Magic Carpet Brewday 2/10/11

After bottling the hefeweizen we brewed our second experimental beer. The recipe is a fairly straightforward late hop IPA, but all five ounces of hops are Austin Homebrew's Magic Hop Dust. This stuff is what collects at the bottom of their boxes of hops, and is a blend of 20 different varieties. It's hard to say what this beer's gonna taste like, but it's gonna be hoppy.

Batch size: 5 gallons

Boil Volume: 3 gallons

Calculated OG: 1.064

Measured FG: 1.014

Calculated ABV: 6.5%

Calculated IBUs (Tinseth): 59

Vol. C02: 2.4

Yeast: Nottingham

Measured pitching temp: 64F

Fermentation high: 72 (days 3-7)

Fermentation vessel: Ale Pail

Lag time: less than 12 hours

Days in primary: 8

7 lbs extra pale LME

2 lbs Munich LME

0.5 lbs Crystal 10

1 oz Magic Hop Dust 7% AA at 60 minutes

1 oz Magic Hop Dust 7% AA at 30 minutes

1 oz Magic Hop Dust 7% AA at 20 minutes

0.5 oz Magic Hop Dust 7% at 10 minutes

0.5 oz Magic Hop Dust 7% at 5 minutes

1 oz Magic Hop Dust 7% at flameout

We forgot to rehydrate the yeast until the wort was almost cool, so we only rehydrated for 15 minutes, rather than the usual 45. Other than that, everything went smoothly, though the fermenting bucket still smelled like the hefeweizen even after we washed it twice. Well, a little hefeweizen can't hurt.

Update: it's the next day, and the fermenter is bubbling like crazy. This is our first time using Nottingham—success!

2/15/11: Bubbling has slowed considerably, and the gravity is already down to 1.014, which is just about our expected FG. It tastes quite good, very much an IPA.

Bottled 2/18/11. Unfortunately, Jack had to do most of the bottling by himself. We also decided to try cold crashing by leaving the fermenter outside the night before bottling.