Imperial IPA (first original recipe)

I decided to be a little more ambitious for this brew and go by my own recipe. It will be an imperial IPA with a little bit of amber character to it. For those who don't know, IPA stands for India Pale Ale. This is a beer style that is characterized by an intensely hoppy (bitter) flavor. The style was developed back in the times of colonial England. The word "India" in IPA refers not to the country, but to the East India Company, the premier importer/exporter of the 18th century. Beer was among the products that the company exported. Beer, while generally very resistant to bacterial infection can still act as a breeding ground for some bacteria. When it is holed up for months in the hull of a warm, damp ship it becomes especially susceptible. What the clever folks at the East India Company knew was that the isoprenes imparted to the beer by the hops act as an antibiotic agent. They were able to make a beer that would survive a long boat trip across the ocean by adding more hops to it. The result was the extremely bitter style of beer known as the IPA.

So that covers the IPA part of the name, but what about the "imperial." Adding the word "imperial" to the name of any beer style generally means that it is somehow bigger and bolder than its non-imperial counterpart. In general, imperial beers use large amounts of hops and malt. As a result, they are typically higher in ABV and with very in-your-face flavors. My imperial IPA should be no exception!

Here are some photos from brew day:

The wort just before pitching the yeast.

Here it is after sitting for a few minutes. That lighter layer on the bottom is called the hot break protein.

Steeping the specialty grains.

Wort just before hop additions.

What I am shooting for in this beer is a style with decent malt character to it and a nice punch of hops. The hops I used should give the beer fruity and piney flavors. I will review it when it is ready.

Here's the recipe:

Recipe Name:         La Mia's Imperial Amber IPA

Recipe Volume:      1 gallon

Yeast:                     White Labs WLP001 California Ale

Malts:	Amount	Gravity Points
1. Pale malt extract (DME)	1.75 lbs.	77
2. Crystal 120	1.75 oz.	3
3. Caramunich	1.75 oz.	3

Calculated Original Gravity            1.084
Caclulated Boil Gravity                   1.060
Measured Original Gravity             1.090

Hops:	Amount	Boil Time	IBUs
1. Nugget (13.3%)	0.2 oz.	90	45
2. Simcoe (13%)	0.15 oz.	30	24
3. Simcoe (13%)	0.15 oz.	1	24
4. Nugget (13.3%)	0.1 oz.	Dry Hop
5. Simcoe (13%)	0.2 oz.	Dry Hop

Calculated IBUs          70

Procedure
- Heat 1 gallon of water in a large pot.
- Heat 3 cups of water to 150-160 F in small pot, add Crystal 120 and Caramunich. Steep for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally (maintaining temperature is not vital). Remove grain bag and wash with water heated in large pot.
- Add 3 more cups of water, bring to boil, turn off heat and stir in 1.75 lbs. DME
- Return to boil and add 0.2 oz. Nugget hops
- Boil 60 minutes, and then add 0.15 oz. Simcoe hops
- Boil 15 minutes, and then add 1/4 tsp. yeast nutrient and 1/4 tsp. Irish moss
- Boil 14 minutes, and then add 0.15 oz. Simcoe hops
- Boil 1 more minute, then take off heat
- Top up to 1 gallon with chilled sterilized water
- Chill wort to 75 F in ice water bath
- Add wort to fermenter
- Aerate for a few mintues
- Pitch 3/4 of 1 vial of yeast

"Sugarman" Chocolate Stout

"Sugar man won't you hurry
Cause I'm tired of these scenes
For a blue coin won't you bring back
All those colors to my dreams"

The inspiration for this beer was a song by a fantastic singer-songwriter named Sixto Rodriguez. If you haven't seen the movie Searching for Sugar Man yet I would highly recommend it.

I decided to do a stout for my second homebrew to mix things up a little bit (I will likely make a lot of ales in the future). While listening to Sugar Man, it hit me... why not a chocolate stout?

Brewing a stout was a lot of fun. This is probably the closest I will ever get to making something that could be called a witches brew (see the photo below). The colors and smells that the grains impart are very satisfying.

