Batch 4

Winter and Christmas was closing in and since my first attempt at an IPA didn’t turn out that great, I decided to do something similar but even stronger as for Christmas most beverages are stronger, especially the beer!

I was looking for a fitting recipe and found one yet again in BrewDogs recipe database which was just a bit low on alcohol so I increased it with the brewing software Beersmith which scales and calculates everything for me, really handy. Beersmith is a really great piece of software and OG is not the only thing it can calculate but colour, bitterness and alcohol. Some might see this software as a form of cheat but frankly I couldn’t be bothered since doing everything manually on a piece of paper is not for me.

I wanted the beer to be red because IPA nor DIPA are very Christmas like beer, rather the opposite since it’s usually full of fruity and juicy tastiness. I didn’t want to affect the taste of the beer too much by adding malt that added the red colour which I’d say I managed to avoid. The red colour was subtle but more intense when holding it near a light source, as can be seen in the picture (subtle red), but I think this only added some charm to it. Unfortunately I never took a picture of it near a light source so my word will have to be enough.

This time brewhouse efficiency was on point the 65% I calculated with and it makes it so much easier to be able to foresee the efficiency for future batches. Normal efficiency is usually around 80-85% so mine is very low, but it’s much more important to have a consistent percentage than a high, irregular one.

The beer turned out great even though I fermented this in the warm wardrobe. I dry hopped this beer which might’ve been the reason the esters weren’t so dominant like last time, mixing esters with freshness from the hops was much more pleasant than fruitiness only from esters. It will be very interesting to see how it will taste in the future when I can control the temperature which in turn means I can control approximately how much esters I’ll get.

I’m way more happy with this batch than the previous one and it was fun to try out dry hopping and cold crashing, and how it impacts the finished beer. Ah yes, I forgot to mention I took advantage of the cold weather to cold crash the beer, this is something that most brewers do before transferring the beer to bottles or kegs. By lowering the temperature to around 0 degrees Celsius, residuals from the beer and fermenting process will starting falling down and stay on the bottom of the container making the beer shiny and clear. I added gelatine to improve the clearing process further, it’s not necessary, but I thought I’d go “all in” since I’m heavily reliant on the weather conditions and not something I can try out whenever I like.

I’m also happy that now after four batches done, I’m more confident with the regular brewing steps which means I can start adding new stuff from time to time. Making the beer is as much fun as it is to drink the finished product. Cheers!