Quare Good IPA

My mate Dave asked me to brew him an IPA which he could take away in a jerry can, ferment, dry hop, and bottle at home when it's done. Dave has been a recipient of Davy Uprichard's excellent cider juice of 2014 and has confirmed his position on the 2015 guest list, so by now he's no stranger to alcoholic beverages by the jerry can.

Dave lives in the Wexford Mountains, where everything except strawberries and Wexford queens is in short supply. Dave's initial request was for a "Double IPA" prompting me to produce a simple enough recipe along the lines of BrewDog's Hardcore IPA, which to my surprise drew horror. 9% abv was the issue. Clearly there was a problem with definitions! So after a bit of ping pong the "Double IPA" was binned and a new recipe for quaffing of around 5% drawn up, with hop fruitiness.

This meant lots of US hops and a simple grain bill. Where I decided to throw a semi curve ball was the yeast. This would normally be a US-05 or WLP-001 no-brainer, but I decided to go with Brett Sacch WLP-644. This gained a bit of notoriety this year when it was DNA sequenced and found not to be brettanomyces but in fact saccharomyces. White Labs have subsequently renamed it in an artist-formerly-know-as fashion and it's now Saccharomyces "Bruxellensis" Trois.

A few things that are unusual about WLP-644:

1. It's slower than regular saccharomyces. Allow 2 weeks to finish primary.
2. It super attenuates. Think 85% or more, compared to ~75% for regular sacch.
3. With lots of wort aeration it possibly can generate a small amount of acetic acid, though this is open to debate.
4. It can form a pellicle.

Lucan County Water

Again as it was going to be hoppy, it meant Leixlip water was out. As I've written before Leixlip water is far too hard to be suitable for brewing this sort of beer without treatment, and so I opted to use water from the Lucan County instead. As there is no such thing of course as Lucan water, they just get a blend of our Leixlip water and another very soft source, I think currently Ballymore Eustace (ironically both sources are 100% Liffey water). On the day in question Lucan water was showing 90 ppm on the TDS meter and in comparison Leixlip was at 230 ppm. TDS isn't hardness but it's a general indication, and Lucan was showing a mere 40% of whatever Leixlip was on the day.

Recipe for 40 litres

Amount	Item	Type	% or IBU
9.50 kg	Pale Malt (2 Row) MCI (5.9 EBC)	Grain	95.00 %
0.50 kg	White Wheat Malt Bairds (4.7 EBC)	Grain	5.00 %
30.00 gm	Hop Extract [51.00 %] (60 min)	Hops	87.4 IBU
60.00 gm	Cascade [5.50 %] (0 min)	Hops	-
60.00 gm	Citra [12.00 %] (0 min)	Hops	-
90.00 gm	Centennial [10.00 %] (Dry Hop 3 days)	Hops	-
150.00 gm	Citra [12.00 %] (Dry Hop 3 days)	Hops	-
60.00 gm	Cascade [5.50 %] (Dry Hop 3 days)	Hops	-
0.50 items	Whirlfloc Tablet (Boil 15.0 min)	Misc
1 Pkgs	WLP644 (White Labs #WLP644)	Yeast-Ale

Est Original Gravity: 1.056 SG	Measured Original Gravity: 1.058 SG
Est Final Gravity: 1.008 SG	Measured Final Gravity: 1.008 SG
Estimated Alcohol by Vol: 6.3%	Actual Alcohol by Vol: 6.5%
Bitterness: 87.4 IBU	Calories: 542 cal/l
Est Color: 10.3 EBC	Color:

Unusually for such a large brew I overshot my efficiency targets by a few percent, which is the opposite to what I'd expect: instead of 70% or so on this size of a brew, I actually hit 77%. Also, even more annoying was when I was drawing up the recipe I left US-05 as the yeast in BeerSmith as it didn't have an entry for WLP-644 (it's the old version, 1.4), which of course meant the anticipated attenuation was much lower, at around 72%. Using these two figures (70% efficiency and 72% attenuation) would have resulted in 5% abv on the dot. Mental note: put in the right yeast at the start in future!

Using hop extract in this one was a no-brainer as it meant the hop debris if I had used pellets was greatly minimised. I still don't have a way of dealing with large amounts of hops that I'm 100% happy with. Guess I'll just have to keep at the whirlpooling.

The wort was split into a 33 litre fermenter and a 25 litre jerry can for Dave to take home. I had made a moderate sized starter with the WLP-644, though I'm not sure that was necessary as it was vigorously healthy when I was slanting it. Dave got half the starter and I got the other half. I split the dry hops and vacuum packed Dave's share for the arduous journey up the mountains.