Stouts use roasted grains to impart the dark, rich colors they typically boast. The roasting process causes two types of reactions to occur in the grains, Maillard reactions and caramelization. A Maillard reaction is the reaction between a sugar and an amino acid. These reactions produce compounds that are dark and have a toasty flavors (guess what else is the product of Maillard reactions!  yes, that is toast... I wonder where the toasty flavors in toast come from???).

Caramelization occurs when a sugar decomposes, releasing gases and leaving behind more carbon-rich residues. This process is called pyrolysis. Burning wood is a good example of pyrolysis. A common misconception about burning wood is that the fire is coming from the wood, itself. In fact, the fire resides just above the wood. The heat created by the fire causes the wood to decompose into ash (mostly carbon) and volatile compounds that react with oxygen (burn), releasing heat and sustaining this process. Caramelization also lends to the flavor profile of many beers (specifically some types of Belgians), but to a lesser extent than Maillard reactions for the case of most stouts.

The roasted grains (crystal 60, roasted barley, and chocolate malt to be exact) were used in conjunction with dry malt extract to make up the total grain bill. The roasted grains are expected to dominate the flavor profile, with the malt extract lending to the body and providing a large food source for the fermentation process.

The hop additions for this brew didn't lend quite as strong a smell as the last beer I made (see links here and here), but they did make the wort look awesome (photo below). Hop flavor is secondary in most stouts, and I don't intend that the hop flavor will dominate in this beer.

I pitched the yeast and put the beer to rest in the bathtub. Here is what the beer looked like after just a few hours.

Such a rapid vigorous fermentation should have been a warning to me, but I did not heed it. Here's what I saw when I woke up the next morning and went to check on the beer.

It was even messier than it looks. Beer had sprayed all over the walls, which was not fun to clean up, but not to worry, this was nothing a little Windex couldn't solve. Oh, that and a blow-off hose.

The beer has calmed down now. I will transfer it to the secondary fermenter tomorrow.

For those interested, here's the recipe:

Recipe Name:         "Sugarman" Chocolate Stout

Recipe Volume:      5 gallons

Yeast:                     White Labs WLP004 Irish Ale

Malt:	Amount	Gravity Points
1. Pale malt extract (DME) in boil	3.3 lbs.	42
2. Pale malt extract (DME) at knockout	3.3 lbs.	42
3. Crystal 60 malt	0.5 lb.	3
4. Roasted barley	0.5 lb.	4
5. Chocolate malt	0.5 lb.	3

Calculated Original Gravity            1.063
Caclulated Boil Gravity                   1.044
Measured Original Gravity             1.068

Hops:	Amount	Boil Time	IBUs
1. Nugget (13.3%)	0.75 oz.	60	37
2. Fuggle (4.5%)	1 oz.	30	13

Calculated IBUs          49

Procedure
- Heat 1 gallon of water to 150-160 F, add Crystal 60, roasted barley, and chocolate malt. Steep for 30 minutes (maintaining temperature is not vital in this stage). Remove grain bag and let drain.
- Add 3 gallons of water, bring to a boil, then turn off heat and stir in 3.3 lbs. DME
- Return to boil and add 0.75 oz. Nugget hops
- Boil 30 minutes, and then add 1 oz. Fuggle hops
- Boil 15 minutes, and then add 1 tsp. yeast nutrient
- Boil 15 minutes, then add 3.3 lbs. extract, let sit 10 minutes to pasteurize
- Add 1.5 gallons chilled sterilized water
- Chill wort to 75 F in ice water bath
- Add wort to fermenter
- Pitch yeast

Freezing yeast (or yeast ranching)

Yeast is one of the most important components of a beer. It does most of the heavy lifting in the brewing process. A homebrewer really only does a couple hours of work for each batch of beer (making the wort, transferring it to a secondary fermenter, and bottling the beer). However, this process can take weeks or even months from start to finish (actually even north of one year for the case of some barley wines). Someone (or should I say something) is working during all of that time, and that is the yeast.

So yeast is important, and since it can also be a bit expensive (about $7 for a vial that would work or a typical batch, which adds up over time), it makes sense to save and reuse the yeast if possible. As it turns out, this is not all that difficult to do. However, it is also not as simple as chucking a vial of yeast into the freezer (if you do this you will end up with a vial of dead yeast). There are a few simple steps required to be able to freeze yeast without killing all of the cells. I'm going to walk you through the requirements and explain why each is important.

