The pellets that I have for this are really fresh. I do plan on dry hopping for a limited amount of time, say four-six weeks. I typically dry hop with whole hops, but I want to experiment with pellet dry hopping.

You stole my date! I will be brewing the same beer (120 min IPA clone) on the same day (Feb 7th). My recipe is closer to the procedure defined in zymurgy and by the homebrewchef.

10 Gallon Batch. Calling it a "Double Quad IPA"
Ingredients:

• 32 lbs - Briess 2-row brewers malt
• 2 lbs - Amber malt
• 3 oz - Amarillo Pellets (Continuously hopped for 120 mins)
• 3 oz - Warrier Pellets (Continuously hopped for 120 mins)
• 3 oz - Simco Pellots (Continuously hopped for 120 mins)
• 3 oz - Nugget Leaf (Hopback)
• 1 oz - Amarillo Leaf (Dry Hop)
• 1 oz - Simcoe Leaf (Dry Hop)
• 1 oz - Glacier Leaf (Dry Hop)
• 1 oz - Palisade Leaf (Dry Hop)
• 2 vial - WLP001 California Ale (5 liter starter, pitched first)
• 3 vial - WLP099 Super High Gravity (5 liter starter, pitched on day 3-5)
• 20 lbs - Dextrose (added during primary fermentation)

Brew Procedure:

• Dough-in at 140 F. Rest 60 minutes
• Raise to 150 F. Rest 30 minutes
• Raise to 168 F for mash out
• Continuous sparge for 60 minutes. Collect 14 gallons.
• Boil for 120 mins. Add hops every 2 minutes from pre-measured amount
• Pull hot wort from boil to 5 liter flask. Cool with filtered water to a specific gravity of 1.040. Chill to 70 degrees F if needed and pitch the WLP099. This is for the second starter.
• Transfer boil through hopback while chilling. Chill to 65-68 degrees.
• Pitch decanted 5 liter starter of WLP001 California Ale Yeast
• Store and set ETC to 68 F.

Fermentation Management:

• Wait until fermentation has fully started (2-4 bubble /second). Max of 2 days.
• Every morning and evening, pour off wort from fermentor, mix it with 10-12 oz of dextrose, add nutrients, and pitch back into fermentor.
• Oxygenate every evening for 30-45 seconds
• After 3-5 days, pitch second starter with the WLP099 high gravity yeast.
• Continue sugar additions until fermentation slows

Couple of notes.

• I'm doing the second starter with the WLP099 using wort from the actual brew so that the whole thing can be pitched back into the fermentor (no decanting). Plus this should train the yeast a little to be better suited to its soon to be home.
• Considered making a hopper from a drill with a speed dial and auger but decided I didn't have time. So I'm going to pre-measure out 60 additions and add every 2 minutes.
• May add additional bittering hops at 60 mins. One of the complains the guy brewing with me has with 120 is its not bitter enough. Most likely this isn't going to make a difference due to the high final gravity, but still considering it.

I will extend the same courtesy as notwoohoo, if any one in the Baltimore/Washington Maryland area wants to come for the brew let me know. I live west of Baltimore.

Should be a fun one. I'll post details after the brew

Very cool, sounds like it will be a fun brewday! I'm not all that sure that adding more bittering hops at 60mins will be beneficial as the hop utilization of a wort of such high gravity will be really low. Maybe you could make a hop tea on the side in 5L of water, boiling ~60 minutes. Then when you pull the 5L of wort for the WLP099 starter, you can add the hop tea to bump up the IBUs a bit (though we really are bumping up to the theoretical max for human perception )

notwoohoo said:

I've dry hopped in a keg for six weeks without any grassy effect. I'd imagine this would depend on the quality of the hops used. The pellets that I have for this are really fresh. I do plan on dry hopping for a limited amount of time, say four-six weeks. I typically dry hop with whole hops, but I want to experiment with pellet dry hopping.