As I said earlier about WLP-644, this brew took a fortnight at 22°C to hit terminal gravity of 1.008. It dry hopped about a week in, and once terminal gravity reached it was fined with gelatine at 2°C for a few days before being racked and in my case kegged. Dave bottled his.

Tasting Notes
Bright copper and opaquely coloured with a lasting white head and associated lacing, this is quite an awesome brew! Very fruity and also quite bitter. It's definitely in the "Double IPA" league when it comes to hop flavour and bitterness. There is no perceivable acidic taste and the pH meter, showing 4.5, confirms there is no real acid present. It's one of the better IPAs I've brewed. What would I change? Well nothing really apart from the bitterness. At around 90 IBUs it's not to everyone's taste, and I think a few of Dave's mountainous mates are finding it a bit tougher going than the large bottles of McArdles off the shelf that they're used to.

Quare Good Lad

Lambic 2.1

After the lambic barrel of 2014 was emptied I decided I wouldn't get involved in the re-filling. This was for a number of reasons, but the most relevant one to this blog is that I already brewed to this formula and used this barrel so I know what to expect from it. Been there, done that, so to speak, without wanting to sound crude. While I'm very happy with the results from that barrel I have always felt it could have had more bite. I don't recall seeing any pH meters on the brew day, but the finished beer only clocked 4.2 on the pH scale a year later. While the beer compares very favourably on the whole, the acid deficiency is clear when commercial examples are compared, which often have a pH of less than 3.5. In Classic Beer Styles 3: Lambic, Jean Xavier Guinard typifies "hard" lambic as having a pH around 3.4 and "soft" as 3.9. (page 36) and the European Union has declared the highest pH to be considered lambic as 3.9. So ignoring geographical origin that beer was not a lambic by other established standards.

I also understand the mashing process a bit better having done a bit more reading and talking to people at Toer de Geuze, so I have refined the procedure somewhat. A couple of things that seem to be missing from a lot of texts is an explanation for the small bit of barley malt that is added to the wheat during gelatinisation. There are conflicting reasons cited for this but some say it's to perform a mash of sorts to help make the gelatinisation of the wheat starches easier. Also there is no need to boil the wheat, it just needs to be kept above its gelatinisation temperature. Anyone who looks at a turbid mash schedule, which is what the genuine lambic breweries in Belgium do will notice that there is no cereal mash and at no point is the wheat boiled. For the reason I've changed some of the steps, simplifying and speeding up the process a bit:

The original quantities gave a water to grain ratio of about 3:1. This is in the regular ale brewing range but from experience I can say that with that much wheat both the mash and sparge are close to sticking point. My new step of adding 3L of boiling water to the gelatinisation pot after the 30 minute gelatinisation rest the "strike" water thins to a ratio of 3.6:1 in the mashtun while also helping to raise the temperature of the pot contents to "strike" temperature. This keeps the mash thin enough not to stick but lots of stirring is still required to aid conversion.

For 20L, revised:

1. Add 2kg wheat + 0.6kg malt to a pot with 15L water and heat to around 62°C

2. Bring to gentle boil for 30 mins
2. NEW: Hold at ~62°C for 30 minutes
3. Let cool to normal strike temp for your gear, plus 3 or 4°C (as you want to mash at 70°C)
3. Add 3L of boiling water to the pot. Apply heat and raise temperature of the pot contents to 3 or 4°C above normal strike temperature (to 80°C in my case).

4. Use as strike water and add to the remaining 2.4kg malt in the mash tun.

5. Hold at 70°C for 2 hours.
6. Sparge with 92°C water until 26L collected.
7. Boil for 2 hours, add 3-7 IBU shitty hops at 120 mins.
8. Collect around 20L in the fermenter.

I have done this procedure twice now (and lambic 2.0.1 twice), and not being restricted to a barrel has allowed me to experiment with different configurations, especially with regard to yeast. The first two were brewed to the 2.0.1 schedule and have WLP-645 grown up from dregs of a Framboise given to me by Nigel Comerford. As of 18 June 2015 these have fermented out, but have not produced a pellicle, three months in. Both done to the 2.1 schedule were actually done as a double brew, and split into 2 x 20L batches. Both were fermented out with a neutral ale yeast before having dregs added: the first had the dregs from the 2014 lambic barrel added, the second had the dregs from Boon Mariage Parfait. Two months later both smell fantastic, though the Mariage Parfait is edging it. Both are showing signs of pellicle development too.

Since I wrote this I had refined the process even more and will blog about it after my next brew. I'm going to call it 3.0 as it's different enough to warrant it. Stay tuned!