DFH 120 IPA clone

[tyzippers]

I stopped at 14.87% ABV cause I bottle. When I do this again I'm going to18% ABV. I can carbonate that high with champagne yeast added at bottling with confidence. My beer was fully carbed at 3 weeks. So next time I'm going all the way to make the exact clone.

Out of curiosity, why did the fact that you bottle play into your decision to stop at ~15%?

 

[hopcop]

At the time I didn't see any positive results with bottle conditioning anything higher than 15% ABV. Plus never using champagne yeast and never had a beer with this much alcohol I didn't want to mess up and not have it carb. I talked with my LHBS and they told me it would be good to not go any higher than 15%. So after doing it and had great success, I will without a doubt go for the 18% ABV that the real 120 is. It was really a lack of experience with techniques and being overly cautious on a brew that cost me almost $100.

 

[tyzippers]

Fair enough! Does DFH use champagne yeast to bottle those beauties or do they force carb? The only time I had a 120 was at my brother's house and we had already had a full day of beer tasting...get me? So I don't remember if there was yeast in the bottle. I've got one in my cellar, but I don't want to open it just to find out.

 

[hopcop]

Fair enough! Does DFH use champagne yeast to bottle those beauties or do they force carb? The only time I had a 120 was at my brother's house and we had already had a full day of beer tasting...get me? So I don't remember if there was yeast in the bottle. I've got one in my cellar, but I don't want to open it just to find out.

I've never seen any dregs in the bottom of a 120 or any of there ales. I did however see some in the Theobroma. That beer was really good. I have a few 120 still in my basement from 2010-2011. I have a few Old School Barleywines from 2011 too. I'm pretty lucky to have some great craft brew stores in my area that can get a ton of beers most regions can't. We get every bottled brew from DFH.

Cheers

 

[sccrgolee]

so i decided to stop adding sugar. i will continue to nurse this beer and finish it out, but i think i've gathered the data that i needed for my eventual 5 gallon 120 clone. i only reached like 12% but i knew that i was missing about 0.050 worth of gravity from the grains (see previous posts). i know what i need to do to fix that in the future.

i've learned some good stuff from this experiment that will make the next time much smoother.

i posted a few more pics of my methods below. i had a bucket filled with sanitizer that i kept the stainless spoon and stainless bowl in when not in use. i would basically open the lid to the fermenter, spoon out some wort into the stainless bowl, mix in the sugar and dump it back. you can see the other pics where the wort is clear when i take the lid off, but foams up pretty big when i dump the sugar in. before adding the sugar i would take my gravity reading. as mentioned before, i need to actually use a hydrometer instead of a refractometer because my readings will be off. still haven't come up with a good way to do that without losing a lot of thieves worth of wort.

the last pic is bread my wife and i made form using the spent grains. it didn't turn out very well. i think we need a better recipe. lol.

i will continue to post my procedures on dry hopping and the kegging/beer gunning into bottles for aging.

 

[tyzippers]

as mentioned before, i need to actually use a hydrometer instead of a refractometer because my readings will be off. still haven't come up with a good way to do that without losing a lot of thieves worth of wort.

Definitely a +1 to the hydrometer! If you're super careful about sanitizing your thief, you can always return the wort back to the fermenter. Not to mention, when the alcohol starts to creep up there, I've always operated under the impression that the environment in the wort at that point is uninhabitable to the nasties that would cause infection. I'm not suggesting that sanitation is not needed, but I worry less about infections with high ABV brews once the yeast had produced a great deal of the alcohol. I would be willing to guess that oxygenation would be more of a concern, though since fermentation is still taking place, the oxygen will be taken care of by the yeast. So, I guess, since I'm rambling, take what I say with a grain of salt, but I've only had one infected beer out of about 100 brews (I've lost track at this point) and that was because I waited two days to pitch my yeast after the boil. (Unintentionally, before anyone crucifies me )

 

[day_trippr]

[...]before adding the sugar i would take my gravity reading. as mentioned before, i need to actually use a hydrometer instead of a refractometer because my readings will be off. still haven't come up with a good way to do that without losing a lot of thieves worth of wort.[...]

I've been doing something very similar to your "science project" and in similar fashion. I sanitize a half gallon glass pitcher and my hydrometer and sample tube, draw the hydro sample and get the reading, pour that quietly into the pitcher, draw more beer to add to the pitcher, then mix in the sugar before pouring it all back into the fermenter.

I started this thing with a 92 point batch with enough US-05 to get down to around 10 points before starting the sugar program - which it did - and keeps going back to: as of this morning the adjusted OG is up to 1.135 and the current SG has slid right back down to 1.010 - for an ABV up around 16.4%.

I had no idea US-05 could hang in there that long, and I had planned on adding WLP099 right about now, but now I want to see how far I can push the US-05!

fwiw, I've had this batch on really tight temperature control from the jump, and the taste samples have been remarkably smooth so far. If I had any sense I'd probably call this "done", but as I actually have plenty of beer on tap again and lots in the pipeline, I can play with this thing to see where it goes...for science!

Cheers!

 

[sccrgolee]

both great ideas on hydrometer usage...

i AM enjoying the playing around with this beer. i've never really done this before and i'm learning a lot. thanks for the input guys!

it'll be pretty quiet for a week or so. the next thing in line is to rack it to a secondary. i think i'll do that next weekend. from there, my next challenge is to dry hop (something i've never done).

see you all in a week!

 

[hunter_le five]

Awesome thread. Subscribed. Can't wait to see the end result.

 

[GoodDogBadDog]

Subscribed. Going to read through this thread a bit later.

 

[JordanKnudson]

Very interesting thread, can't wait to hear the rest!

 

[kcmobrewer]

I did scottland's recipe a while back, turned out great. I will tell you, from personal experience, this beer will not bottle carb. Or if it will it'll take a very long time, I'm at 6 months with not a single bubble. Everything else turned out perfect, loved the taste, just shoulda waited until I could have kegged it. Gonna do it again soon, so I can force carbs it and then let it age in the bottle knowing it's carbed.

Also, when in secondary, let it sit for at least a couple months to let the alcohol mellow out. After it's conditioned bit start dry hopping per your schedule prior to bottling. If you do decide to bottle carb still I wish you the best of luck of course .

DFH definitely force carbs this ,and I believe most of the rest of their beer. I've only seen a few naturally carbed, and it's stated right on the bottle, ex. 75 min.