Let's start with the components you will need to accomplish this job.

Several small containers

Small containers of some sort are needed to store the yeast. These containers should be big enough to store about 40 mL of yeast slurry (suspension of yeast in water). The yeast itself often comes in a nice little vial that can be reused (one can be seen in the photo above and the photo at the bottom of this post).

Centrifuge tubes are great for this purpose if you can get your hands on them (working in a lab can make that easier).

Glycerin

Not just a song from the early 90s! Glycerin (also known as glycerine and glycerol) is an alcohol with three hydroxyls too. About 10% by volume glycerine is mixed with the yeast slurry prior to freezing. The reason this is important has to do with crystal formation in water.

When water freezes, some of its molecules are able to orient into regular arrays and form crystal. However, a large portion of water molecules are frozen in place before they can orient into crystals, instead forming an amorphous solid. When you put water into your freezer to make ice, what you end up making is a solid that is comprised of a mixture of crystal domains in an amorphous matrix. Hopefully this makes a little more sense after looking at this schematic:

The typical ice in your freezer is mostly amorphous with small crystalline or polycrystalline regions. Here's a microscopic view what it looks like:

The fibrous, snow-flake-looking things are crystalline domains. The rest of the ice (which just looks smooth and transparent) is amorphous.

What you want when freezing yeast is to have the cells trapped in a completely amorphous ice matrix. The formation of ice crystals causes yeast cells to lyse (their membranes are disrupted and the cells are destroyed). If we tried to freeze our yeast in pure water we would end up forming a lot of ice crystals and killing the yeast cells. This is where the glycerin comes into play. When a mixture of glycerin in water freezes, ice crystals cannot form. As the water molecules begin to orient, glycerin molecules get in the way and disrupt crystal formation. The result is ice that is almost completely amorphous, which is exactly what we want when freezing yeast.

Isopropyl alcohol

I honestly don't even know why I bothered to put a picture of isopropyl alcohol. I think everyone is familiar with it (if not as isopropyl alcohol than as rubbing alcohol - they are both the same thing). The reason I needed isopropyl alcohol to freeze the yeast is because the freezer I have is frost-free. Most modern freezers are frost-free. If you are unsure whether your freezer is frost-free there is a simple test you can do to determine this: Open up your freezer. Is there a layer of frost covering everything your freezer? If no - your freezer is frost-free. If yes - your freezer is not frost-free.

The reason a frost-free freezer is not ideal for storing yeast has to do with the mechanism by which the freezer gets rid of frost. A frost-free freezer will periodically warm up, which allows any frost that might have formed in it to dissipate. Food that you have stored in the freezer is not harmed by this process, but yeast won't survive these cycles of warming and cooling.

Where the isopropyl alcohol comes in handy is in keeping the yeast at approximately the same temperature during its time in the freezer. If you look back at the first photo in this post, you will notice that I filled the jar containing the yeast vials partially with liquid. That liquid is isopropyl alcohol (~70%). The isopropyl alcohol acts as a temperature reservoir that keeps the yeast frozen and shields it from the frost reduction cycles. Other liquids (or gel cold packs) would work too as long as they don't freeze at the ambient temperature of the freezer.


That's all you need to freeze the yeast. Now let's walk through the steps required to accomplish the job.

- Recover and wash yeast from bottom of fermenter. I am not going to go through the steps required to do this. If you look up washing yeast on the internet you will find plenty of guides on how to do this (maybe in the future I will write up a blog post on doing this myself).

- Pour off excess water so there is just enough for yeast to form a very dense slurry.

- Sanitize some water by boiling it for 15 minutes. Chill in refrigerator after sanitizing.

- Make solution of 20% glycerin in chilled sanitized water.

- Mix equal volumes yeast slurry and glycerin solution, pour into vials, and shake to mix thoroughly.

- Put vials into container that will hold isopropyl alcohol bath and fill with enough isopropyl alcohol to cover above level of yeast.

- Loosen caps on vials, and freeze (caps are loosened so pressure doesn't increase and break vials as water expands during freezing).

- Once completely frozen, tighten caps on vials.

- You are done!


Here's a photo of one of the vials I froze. I will write up another post in the future when I reactivate it to let you all know how that goes.