Single Hop IPA | Apollo and Sterling Varieties | 3rd Runnings Berliner

Single Hop IPA experiments are an amazing thing to do with a Homebrew club for many reasons.  Hops fade so quickly it's almost impossible to do this type of experiment on a large scale by yourself.   Doing the experiment as a group is really the only way to taste the difference between a bunch of hop varieties at one time to really understand the characteristics of bittering, aroma, and flavor of a given hop.

There are many ways to go about doing a Single Hop IPA experiment but here is the best way in my opinion.   Since we know what the IBU's of a beer are by the label on the package where we bought them the goal should be that everyone hits a specific IBU say 70.   Your Flavor and Aroma additions should be either exactly the same size or very close the same size.  Adjust your 60 minute bittering contribution accordingly.  Use a simple malt bill that will let the hops shin without tons of caramel malts getting in the way!  For this reason we choose to do a clone of Bell's Two Hearted (which is Centennial through and through)

 Because the best way to do any experiment is to only change one variable, you'll want to do your best to eliminate as many variables as possible.   This is tough when you have 20+ people brewing on their own equipment.   Here is a list of unfortunate, but uncontrollable variables in a HBC single Hop experiment.

• Mash Temp- Inevitably, not everyone will hit their mash temp right on and some people's equipment will loose heat over the hour long mash.
• Fermentation - Most people just ferment at the ambient temperature of their house.   I encouraged our members to use a swamp cooler to keep temps low.
• Mash Effeciencies- You have to trust that everyone will do their best to calculate their mash effeciencies and adjust the recipe accordingly.
• Extract vs. All-grain
• Packaging -Bottle conditioning will be taste differently then a kegged version as it won't be as fresh.

Hear are the details of our Single Hop experiment and how we decide to deal with extra variables in order to control the experiment as much as possible!

NORDEAST BREWERS ALLIANCE SINGLE HOP IPA EXPERIMENT DETAILS

Time Frame –

• Brew Day:  June 1st - June 15th
• Dry Hop for 5-7 days.
• Bottle or Keg by July 1st-7th!
• Sample side by side on Thursday JULY 19th at the Eastside Neighborhood Services in MPLS!

HOPS-

1. Columbus
2. Nelson Sauvin
3. Zythos
4. Sterling
5. Apollo
6. Chinook
7. Czech Saaz
8. US Saaz
9. Pacific Jade
10. Northern Brewer
11. Ahtanum
12. Citra
13. Mt. Hood
14. Cluster
15. Summit
16. Warrior
17. Galaxy
18. Centennial

WATER

• KANDIYOHI water (cheap and available at Rainbow Foods)
• MASH INGREDIENTS (target OG of 1.064 assumes >65% efficiency)
• 11 lbs. Rahr 2-Row (or 9.15 lbs Gold malt extract syrup)
• 1 lbs. Briess Caramel 40

MASH SCHEDULE: single infusion

• Sacch’ Rest: 152° F for 60 minutes
• Sparge: 170° F for 15 minutes(batch sparge) or however long it takes you (fly sparge).

BOIL: 60 min.

• 60 min. addition = 22 IBUs
• 20 min. addition = 30 IBUs
• 5 min. addition = 6 IBUs
• Target IBU - 55-60 IBU’s using Tinseth

DRY HOPS

• 1 oz. of your chosen hop – add one week before bottling day.  Do not dry hop for more then 7 days!!!

YEAST:

• SAFALE US-05  (DRY YEAST) – 1 packet (not re-hydrated)
• Please just dump the packet directly into the cooled wort, we don’t want to risk contamination or variation by rehydrating the yeast.

FERMENTATION

• Aerate Wort
• Chill wort to 63-65 degrees
• Start fermentation at 63-65 degrees
• Please try not to let fermentation get above 68 degrees in the first two days of active fermentation.

Last night I brewed an 11 gallon batch of beer for this experiment.  I mashed, sparged and transferred into a keggle as usual.  Then I separated it into two 7 gallon stock pots to be boiled seperately.  5.5 gallons each of a Single Hop IPA for my HBC's Single Hop IPA experiment.    I also collected an extra gallon of 2nd and 3rd runnings and boiled that...lightly hopped to 7 IBU's, cooled to 100 degrees and pitched a full pack of Wyeast Lactobacillus.   I'm keeping that in my attic where it's super warm for a few days and then I'll pitch some brett into it.  Should be a fun little experiment.

*****If you click on Apollo or Sterling you'll get taken to my recipes for them on Hopville.   I ended up not being able to find the designated water, so I just used half RO water and half MPLS tap water.