While I generally been posting on geeky programming stuff, today i’m going to switch gears to geeky brewing stuff and write about an IPA I’m currently cooking up.

San Diego is known for their overhopped, high-gravity India Pale Ale’s, usually called a Douple IPA or Imperial IPA, but among my brewing circle it’s been christened the SDPA, since it’s really rather far removed from what a traditional IPA is supposed to be like. So brewing a beer for a San Diego company naturally should represent this local transition. This recipe is one is a variation of one i’ve concocted over a number of iterations, taking inspiration from Alpine’s Duet, Stone’s Ruination, Green Flash’s West Coast IPA, Pizza Port’s HOP-15 and Ballast Point’s Sculpin IPA. It’s a extract recipe trying to emulate full grain color and taste by using late addition.

The resultant beer has been named the MindTouch RESTful IPA both for geeky reference to Dream and this high gravity ale’s ability to induce extreme relaxation after only a pint or two.

Ingredients

• Malt
  • 0.5# Victory Steeping Grains
  • 0.5# 10L Crystal Steeping Grains
  • 1.0# Cara Pils Steeping Grains
  • 7.0# Coopers Light DME
• Hops
  • 2 oz. Centennial Pellets
  • 2 oz. Chinook Pellets
  • 2 oz. Cascade Pellets
  • 2 oz. Simcoe Plugs
• Yeast
  • White Labs California Ale Yeast

Steeping

First step was to heat 2 gallons of filtered water to 160F for steeping the grains. The Victory, Cara Pils and Crystal malt were suspended in the water in a steeping bad, so as to not have it burn the bag’s bottom and so I could easily remove them again afterwards. The grains were steeped for 45 minutes.

Boil

Once the steeping grains were removed, the water level was topped to 3 gallons brought to a boil. At the beginning of the 60 minute boil the bittering hops were added:

• 1 oz. Centennial
• 1 oz. Chinook
• 0.5 oz. Cascade

With 15 minutes remaining, I first gradually added the 7 lbs. of Light Dried Malt Extract, then more bittering hope were added:

• 1 oz. Chinook
• 1 oz. Cascade

At the end of boil, I added more hops for flavoring and aroma:

• 1 oz. Centennial
• 1 oz. Cascade

Pitch

Once the wort had cooled significantly, I transfered it to the a 6.5 gallon carboy (fermenting head space) and topped it off with filtered water for a final volume of 5 gallons. Finally pitched the California Ale Yeast when the wort cooled to about 80F. The original gravity was meaured at 1.064 @ ~80F or 1.067, adjusted. Historically, this recipe ends up at a final gravity of about 1.010, which would give us 7.8% alcohol by volume, or just about right for an SDPA.

Next weekend, I’ll rack it to a 5 gallon carboy it and dry-hop it with 2 oz of Simcoe plugs. Weekend after that it’ll be bottled, so in about 4 weeks bottle conditioning should be complete and the first, if a bit green, tastes will be had.