Brew Indy, brew!

About two months ago James and I decided to both brew an IPA.

For the beginning homebrewer, kits a definitely the way to go.  Once you have all your equipment you can simply pick up a box containing everything you need as well as some yeast and start boiling. And that’s exactly what we did.

So first a little info on the Kit we purchased. We both purchased the Brew BQ Pale Ale Kit from Great Fermentations. This is (according to them) one of their most popular kits. I have sampled it in the store and it is delicious. Nicely hopped with a great aroma.

The Brew BQ kit is that it has over 4 types of hops that are added at different times during the 60 minute boil. They are:

Cascade

Columbus

Amarillo

Ahtanum

It also includes 5 different malt grains

Light Munich Malt

Carapils Malt

Aromatic Malt

Wheat Malt

Biscuit Malt

The yeast suggestions it gives are:

Wyeast 1332 Northwest Ale

Wyeast 1098 Brittish Ale

Nottingham Dry

Unfortunately, James had purchased his over a year ago! Being unsure of the potency of the hops after a year, James went back into Great Fermentations to purchase the exact same hops that were in the kit. Now, we both love our hops! So instead of throwing away the old hops,  (which we were told would be fine just maybe less aromatic) James decided to add them along with the new hops to his batch.

So the experiment goes as follows:

We take two kits, exactly the same.

One will be our “control.” We do everything according to the directions using a Wyeast 1332 Northwest Ale liquid yeast pack.

The second, we double the hops and use a Nottingham Dry yeast pack.

Any of you that have ever brewed you own beer will probably know that you should NEVER cook it on your stove top. I learned the hard way. For those that don’t know, When you add malt extract to boiling wort it has a tendency to boil over if you don’t keep an eye on it. I literally took my eyes away for like 2 seconds and the next thing I know its boilng over right on my new white stove top. If you have ever burnt sugar you know how hard it is to clean up.

After the boiling process we had to chill the wort. This gave me the opportunity to try out my new wort chiller I made!

All parts were purchased at Menards for less than $35!

The Immersion chiller worked perfectly! Unfortunately I didn’t realize until after that while moving the chiller around I accidentally broke the thermometer in the wort. Luckily there is no Mercury in the thermometer but the weights (small tiny beads) and shattered glass ended up in the “control” batch. After speaking with the experts at Great Fermentations, they said it would be fine just make sure to filter the beer through a very fine filter before drinking to get rid of any glass or beads.

The other batch (with the extra hops) came out with no problems.

After about three weeks we bottled both batches. and then let them sit for another two weeks.

The result:

Considering the control batch was contaminated, the experiment didn’t come out as well as we had hoped.

The control batch has a nice hop characteristic but tastes oddly metallic! Ive been told that there is chance that might go away after a couple months, so I will let it sit and find out in January.

Surprisingly, the version with double the hops came out much more hoppier.  Much more.

I say I was surprised because even though we doubled the hops I fully expected the old ones to not yield much at all.  This is because when you get hops in the form of pellets the whole plant is crushed which releases part of the lupulin gland which is what is responsible for the resins and oils and what not.  This is good in a way because it helps your boil to utilize much more of it at a faster rate than if you were to just use whole hops.  The bad part is it’s then harder to keep your hops fresh because the lupulin will decay as it gets older at a faster rate then if you left it as hole leaf hops.  Happily I was able to get something out of the old and give it a great kick with the new.

The experiment went well. Two completely different tasting beers from the same beginning kit. I recommend you try it yourself. Change it up a little. Add different hops, different yeast, etc. Maybe try adding honey?

Keep brewing Indy!!