Batch 3

After two darker beers completed it was time for a paler beer and I decided for the beloved style IPA.

Most recipes I could find included various hops additions and as I wanted to keep costs low, but also keep the number of steps low since I wasn’t that confident yet with all the steps involved, I kept looking until I found a recipe from BrewDogs big recipe database.

I managed to increase brewhouse efficiency but not enough to reach the desired recipe OG so I had to use table sugar to increase it as I hadn’t bought dry malt extract yet. Other than the missed OG everything went according to plan which was a bit of a surprise for me since this was a higher alcohol beer and carbonation by fermentation can be slower or not even successful. This is mainly because yeast hibernate or calm down when a lot of alcohol has been produced and going to high can even start killing the yeast since it becomes toxic. I’m not an expert on this topic so do not see this as hard truth but rather a simple explanation to why I was concerned with not getting enough carbon in my beer. In the end, the carbonation worked out great and it’s really simple and fast process when using sugar cubes.

This and the other two batches was fermented in my wardrobe which didn’t at the time have to much of an impact on the finished beer but I noticed a lot of esters in the IPA which I wasn’t too happy about. Some esters are welcome but not too many, and since it was fermented in my wardrobe I’m confident that it was a product from fermenting warm and not temperature controlled. The majority who didn’t like my darker beers liked this one which I don’t agree with.