Woxford Brewing: Conan Yeast! What is best in life?

Conan Yeast: To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their long-chain-sugars.

Woxford Brewing: That is good! That is good.

While I’ve never had a Heady Topper, I certainly have already tried to brew a clone.  With the way the beer sounds, who wouldn’t?  I don’t have access to Heady, so stepping up dregs from the cans was impossible.   After my first clone, Taa Dow, which came out quite nice, though not as nice as the Hop Slam clone, I decided I’d wait until I had some yeast from one of the major labs.

This past month, I’ve been on a yeast purchase binge.  The smaller labs have been stepping up interesting strains making it easier try out newer (or hard to find) strains.  One of those is the Vermont IPA from Gigayeast.  With the yeast in hand, I started with the Heady clone recipe (version 4.0 that was found on Homebrew Talk forums) and then swapped out some of the hops for some others that sounded like they’d blend well with the peachy aroma from the Conan yeast.

In other news, the chest freezer has finally bit the dust.  The machine is close to 20 years old at this point.  I’ve had it for 4 years now and it’s provided steady service for a cool $90 craigslist find.  I’m searching, but larger chest freezers (15 cu.ft.) tend to go rather quickly around town;  I’ve emailed no less than 6 sellers, only two responded, both already sold.

I’m eyeing a new one, but finding them roughly half-price or less is a real steal.  This time around, I’ve promised myself to ensure I do a proper collar so we can have faucet taps.  I already have most of the supplies, so it should be a snap.

Until then, brewnights are bottle-only affairs.  That’ll be fun!  Here’s my Lamentation IPA, Heady Topper variant.  Let’s see how this turns out.

If you give me 10 hops then I use all 10!

Double IPAs are just fabulous. I just can’t get enough of them. I’m a huge fan of the Stone Enjoy-by series. As far as I’m concerned it’s a win-win-win situation. Stone makes an incredible hoppy, fresh beer that needs to be distributed, served and drunk in the span of months. I’ve never tasted a fresher IPA than one I’ve brewed myself.

On that path, even though I just brewed an Imperial IPA, ff3k, there’s nothing wrong with following up with another one.  This recipe caught my eye after appearing on a list of beers that *must* be tried passed to me by a friend.  The first beer, Heady Topper caught my eye as I didn’t know it was an Imperial IPA and I had seen a huge thread on homebrewtalk.com  where many homebrewers had been working to clone the beer.

One can never be completely sure if the recipe isn’t shared from the brewery; and even if it is, the differences in equipment and process can definitely affect the final beer.  That means it’s a bit of a gamble if you’ll actually clone the beer.

None of that concerns me though as I know a good IPA recipe when I see one.  Thanks to a dedicated group on homebrewtalk.com and Signpost Craft Brewing, we’ve got something close to Heady Topper.

Here’s my take, note I couldn’t find the Pearl malt in large enough quantities, so I’m using Marris Otter.

Fly Ralcon Sample, a Rye IPA with Calypso hops

This year I’ve been brewing a lot of beer for specific reasons, new beers, beers for competitions and every now and then you just need to brew a beer for yourself. Such is this beer. The last IPA or two I have brewed I was trying out a new recipe, or new hop. This beer we brewed a week ago is a really straight forward IPA with lots of fruity hops: Citra and Amarillo.The brew session went without a hitch. Mashed in at 122F for a protein rest (though reading in Gordon Strong’s Brewing Better Beer, he mentions this being totally unnecessary due to highly modified malt that’s now available.  Gordon prefers a 131F instead to keep proteins for head-retention) and then a step-mash up to 150F for sach rest. Also, I was batch sparging this beer instead of my normal no-sparge method in which I include all the water needed in the mash.

No 6.5 gallon carboys left, so into the 13 gallon fermentor.

Collected about 8 gallons of wort and hit my O.G target, 1.054. 60 minute boil and then a trip through the platechiller and I had 6 gallons of 1.070 wort at about 65F. I pitched a 3 liter starter of Wyeast 1056 into the only container I had that was big enough for 6 gallons, my 13G plastic fermenter normally kept for 10 gallon batches.

I’m looking forward to the 12 day dry-hop schedule and getting this beer into a keg as soon as possible.

Here’s the recipe for ff3k, an American IPA hopped with Nugget, Citra and Amarillo.

Update:

Dry-hopping with Citra

2013-05-04: Measured F.G, 1.010.  Nice and dry.  Added 21 grams of Citra to start with.