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

[notwoohoo]

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...

 

[notwoohoo]

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!)

 

[notwoohoo]

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.

 

[nealf]

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

 

[notwoohoo]

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

 

[notwoohoo]

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

 

[Jonnio]

lookin good so far

 

[Monghetti]

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

 

[direwolf4]

[*]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)

unreal....

5 vials and 20# dex?

save a bottle for me brah...

 

[jvetter]

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.

 

[BeerNewbie]

I got all tingly inside when I read this!

 

[jvetter]

After 13 days I have reached 20%. Fermentation slowed a day or two ago and I am letting it finish. The gravity right now is 1.030 sg. If it gets to dry I will add some more sugar, but for now I want it to finish so I can dump some trub. Will also start dry hopping soon. I tasted it around 17% and it was surprisingly good and very similar to 120.

How is yours going notwoohoo?

 

[joety]

Wow, nice setup. Looks like you have a pressure guage on your oxygen tank. How does that work?

Those first runnings look like extract. Amazing.

 

[jvetter]

Wow, nice setup. Looks like you have a pressure guage on your oxygen tank. How does that work?

Those first runnings look like extract. Amazing.

Thanks, just did a major upgrade two brews ago.

The pressure gauge is recent addition because I went to inline oxygenation. From that picture you can see the inline oxygenation assembly attached to the therminator, which feeds into a quick disconnect, small ball valve, a brass tee, which is fed by the oxygen. The gauge is a standard gas gauge like you would see on a CO2 regulator, but it only goes to 30 psi. I got it from mcmaster carr. The reason for the gauge was so that I had something to indicate how much gas was going in for reproducibility. With a manual oxygen setup I could tell from the bubble action, but with inline I had no way of knowing the amount going in.

The regulator on the disposable tank is one of the adjustable homebrew ones. I just removed the main connector and added a 1/8 to 1/4 NPT converter to go into the brass tee. I have to say it works better than expected. Heres a close up.

 

[joety]

Thanks, just did a major upgrade two brews ago.

The pressure gauge is recent addition because I went to inline oxygenation. From that picture you can see the inline oxygenation assembly attached to the therminator, which feeds into a quick disconnect, small ball valve, a brass tee, which is fed by the oxygen. The gauge is a standard gas gauge like you would see on a CO2 regulator, but it only goes to 30 psi. I got it from mcmaster carr. The reason for the gauge was so that I had something to indicate how much gas was going in for reproducibility. With a manual oxygen setup I could tell from the bubble action, but with inline I had no way of knowing the amount going in.

The regulator on the disposable tank is one of the adjustable homebrew ones. I just removed the main connector and added a 1/8 to 1/4 NPT converter to go into the brass tee. I have to say it works better than expected. Heres a close up.

Thanks. I'll be switching to a CFC setup when my pumps and chiller arive. I have an extra pressure guage sitting around. I may have to try the inline O2 myself. Where do you typically set it?

 

[jvetter]

Thanks. I'll be switching to a CFC setup when my pumps and chiller arive. I have an extra pressure guage sitting around. I may have to try the inline O2 myself. Where do you typically set it?

I'm not entirely sure how what the right pressure is, but I have been using 10 psi. Everything above that seems way too high. Morebeer recommends not oxygenating for the whole transfer, but I guess that depends on how much pressure you use.

 

[notwoohoo]

Been awhile since I've posted an update on this... so here goes

I boiled for over hour hours, obtaining 4.4 gallons of 1.140 wort. I didn't sparge enough to get great efficiency. I was hoping to boil down to 3.5 gallons, oh well. To make up for the volume difference, I will be adding some sugar directly to the fermenter, as opposed to the sugar syrup.

I oxygenated with pure o2 for the first four days, and pitched a TON of WY1056 (1200mL of thick slurry or so). The reading is down to the 1.040 range, which I am extremely happy with so far!

