Aatte Hymne Til Humle Recap
Earlier this year, we set out to learn more about making IPA, specifically what techniques worked on our system. We wanted to learn how to make a hoppy beer with better aromatics and balance. We brewed eight different IPAs with results as follows.
All hops used in the hot side were Magnum (bittering), Cascade, and Chinook (middle and WP additions).
All dry hop additions were added at 2-3lb/bbl.
All beers were fermented with Chico ale yeast. This was a variable we wanted to fuck around with more, but it was beyond the scope of this project.
We’ve included the average ratings from Untappd and Ratebeer for these beers. Averages were not available from BA.
Here are our takeaways (i.e., what works for our system) from doing these beers (which will all seem really fucking obvious, but it’s good to know first hand, ya know?):
- Keep the hot side additions to a bittering addition and a big-ass whirlpool addition.
- Dry hop in one big addition as fermentation slows, with around 1 plato left (as some yeast-hop interaction is pleasant), at warm (60F) temperatures.
- Bubble CO2 into the tank after adding dry hops to get more hop-to-beer surface contact.
- Let dry hops sit in beer between 3-5 days (although, jury is still out a bit on this).
- More malt character can be nice, particularly if you’re moving through the beer quickly (as we typically are).
What we learned from this series has now been applied to Tunnel of Trees and Scorn in a continuing effort to make even better beer.
Of Wolf and Fear
Grist: 2-Row, C-15, Acidulated
Hop (boil): 60, 30, 15, WP
Yeast: 001
Dry Hop: 3 days at 60F; Centennial, Vic’s Secret, Waimea, Mosaic
General Thoughts: This was pretty much standard IPA making for us, although, this brew featured a few more hot-side hop additions. We wanted to see if more additions in the boil gave more hop character in the finished beer. In our opinion, it does, though this can also be vegetal, so we ended up over the course of these brews settling on one bittering addition and a big whirlpool addition (best of both worlds).
Untappd: 3.99
RB: 3.31
Of Wolf and the Devil
Grist: 2-Row, C-15, Acidulated
Hop (boil): 60, 30, 15, WP
Yeast: 001
Dry Hop: Split into two additions. The first added with 1 plato of fermentation left, dropped after 2 days, then the second addition was added for 3 days at 66F; Centennial, Vic’s Secret, Waimea, Mosaic
General Thoughts: There wasn’t an appreciable enough difference in aromatics to make this technique worth the extra time and work.
Untappd: 3.96
RB: 3.09
Of Wolf and Hatred
Grist: 2-Row, C-15, Acidulated
Hop (boil): 60, 30, 10, WP
Yeast: 001
Dry Hop: Added at 60F, recirced beer for 1 hour after adding dry hops. Dropped after 3 days; Centennial, Vic’s Secret, Waimea, Mosaic
General Thoughts: Initially, recircing the beer after dry hoping was giving us good results, but the aromatics volatilized very quickly and the potential risk for introducing the beer to further oxygen and contaminants led us to try this one more time before changing to simply bubbling CO2 in the beer after dry hopping.
Untappd: 3.82
RB: 3.30
Of Wolf and Man
Grist: 2-Row, C-15, Acidulated
Hop (boil): 60, 10, WP
Yeast: 001
Dry Hop: Added at 30F, recirced beer for 30 minutes after adding dry hops. Dropped after 3 days; Azacca, Vic’s Secret, Waimea, Mosaic
General Thoughts: You read that it’s a bad idea to dry hop at colder temperatures. Turns out, it is. Definitely got a more astringent, vegetal pick up from this technique.
Untappd: 3.75
RB: 3.28
Of Wolf and the Moon
Grist: Ballad, Blue Ballad, Acidulated
Hop (boil): 60, WP
Yeast: 001
Dry Hop: Added total dry hop amount on day 1 of fermentation. Dropped after fermentation was complete; Azacca, Vic’s Secret, Waimea, Mosaic
General Thoughts: We had good results dry hopping a saison on day one of fermentation, so we wanted to try it here. The results were mixed. We got very good aromatics from this technique, but the aroma definitely was different from what we were used to (not a bad thing necessarily). Harvesting yeast also became a bit sketchy, as you have so much hop matter in the slurry...promising but volatile and seemingly inconsistent end product.
We changed our grist to incorporate local maltster Troubadour from this point forward. We went with a bit of a darker base malt for this beer (wanted to see if some more malt character added anything…we think it did, in fact, add a bit of a fruity character) and the next few before settling on a lighter base malt along with some Munich II as the sweet spot.
Also, it was on this beer that we noticed Azacca was contributing a big anise character, and that hop has since been relegated for use in dark beer.
Untappd: 3.76
RB: 3.30
Of Wolf and Passion
Grist: Ballad, Blue Ballad, Acidulated
Hop (boil): 60, WP
Yeast: 001
Dry Hop: Added at 60F. Dropped after 4 days; Waimea, Vic’s Secret, Mosaic
General Thoughts: This beer was a bit of a rebalancing where we worked in techniques that we thought worked from before.
Untappd: 3.85
RB: 3.36
Of Wolf and Destiny
Grist: Serenade, Munich II, Acidulated
Hop (boil): 60, WP
Yeast: 001
Dry Hop: Added lupulin powder at 60F. Dropped after 3 days; Simcoe lup pow, Mosaic lup pow, Citra lup pow
General Thoughts: Lupulin powder is really cool but a) hard to get and b) not as aromatic as we had hoped (hence the mix of pellets in the final, following iteration). The flavor from it is fantastic though.
Untappd: 3.90
RB: 3.13
Of Wolf and the Night
Grist: Serenade, Munich II, Acidulated
Hop (boil) 60, WP
Yeast: 001
Dry Hop: Added a blend of lupulin powder and pellet hops at 60F. Dropped after 6 days; Simcoe lup pow, Citra lup pow; Mosaic pellets
General Thoughts: We did a longer dry hop on this, six days, and the results were positive with nice aromatic pickup. We went a bit nuts on the dry hop addition because fuck it, it’s the last one.
Untappd: 4.0
RB: 3.9