Today I made brew number 04. It was based on Norther Brewer’s Organic IPA kit. I decided to try to make a Belgian inspired IPA. I used the stock kit, with a few modifications. Instead of the Admiral Hops at 60 minutes, I substituted with Saaz. Also, I added 1 pound of Belgian rock candi to the fermentables. Finally, I substituted the Wyeast #1968 London ESB with Wyeast #1388 Belgian Strong, which was derived from Duvel’s yeast. I am hoping for an IPA with a hint of a Belgian. It will be exciting to see how it turns out. I had originally tried culturing yeast from a bottle of Duvel, but it did not turn out. My guess is my bottles of Duvel were too old, and the yeast simply didn’t have enough left in it to be revived. The complete inventory is here:
Specialty Grains
* 0.5 lbs. Briess Organic Caramel 60
Fermentables
* 6.3 lbs. Organic Light Malt Syrup
* 2 lbs. Organic Light Dry Malt Extract
* 1 lb. Belgian Clear Rock Candi
Boil Additions
* 1 oz. Saaz (60 min)
* 1 oz. Organic Admiral Hops (30 min)
* 1 oz. Organic Goldings Hops (5 min)
Special Ingredients
1 oz. Organic Goldings Hops (dry hop)
Yeast
* Wyeast #1388 Belgian Strong Ale.
One snag I ran into is when my yeast arrived, the Wyeast packet was clearly bloated. I guessed that somehow the activator packet inside must have been ruptured during shipping. I went ahead as planned, figuring it would be ok. When I went to go finally pitch the yeast, I discovered that in fact the activator packet had not been broken. So either the Wyeast packet had become pressurized somehow or the yeast got contaminated. I am hoping for the former!
The original gravity ended up being 1070, which is higher than the kit estimate of 1063, but is to be expected, since I added sugar to the fermentables. I am still debating whether or not I will rack this batch to secondary or not. In order to, I would have to bottle my Saison a few days earlier than I had expected, but still it would have been in the secondary for reasonably long enough time. I plan on waiting to see how much clarity the IPA develops in the primary before deciding for sure.
For my next brew I am basically making up my own recipe! I am going to be calling it Christmas ESB. More details to come soon!
[...] alcohol, beer, belgian, brew, chicago, homebrew, ipa — diginux @ 11:00 am I bottled the Belgian IPA on 11-2-07. I only let it sit in the secondary for a week, since the kit was based off didn’t [...]
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