1.200 20%+ 120 Minute IIPA

[sirsloop]

I suppose there is risk of infection without boiling... there's gonna be like 9-10% alcohol in there when I start adding the dextrose, not to mention a ridiculous amount of yeast. I've added dextrose dry to stuff before and it was fine, although that's not really saying it wont happen.

 

[sirsloop]

When I'm ready to start the dextrose.... do you think I should rack off the US-05, or leave it in there? I don't really see any downside to leaving it in there. I'll be pitching a significant amount of WLP099. They will probably be at about the same overall numbers by the time this happens. When the alcohol gets past like 10-11% the us-05 will go dormant.

 

[PseudoChef]

You do not want to add dry sugar to the fermenter - especially with using WLP099.

Not because of risk of infection, but because introducing all those nucleation sites into the wort/beer will cause excessive foaming. It will disturb all that CO2 in solution (if not degassed) and come spewing at you.

Ask Evan! about this. IIRC, he forgot sugar in his latest IIPA and went to add it later dry and this happened.

 

[rocketman768]

Just a heads up, the corn sugar I use has a potential of 1.040. Beersmith claimed 1.046 but I actually measured 1 lb in 1 gallon to get a more accurate number.

I was also confused by this, and John Palmer's assertion that 1 lb/gal of corn sugar is 46 points. Corn sugar is dextrose MONOHYDRATE, meaning, some of the mass of the sugar is bound water. Expect only 37-42 ppg for corn sugar.

 

[sirsloop]

Interesting... I wonder what the minimum amount of water I can get a half pound of sugar in. Maybe make up a batch of them. Maybe use a cup of water per half pound of sugar. Boil them briefly, cool, put it in sanitzed containers in the fridge and dump them in as needed.

 

[mnadamn]

Not sure how much it'll help. Wine has a lower pH than beer, so degassing would rid some carbonic acid and drop the pH to a range more suitable for the yeast. It can't hurt though, and I have found degassing does help speed up flocculation of the yeast so I have started doing this for low flocc strains...

I dont know if I am correct or not in my reason for degassing, but this is the logic that I had used, I hope this helps and good luck!

For me, I was degassing due to the thickness of the wort. The issue I was having is that the wort would become saturated with co2 and would seem to slow or even stop fermentation. Before we degassed the first time, we gave it a little shake, this nearly forced all of the water out of the airlock. degassing made it obvious that there was a great deal of co2 in solution and after degassing we would have fermentation again (well... vast increase in airlock activity) which seemed to slow as time progressed and saturation increased (about 2 weeks). we degassed every 2 weeks and racked every 3rd time.

The Primary fermentation was strong. I must warn you. when we pitched the wlp099 we lost roughly 1/4 of our wort due to blow off (5 gal brew, 6.5 gal carboy). We used a tube that fit directly in the carboy with no bung or anything (forget the size) and that was fully submerged (1in from the bottom) in an ale pale 2/3 full with a sanitizer/water mix. For the first 2 weeks, This sounded like machine gun fire, smelt and looked like budweiser to the point where the label we used read "so strong, it pisses budweiser". You will lose volume, and it will be loud, plae somewhere in your home that it will not annoy you.

Good luck with your endover it is a fun experiment/process plus you get some bragging rights with it. And please, Do not make the same mistake I did. All my friends wanted to try it, and I let them. Now I have 5 wine bottles left which will not be drank until I get married.

 

[sirsloop]

I'm using an 8 gallon bucket for primary... maybe I'll REALLY boil it hard and get it down to 4.5 gallons so there is some fudge factor for the dextrose additions...

 

[dstar26t]

This first time I added corn sugar to the fermenter, I used 2 cups water for the 1.2 lbs of sugar which is 1 2/3 cups per pound. Probably try 1 1/4 cups per pound next time since it wasn't too thick. I only cooled it to 80 to try and keep it less viscous. The beer was 68.

 

[sirsloop]

OK, so if you figure the ratio could get as low as 1 cup per pound... that will be 12 cups of additional water, or 3/4 gallon. Maybe i'll just take a quarter gallon and mix in 4 pounds of water. I'll use that, then make another quarter gallon. That is unless you think 1 gallon of boiled sugar water will stay in my fridge for two weeks without going icky.

 

[reim0027]

Prosted. This thread is going to be fun to watch. GL with your monster brew man!

 

[Saccharomyces]

How does degassing a beer aid in flocculation and how would you go about doing it?

I use a degassing wand and a drill.

 

[Saccharomyces]

I suppose there is risk of infection without boiling... there's gonna be like 9-10% alcohol in there when I start adding the dextrose, not to mention a ridiculous amount of yeast. I've added dextrose dry to stuff before and it was fine, although that's not really saying it wont happen.

I don't think this is very likely, I would just add it dry like you are doing, and make sure everything that touches the sugar is sanitized. Sugar is hygroscopic so any baddies should have dried out and died. Same principle as pouring salt on a slug...

The nucleation problem seems it could be solved by degassing a bit by stirring before adding the sugar?

 

[PseudoChef]

I don't think this is very likely, I would just add it dry like you are doing, and make sure everything that touches the sugar is sanitized. Sugar is hygroscopic so any baddies should have dried out and died. Same principle as pouring salt on a slug...