I made a 2.75 gallon starter of WLP099 (Super High Gravity) that has been chugging away for a few days now. I considered bumping up the gravity, but in the end the OG was 1.040 for the starter. I'll be taking a gravity reading on it tonight and, if it is finished, will cold crash it to get the yeast to floc nicely. Once the yeast have collected at the bottom, I'm going to siphon right on top of the cake. After getting on the WLP099 cake, I'll begin sugar additions, bumping up the starting gravity to a normalized 1.200. After this finishes off, I'll drop it into a tertiary on dry hops (Columbus) for a couple of weeks. With a week left in the tertiary, I'm going to add bourbon soaked medium toast Hungarian oak cubes. I'll taste after a week to determine if there is enough "oakyness." Once the oak character is significant enough, I'll transfer to a corney for a bit of bulk aging prior to carbing it up!

A few local HBT brewers had a sample out of the primary. I've had a couple so far, it is tasty stuff!

 

[notwoohoo]

Oh yeah, pictures to follow!

 

[Duckfoot]

was wondering how this was going....

 

[notwoohoo]

My WLP099 starter finally finished. I siphoned off as much of the starter wort as possible, added invert sugar to bump the gravity up a bit, and siphoned from the primary today! ABV out of primary is 13.9%. Tasting really good so far.....

 

[BostonHopHead]

How did the 120 Minute come out? I've done a couple of 60 mins and Imperial IPA's. The 120 is next. Hope it was awesome. Would you do anything different to the recipe?

 

[joety]

Been awhile since I've posted an update on this... so here goes

I boiled for over hour hours, obtaining 4.4 gallons of 1.140 wort. I didn't sparge enough to get great efficiency. I was hoping to boil down to 3.5 gallons, oh well. To make up for the volume difference, I will be adding some sugar directly to the fermenter, as opposed to the sugar syrup.

I oxygenated with pure o2 for the first four days, and pitched a TON of WY1056 (1200mL of thick slurry or so). The reading is down to the 1.040 range, which I am extremely happy with so far!

I made a 2.75 gallon starter of WLP099 (Super High Gravity) that has been chugging away for a few days now. I considered bumping up the gravity, but in the end the OG was 1.040 for the starter. I'll be taking a gravity reading on it tonight and, if it is finished, will cold crash it to get the yeast to floc nicely. Once the yeast have collected at the bottom, I'm going to siphon right on top of the cake. After getting on the WLP099 cake, I'll begin sugar additions, bumping up the starting gravity to a normalized 1.200. After this finishes off, I'll drop it into a tertiary on dry hops (Columbus) for a couple of weeks. With a week left in the tertiary, I'm going to add bourbon soaked medium toast Hungarian oak cubes. I'll taste after a week to determine if there is enough "oakyness." Once the oak character is significant enough, I'll transfer to a corney for a bit of bulk aging prior to carbing it up!

A few local HBT brewers had a sample out of the primary. I've had a couple so far, it is tasty stuff!

Wow, what did you do with the starter beer from that monster? I wonder if making an APA or something using the Super High Gravity yeast would have given you a decent batch of beer at the same time.

 

[notwoohoo]

The beer is going well, so far. I'm around 16%abv right now, so it has a good bit to go still...

I tasted my starter wort, but I wasn't expecting it to be good. I made a starter wort batch that I used half for this and half for pressure canned wort. It did have a bit of hops, but not much and it was only boiled 15 minutes.

 

[MULE]

I am eagerly awaiting the results from these two beers.

Insane guys!

 

[joety]

After watching all this, $7.99/bottle for the original almost sounds cheap.

 

[notwoohoo]

It is quite a process... I need to acquire an authentic 120 for comparison with the brew club

 

[RootsUltimate]

I know that DFH has some instructions to build a hop-o-matic, but has anybody thought about using a water pipet for additions over the 120 min? If you are using pellets instead of leaf you could rehydrate and calibrate your pipet to deliver the total volume of 'hop tea' in equal spaced one drop intervals. Some simple math or some water test runs could easily calibrate the valve opening for it to last exactly 120 minutes. Then just rehydrate, fill it, and clamp it over your boil.

I'm not ambitious enough to try it yet, but it might make the process easier and more quality controlled.

 

[notwoohoo]

I'd think that using that method it would be difficult to obtain a homogeneous solution within the pipette. Also, 5+ ounces of hops takes up a lot of volume in H2O

 

[brewingsam]

looking forward to how this comes out

 

[notwoohoo]

I racked this to tertiary today, mostly to rouse the yeast as much as possible during the transfer. I added two pints of invert sugar syrup as well. Gravity readings to commence tomorrow!