This is the second brew of a parti-gyle brewing session. I discussed the first part of that session, and the naming of the brews, here.
I decided to experiment with making a lighter, milder, but still-intensely hoppy IPA-ish brew after reading a bit about experiments towards that style by The Mad Fermentationist, and discussions among a few brewers here in Korea regarding the brewing of a hoppy session ale. I figured I would try making a hoppy, low-ABV beer with some of my favorite hops — Citra and Sorachi Ace — to see whether I could pull it off. Since I was already planning to make an IPA, it made sense
For the second half of the batch, I’ll cap the mash with 500 grams of wheat malt, 500 grams of flaked rye, and 100 grams of Gambrinus Honey malt, and let the wheat malt mash for an hour, while the flaked rye and Gambrinus Honey malt steep. I’ll mash that at a pretty high temperature, hoping for a higher proportions of unfermentable sugars to get into the wort. This should boost the OG of the second batch’s runnings to 1.039-ish, though if it’s a little lower that’s okay. (I can always steep some Carahell or something in the boil pot before boiling it, if the gravity comes out low. I suppose I should test it.)
This mini-aɪ pʰiː eɪ? is hopped with Citra and Sorachi Ace, hops I have successfully paired before in the beer I made for the late-hopping experiment we conducted last summer. (Mine were the Ship O’Boons beers, posted about here and here.) I figure, with how much I love Citra and Sorachi Ace, it’ll be hard to go too far wrong. Like the other IPA, I’ll be fermenting this with a California Ale yeast, from the cake used to ferment my low-ABV braggot.
The specific hop schedule is a bit unusual: whenm I cap the mash, I’m going to add 30 grams of Citra pellet hops. I’ll follow up with 5 grams of Citra at first wort, 8g at 30 min, 9 grams of Sorachi Ace at 20 minutes, 10 grams of Citra at 15 minutes, 11 grams of Sorachi at 10 minutes, 12 grams of Citra at 5 minutes, 14 grams each of Sorachi and Citra at flameout, and then 14 grams or so each for dry hopping. This sounds like small amounts of hops for a heavily-hopped beer, but since the OG is so low, and hops are so high in alpha acids, this is a pretty heavy hop schedule for a beer of this size, with a BU:GU of about 0.93… I could go higher, but I figure this is hoppy enough for me.
The recipe, for those interested, is here.
UPDATE (12 April 2012): By the way, I seem to have overboiled the brew. I did this beer in a bigger pot than usual, and discovered the evaporation rate is also higher. It ended up at 1.050-ish. We’ll see whether I want to add boiled water to the keg, but I have a feeling I won’t want to. I would have done so this morning, but the beer has already krausened, since I pitched it onto some of a live yeast cake. The gravity sample tasted okay, though it will likely just end up as a hoppy Pale Ale, and not so much a micro-IPA.