I have boiled up
the syrup
that was in
the tin can
and which
will now soon become
India
Pale Ale.
The adjuncts:
Indonesian gula,
so sweet,
and wheat malt.
*
The rest can’t fit into the poem (and, oh, apologies to William Carlos Williams), but here are the details for beerheads on my currently fermenting batch of Jaggery India Pale Ale:
Yes, it’s based on extract. I haven’t yet gotten the gear (or had the time) to move to all-wheat. I used one can of ESB IPA malt extract, a single packet of dry wheat malt extract, and a kilogram of gula, the wonderful Indonesian jaggery I posted about here.
The malt extract was pre-hopped, but I still added some of my own bittering with Cascade and adding some Kent Goldings at the end of the boil. Do I know what effect each hop has? Not really–I’m guessing based off some of what Randy Mosher included in his wonderful book. The initial gravity was around 1.045. I’ve no idea what the final gravity will be, though I’ll give it some time. I think I’ll be dry-hopping, though I don’t know what I’ll dry-hop with. (Probably more Kent Goldings, unless I run across a better suggestion somewhere along the way.)
I’m expecting this to come out slightly less pale than might be optimal for an IPA, though probably not darker than my last batch. When I just took a gravity reading a moment ago, there was lots of particulate matter floating around–some dead yeast, but also some of the dissolved sugar. Gula has a lot of unfermentable stuff in it, so a nice long settling period in secondary fermentation is probably called for. I think I’ll let it sit in secondary for a weeks or ten days, and then shift as much of the beer (and as little of the trub) as possible over to the other carboy and let it clear some more, before dry-hopping.