Don't add it dry, see my previous post in this thread and/or talk to Evan!

 

[Jonnio]

As far as adding it wet, you can easily just make a simple syrup and add that. You can go as thick as two parts sugar to one part boiling water to start, and then boil however long you want to concentrate it even more.

I also wouldn't worry about infection (look at how many gallons of Apfelwein have been made with no boiling or anything), but the gas might be an issue. If you degass first and then add that might solve it, but I don't know.

 

[sirsloop]

ok, so I guess I should just try to make up like a gallon of sugar water and add in a cup morning and night. I guess im just worried about it being too thick to pour and work with. Either that or I can start adding oxygen with my racking cane/stone setup... and stir the crap outta that. Then add the sugar dry The stirring should break up the loose CO2 in there...

 

[Eastside Brewer]

This is a great thread, I have been wanting to brew a monster like this but I wasn't sure about fermentation. You have a lot of valuable info on the steps required. I am interested in the degassing, I have never heard of this technique, is it simply shaking the fermenter or is there a gadget to purchase?

Please keep us posted on the progress.

Eastside

 

[sirsloop]

well a wine degasser is this wand jobbie with little arms that pivot out when its spun. You simply hook it to a drill and spin away. Its also a handy way to keep the wort spinning while using your immersion chiller!!! I think I'll try stirring with my O2 wand, then sprinkling a little dextrose on there. I realize the risk... i'll do a little bit and see what happens. If it turns out to be a major problem, I'll have to suck it up and make sugar water.

My 1.040 starter brew was mashed earlier.. hit 153F for an hour, sparged, and it turned out to be a tad over. I'll probably end up at around a 1.045. I guess the barley crusher kicks arse when you have room to do a 1.5qt/lbs mash. I'm 45minutes into the boil, about to add whirlfloc and servomyces in. The servomyces it supposed to help with yeast health and increase yeast numbers. I dont see any reason to not use them here... they are like a buck a pill. Pics in a little while once I get through the busy part here at the end (and cleanup).

 

[sirsloop]

Ended up at 1.042 on my starter bitter... I boiled it short a little and ended up putting about 1/3 gallon back in to get it over the 5 gallon line.

 

[sirsloop]

Ehh, not really much to see here. Its a standard all grain batch of beer. I threw in a half pound of rice hulls which REALLY made a difference with sparging. IDk, I may end up making a new 10 gallon cooler. I think it was a real benefit to have the additional headroom to have 1.5qt/lbs, plus extra room on top of that for mash out water. I nailed 80% efficiency, which I think is the highest I've gotten to. Its obvious the thinner mash, and mash out helped my efficiency.

 

[Jif]

Excited to see progress on this one!

 

[jvetter]

I'm making a 120 clone tomorrow (Feb 7th) and will be using similar procedures. My plan is to keep a pitcher and whisk in a bucket of star san. A couple days after pitching I plan to pour some beer off into the pitcher, mix with dextrose using the whisk, and pitch back into the fermentor. I will be doing this twice a day.

The full details of my brew is here.

Will be interested to see how yours turns out.

 

[sirsloop]

hmm... more hops eh? Well.. maybe I'll add an extra ounce of Warrior or something to the sparge as I'm collecting wort... that should help it out a bit...

 

[Danek]

I only just noticed this on your recipe:

"Calories: 1,063 cal/pint".

I applaud you, sir!

 

[Big10Seaner]

Yeah now I'm kind of excited as well- let us know how things begin shaping up!

 

[sirsloop]

Lol... I dunno if you would want to drink an entire pint of this stuff. I figure I drink 4oz a night of this quad I made and its ONLY 11%!! Well.. than again I can drink an entire bottle of commercial stuff. Ehh... 1000 calories per bottle... WHATEVERRRR! LOL!

 

[Jaysus]

This is great!

 

[sirsloop]

~12hours until brew time!!

 

[sirsloop]

After a bunch of talk w/ my homebrew club guys... I decided i'm gonna ante up a couple more ounces of hops to kick this thing in. I figure I'll drop 2oz of summit into the first runnings pre boil, and those hops will go the entire 120 minutes. That should juice up things up quite nicely.

 

[sirsloop]

Mash on!!

I picked up Bobby_M's 48qt cooler yesterday... got my water heated up, milled all 17lbs of grain, preheated the cooler, and mashed in. Its at 150° right now, so I figure over the next two hours it'll drop down a few degrees. I'm getting my hops ready. I'm dropping two ounces of summit into the first runnings, preboil. The rest includes 1.5oz Warrior, 1.5oz Amarillo, and 1.5oz Simcoe. I figure the easiest way to evenly space out the additions is to put all the hops in the blender, then measure out 40 individual cups. One addition every three minutes. I added the summit in there because the commercial stuff is SUPER sweet, and I think it needs a touch more bitterness. I mean I've done 7% brews that included 7oz of simcoe... and we're talkin nearly three times the sugar, and a much higher FG.

Lol... 6.5 gallon bucket for the grain

A *slight* amount of hops

 

[jonp9576]

i am following this brew closely. keep us posted