6.5 ounces of Centennial Hops

Have I told you before how much I love Centennial hops?    You’re looking at 6.5 ounces of Centennials ready to do their job on ten gallons of Two Hearted IPA.

The brew day went well.  The only thing out of the ordinary was my pump cavitating for a few minutes.  Eventually it corrected itself and all was fine.  I hit my mash temp, 152 degrees, on the nose, and everything else played out as expected.  I’m currently chilling and expect to be cleaned and wrapped up within the hour.

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Columbus IPA Tap Handle

One of the things I like to experiment with in my brewing is making single hop ales.  It really allows you to see what a particular hop variety brings to an ale.  To take this one step further (and feed my background as a former science teacher:), I like to take a recipe for a single hop ale, and brew it again, changing only one thing – the variety of hop.  Basically, this means keeping the hopping schedule, individual hop charge IBU percentages and overall brew IBUs identical to the original ale.  Tomorrow, I’ll be taking my Two Hearted IPA recipe, and changing only the hop variety – from Centennial hops (my hands-down favorite, only one hop to brew with on a desert island:) to Columbus hops.

Additionally, I’ll be bottling up a few bombers of the Two Hearted IPA, since I know the second keg will be gone before the Columbus IPA is ready, to allow for side by side comparisons of the two ales.  I just finished filtering my water and milling the grain for tomorrow’s brew day.  As always, the milled grain smells wonderful:)

Here’s the recipe for tomorrow’s brew day:

Columbus IPA
14-B American IPA

Size: 10.08 gal
Efficiency: 75.0%
Attenuation: 75.0%
Calories: 317.28 kcal per 16.0 fl oz

Original Gravity: 1.071 (1.056 – 1.075)
Terminal Gravity: 1.018 (1.010 – 1.018)
Color: 7.27 (6.0 – 15.0)
Alcohol: 7.03% (5.5% – 7.5%)
Bitterness: 61.1 (40.0 – 60.0)

Ingredients:
20.0 lb Pale Malt(2-row)
4.0 lb Vienna Malt
10.0 oz Crystal Malt 10°L
6.0 oz Crystal Malt 40°L
1.0 lb Cara-Pils Dextrine Malt
.5 oz Columbus (15.0%) – added during boil, boiled 60.0 min
.75 oz Columbus (15.0%) – added during boil, boiled 45.0 min
.80 oz Columbus (15.0%) – added during boil, boiled 20.0 min
1.0 lb Corn Sugar
1.5 oz Columbus (15.0%) – added during boil, boiled 10.0 min
1.5 oz Columbus (15.0%) – added during boil, boiled 0.0 min
2 ea Whirlfloc – added during boil, boiled 10.0 min
1.0 tsp Yeast Nutrient – added during boil, boiled 10.0 min
2000 mL White Labs WLP001 California Ale

Milling grain for Columbus IPA

One other difference in this brew from the Two Hearted IPA is the yeast.  Unfortunately, I’m out of Pacific Ale yeast, but I’ll be restocking soon since a trip to B3 is in my near future.  This ale should dry out just a bit more than Two Hearted IPA, but I can adjust for that with a slightly higher mash temperature.

Brenda is off to San Franciso in the morning to take up another load of stuff to Meagan at AAU, so I’m on my own for the brew day.  Unfortunately, Meagan is using my older PowerBook G4 at school, until the new MacBooks are released in a couple weeks, so my iTunes server is MIA. I’ll have to rely on Sirius for brew day tunes:)

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The Two Hearted Ale clone should be ready to keg in the next couple days and the Blue Moons Belgian wit is ready right now.

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Click here to view the embedded video.

When I got up this morning, the krausen was just about to shoot out of the blow-off tube, so the fermentation has taken off well.  I can’t wait to taste this ale!

On a side note, yesterday I took a trip down memory lane, compliments of the gift of a friend (thanks, Mark!).  About a month ago, I was given a couple CDs that had a Tubes concert from April, 21, 1977, that I actually attended at the Palace of Fine Arts, in San Francisco.This was back in my wilder days, and we had an “interesting” ride to the city to see the show.  I finally got around to ripping it into iTunes and was surprised to find that all of the tracks were already tagged for song title and artist.  It was great to hear old favorites like What Do You Want From Life, Stand Up and Shout, You’re No Fun, Hit Parade and White Punks on Dope.

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In the past, I’ve embraced single hopped ales – to get to know the bittering and flavor profiles of the hops.  I’ve also told numerous people over the past few years that if I was stranded on desert isle, with only one hop – it would be Centennials, so I’m excited to taste this ale.

Two Hearted IPA
14-B American IPA

Size: 10.08 gal
Efficiency: 75.0%
Attenuation: 75.0%
Calories: 317.28 per 16.0 fl oz

Original Gravity: 1.071 (1.056 – 1.075)
Terminal Gravity: 1.018 (1.010 – 1.018)
Color: 7.3 (6.0 – 15.0)
Alcohol: 7.03% (5.5% – 7.5%)
Bitterness: 60.84 (40.0 – 60.0)

Ingredients:
20.0 lbs Pale Malt(2-row)
4.0 lbs Vienna Malt
10.0 oz Crystal Malt 10°L
6.0 oz Crystal Malt 40°L
1.0 lbs Cara-Pils Dextrine Malt
1.0 oz Centennial (10.5%) – added during boil, boiled 60.0 min
1.0 oz Centennial (10.5%) – added during boil, boiled 45.0 min
1.0 oz Centennial (10.5%) – added during boil, boiled 20.0 min
1.0 lbs Corn Sugar
1.75 oz Centennial (10.5%) – added during boil, boiled 10.0 min
1.5 oz Centennial (10.5%) – added during boil, boiled 0.0 min
2.0 oz Centennial (10.5%) – added dry to primary fermenter
2 ea Whirlfloc – added during boil, boiled 10.0 min
1.0 tsp Yeast Nutrient – added during boil, boiled 10.0 min
1600 mL White Labs WLP041 Pacific Ale

I’m wanting to get up early and get this brew going.  With all of the fires around all of California, I want to get out of the smoky air as soon as possible tomorrow.  Today I was outside for a couple of hours and came away with sorry lungs and a huge headache…

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