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I generally use the best/freshest leaf hops I can get. That said, I'm just repeating what was told to me by Yooper and others. I just mentioned it because it would suck (big time) to put in all that effort and get what they call a "lawnmower" beer. You might want to drop one of the more experienced members a PM about this, for the sake of clarity (again, I'm just repeating and could have my facts confused).

Good luck with this one though. You have to let us know how it comes out.

jvetter said:

[*] Every morning and evening, pour off wort from fermentor, mix it with 10-12 oz of dextrose, add nutrients, and pitch back into fermentor.

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Ouch! No pain, no gain I suppose.

FYI, DFH is oaking the 120 these days. It's a nice addition.

adamjab19 said:

Ouch! No pain, no gain I suppose.

Click to expand...

Pretty much. The smaller and continuous the additions the better. Should only take 5 minutes at most, but it will be worth it

dstar26t said:

FYI, DFH is oaking the 120 these days. It's a nice addition.

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I agree. The oak aging cuts some of the sweetness a little. If I had a barrel I would age it, but don't think I want add chips my first time around.

I have some Hungarian oak cubes (medium toast) that I've been aging in knob creek bourbon for awhile (since 10/7/2005 ). Maybe this is finally the beer that I use them for...

I've begun preparations for this beer today by making and pressure canning the sugar syrup for incremental addition in the primary fermenter. I'm planning on taking pictures throughout this to document the brew.

7lbs of sugar, 3.5g of citric acid, and water up to a volume of 6.5qts


Can't make beer without drinking beer (pale ale)


Back to work, preparing the pint jars for use


Loading up the pressure cooker (thanks to nealf for letting me use the cooker!)

More...

Thirsty again (house stout )


Finally, pressure canning is a go


All in all, I collected 6.5qts of this syrup. The cans are cooling and will be stored at room temperature until I use them in the next several weeks.

Man, that pressure cooker is old-school. Glad it worked for you!!

So the brewday is upon me! I'm going to continue to take pictures to document. I'll begin heating the strike water in about 20 minutes.

The finished sugar syrup solution


Cracking open a new bag of 2-row (used 12.5lbs of this and 12.5lbs of pilsner for the bill)


The grain bill weighed out and waiting for the Crankenstein


The grist, which barely fits into my old fermenting bucket

And now I turn my attention to the hops...

The schedule and packaged hops from the freezer


Beginning the weighing process


The finished additions - 24 in all. It smells quite good

lookin good so far

I'm excited to keep tabs on this today...and for the next several months.

jvetter said:

[*]2 vial - WLP001 California Ale (5 liter starter, pitched first)
[*]3 vial - WLP099 Super High Gravity (5 liter starter, pitched on day 3-5)
[*]20 lbs - Dextrose (added during primary fermentation)

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unreal....

5 vials and 20# dex?

save a bottle for me brah...

So far my Feb 7 120 clone brew has turned out very well. I've been adding more dextrose at each addition than anticipated because the yeast is working so efficiently. Its like in a permanent state of high krausen. I let the California ale yeast do its thing till the beer was around 11% with a remaining gravity of 1.032. Currently I have estimated the ABV at 16.6% after 17lbs of dextrose. Shouldn't be long till this sucker is done primary. Then I can do some dry hopping . Oh forgot to mention, I did 60 additions during the boil and added some extra centennial at 60 mins.

For details check out my blog:

• Original Plan: has description of brew similar to whats in this thread
• Brew Postmortem: results of the brew. What went good and bad.
• Progress: record of the brew and fermentation additions.

Also, I have a few pictures from the brew here.

I just recently found that the values in BeerToolsPro for dextrose were a bit low. It shows dextrose as having a 1.038 sg /lb/gal, which is around 83% extract. After doing my own test with the hydrometer, I found out that its more like 1.044-1.045 sg, which is 98% extract. I adjusted my ABV calculations based on 1.045 sg, but may adjust again for the lower 1.044.