DFH 90 Minute IPA Question

[mroberts1204]

I absolutely love the 90 minute ipa and want to brew up the clone but I know it is a step mash from 122 to 149 or something like that. Is this necessary or can I do a single infusion? Thanks!

 

[Oldsock]

I doubt DFH does a step mash for a beer that is mostly pale malt, and according to the guy giving the tour at their brewery most of their beers are mashed ~158 (which explains the huge residual sweetness of the 90 min).

 

[Hotspur]

I did this a while back, and just hooked up the keg about a week ago. I did follow the step mash, and it tastes amazing! SO GOOD. I know it's more work, but it works, and for the materials cost, I'd do it the way it says, at least the first time. (.75oz every 7.5 minutes over 90 minutes is a LOT).

 

[mroberts1204]

Well this is the clone:

5 gal
OG 1.088 FG 1.021
IBU 90 SRM 13 ABV 8.7%

16.5 lbs Pilsner Malt
1.66 amber malt

2.00 oz Amarillo 8% AA 90 - 0 minutes
.62 oz Simcoe 10% AA 90 - 0 minutes
.53 oz Warrior 15% AA 90 - 0 minutes
1.00 oz Amarillo Dry
.50 oz Simcoe Dry
.50 oz Warrior Dry

Irish moss
Wyeast 1099 (Whitbread)

Mash @ 122F then raise to 149F until conversion is complete.
Boil wort for 105 Minutes
With 90 minutes left to the boil slowely and evenly start adding hops. (Works out to .25 oz every 7.5 minutes)

Now I suppose I'm still an AG newbie so my question is...if I am using a rubbermaid cooler as an MLT, is this possible? It seems that to raise the mash temp from 122F to 149F I would need to either mash in initially with less water or sparge with less. Which is the preferable method? Anybody know which mash profile I should use in Beer Smith? Thanks!!

 

[mroberts1204]

I just copied and pasted this recipe from another thread...is the hop schedule wrong?? Hotspur: you are saying .75 oz. every 7.5 minutes while mine claims .25 oz. Just a hunch but .25 oz. kinda seems like too little but I'm not sure.

 

[Hotspur]

I did .25 oz of each Amarillo, Simcoe and Warrior every 7.5 minutes for the 90 minute boil. I forget which posting I saw the .25oz each in, I think it was on here somewhere. Just doing .25oz total every 7.5 minutes really doesn't seem enough, and having tasted it with the .75oz combo every 7.5min, I think it's the right way to go.

I have a 10gallon Home Depot round cooler, and mashed in to rest at 122, then raised the temp to 149. Basically, you start with a thicker mash, and add water to raise the temp, and it thins out the mash in the process.

I had a LOT of sparge water though, because I did the math wrong. So, I ended up with 10gal pre boil, and needed to get to 7 before starting the 90 minute bit for hop additions. So, after collecting all of my wort, I ended up boiling for an extra two hours to reduce the wort to my starting point. Hilariously, my OG was SPOT ON, and by pitching onto a Nottingham cake from a pale ale that was done two weeks prior, I ended at 1.016. It ended up being about 9.5% abv, and a touch crisper than the original, but not so much to be far off. I actually like it better, the original gets a bit too sweet sometimes. I used the Notty cake because a) it was there, b) I'm lazy and c) it had one hell of a healthy yeast colony for a beer that big.

 

[Eastside Brewer]

.75 oz. every 7.5 min. in a 90 min boil is like 9oz. of hops, is this a 5 gallon batch? the clone recipe calls for 3.25 oz. in the boil, what am I missing?

Eastside

 

[Hotspur]

Actually, that calls for 3.25 oz at flame out.

"With 90 minutes left to the boil slowely and evenly start adding hops. (Works out to .25 oz every 7.5 minutes)" - this describes how much to put in the boil. There's a reason this is like $15 for four bottles, and it's not just marketing. There's a crapton of ingredients for this.

I would follow the grain bill and use .25oz of each hop at every 7.5 minutes. Yes, it's about half a pound, but MAN IS IT TASTY. I've been drinking this, and it's so smooth and balanced. I would do this again and not change anything from how I did it before.

 

[Eastside Brewer]

Oh okay. So continuous hops with all three varieties, Warrior, Simcoe and Amarillo?

Thanks

Eastside

 

[Hotspur]

Yep. .25oz of each every 7.5 minutes. It's kind of a pain in the ass, since you do a lot of weighing, and sitting there watching a stopwatch.

Also, if you want a5 to 5.5 gal going into the keg, you may want to scale up the estimated volume going into the fermentation bucket, since that much hops will absorb a lot.

 

[mroberts1204]

I pulled this off another thread (again):

Start Fermentation at 71 degrees and let raise to 74. Dry hop in secondary at 71 for 3-5 days, then cool to 32 degrees.

Is this true? The preferred temp for that yeast is something like 66-70...seems like 74 is too hot

 

[user 22118]

Take some malt, put it in the blender, add a cup of sugar/lb of barley. Add water and then throw one hop pellet into it and you will have something that is better that DFH 90 min and also less sweet.

Seriously though, I have seen the recipes and I have tasted the beer. All I have to say is that I have never tasted 90IBU in this beer and that alone makes me think that there is an extreme amount of later hopping because of the lack of bitter. Sure, DFH says that they use a hop bazooka or something that adds hops continuously. I think though, that if they were adding say every minute, they would have something more bitter than they do. If I were trying to make a 90min without ever hearing how they made it, I would do it so differently.

That said, good luck. Try to make something more balanced, but good luck.

 

[Hotspur]

I think I fermented at 68-70, since that's what my basement is. I left it on the cement floor.

Matt: As noted, mine finished a bit lower than the recipe called for, and I think mine is noticeably less sweet than the actual DFH 90. I like it better, because it is more balanced. There's also a growing split in styles for "West Coast IPA" and "East Coast IPA", with there being more bitterness in West Coast, and more residual sugars in East Coast.

 

[mroberts1204]

I'm entering this into BeerSmith and its closing in on 200 IBUs...still with plenty of Warrior additions left to input. Is this right? .25 oz of each is a lot of hops and thats fine (I just wanna be sure I'm reading this right since the 'clone' everywhere else claims a total of .25 oz of hops every 7.5 minutes).