Back to Big ... Amarillo Citra IPA

Overview of the counterbrew kitchen / brewery

John and I brewed today... I know that is no surprise since we are clearly both obsessed with home brew.  Today we brewed a Big IPA... originally I thought of it as a really big american IPA.  But during brewing we added some additional grain which clearly placed it squarely into the Imperial or Double IPA category.   We had no plans to add additional grain, but we are brewers who taste the mash while we are mashing, and that has a great advantage.

One of the many great advantages of milling your own, You
can adjust your recipe on the spur of the moment...

You see after 45 minutes the mash usually takes on a great sweet, bready, nutty flavor.  This time.. meh.... it was ok, not great, but ok.  But we knew it wouldn't stand up to our massive hop bill (3 ounces in a 2.25 gallon batch).  So we got the mill back out and added .5 pounds of C10.  One of the great advantages of buying grain in bulk is the ability to make changes on the fly.  So we capped our mash with .5 ounces of C10 and mashed for another 15 minutes plus the mash out.

The boil went well, The house
smelled amazing.

The boil went well.  This was a small batch on the stove top.  Loads of Amarillo and Citra were added through out the boil and the kitchen / brewery smelled amazing.   We chilled with the 25 ft stainless immersion chiller.   It was the coldest day of the year, and the chill was lightning fast.  We went from boiling to pitch temps in around 10 minutes.  Of course that is one of the advantages of brewing small batches.   They chill fast.


Then we aerated and pitched an entire package of US05.  A focus of our brewing recently has been achieving high yeast attenuation.   US05 is a champ for attenuation.

During the brew we tried the Cream Ale we brewed.  John wrote the recipe, and chose to go with corn and flaked barley rather than the standard corn and rice adjuncts.   It is absolutely amazing.   We used S04 ale yeast.  Next time I think well try US05 in this as well.

Busy week.  I have 20 gallons to bottle up this week.  No super secret tricks for that just a couple of hours of hard work.   10 gallons are already fining with gelatin.  Trying for super clear beer.
I should be ready for spring, hell I am ready for spring.
I have 20 gallons of light ale and lagers ready to go.