When brewing a triple IPA

[SkinnyShamrock]

Be sure to use a pound of pellet hops in your boil. Hop soup is good for you.

Seriously, what led anyone to believe that a triple IPA was a good idea? 25 lbs. of grain, 16 oz. of hops in the boil. I'm brewing it with a friend for a competition (yea, a bunch of triple IPAs, the judges mouths will be numb after the first two). We started just pouring the wort into the fermenter, but realized halfway through we better strain the hops out. The hops settled out, and probably take up 1/4 of the carboy.

After about a week of the hardest-churning fermentation I've ever seen, we added boiled table sugar/water (2.5 lbs of sugar!) solution to boost the alcohol and thin it out a bit. It refermented so hard that it kicked up all the hop crap that had settled out. God bless Cali Ale yeast at 64*F!

Oh, and there's another 8 oz. of hops for dry-hopping. This beer is gonna take rust off of bumpers.

 

[StarCityBrewMaster]

only in America :cross:

 

[Yukon_Skiers]

I want to try it!

 

[inthedeep2]

ohhh my.... sounds like good beer.... may have a little bite to it...

 

[rexbanner]

IPAs are so played.

 

[bknifefight]

What are your numbers? I want to know the ABV and IBUs!

 

[stevea1210]

Another Al's submission on the way, huh?

I have to agree that that only the first couple beers will get a decent reveiw simply due to taste bud destruction.

 

[BrewThruYou]

IPAs are so played.

IPAs aren't played...the race to make the hoppiest IIIIPA is played.

 

[SkinnyShamrock]

I normally wouldn't do a silly IPA. I, too, think they're overdone. But, this is in the spirit of competition, why not?!

As for numbers, our calculated final ABV will be 11.4%, and calculated IBU is 287.

It'll either be the best, hoppiest beer ever, or totally effing undrinkable.

 

[bknifefight]

As for numbers, our calculated final ABV will be 11.4%, and calculated IBU is 287.

Holy Moly! Sounds insane!

 

[Joe_K]

How's it taste?

 

[emjay]

I just brewed a variation of Pliny the Elder yesterday land holy crap, I hear ya. Mine will come in around 10%, with 296 IBU's.

My mistake: using leaf hops! To anybody reading this, for the love of God do NOT hop beers like this with leaf. I also had to pour through a strainer (which collapsed part way through, letting in too much leaf for my liking, and making a huge mess) because my siphon kept clogging, and whirlpooling doesn't accomplish much with all those hops in the pot.

Oh actually... I made an even bigger mistake: Attempting all this with a PARTIAL BOIL (13L of a 19L batch) for 90 minutes. I had to dilute it while cooling, and then had to squeeze the liquid out of the hops in the straining bag because they soaked up almost all the wort. Luckily, I own a pair of Blichmann brewing gloves which I sanitized, and got a VERY fast start with my 3L starter, so it shouldn't get infected. The ridiculous IBU's will surely help too.

But still... learn from my utter stupidity. I had about 10lbs of various American leaf hops in my freezer so I didn't want to spend more on pellets. Don't do this - if you HAVE to make such a ridiculously hopped up beer (and I gotta admit, I'm still very eager to drink it), then AT LEAST be smart enough to use pellets. Or be really smart like Vinnie and use some isomerized hop extract.