First All-Grain Brew
Finally, it is time.
Last week I installed the ball valve in my 5 gallon kettle.
Then I built the mash tun... 10 gallon cooler with a false bottom and a ball valve...
It's glorious. All-grain here we come.
The Brew:
Not just any brew would do for the maiden voyage. As I take flight from the extract world only one beer would do: The Falconer's Flight Imperial IPA.
Falconer's Flight:
Falconer's Flight is an exclusive hop blend created by Hop Union to honor the legacy of Northwest brewing legend Glen Hay Falconer, who passed away in 2002. It is in pellet form only, as it is a blend of several distinct hops common in almost any Northwest-style IPA.
The Grains:
We're doing a 60/40 split on 10 pounds of 2-row; US/UK. The UK grains will impart their quintessential nutty, toffee notes. We're also adding 1 lb of dry malt extract to kick the ABV up, and 2 pounds of turbinado sugar, one at the begging of the boil and one at the end.
A note about late-boil additions of fermentables:
The purpose behind adding some of your fermentables later in the boil is "IBU efficiency", meaning just how bitter your hops make your beer.
Some of you at home are saying: But I thought bitterness was only associated with the act of isomerisation of the hop's given levels of "alpha acids", therefore being directly dependent on the alpha % and the length of the boil.
While you at home thinking this are not incorrect, there is another factor: what's in your boil. So while I won't bore you with the big long formula to adjust for this (I assure it's all quite complicated and interesting), just take it on faith that adding some of your fermentables later in the boil will actually increase the amount of IBU's. If you try to use this technique, make sure you find a good brewing calculator, because you can go overboard real fast.
Anyways, the full recipe can be found here:
http://hopville.com/recipe/858775/imperial-ipa-recipes/falconers-iipa
And I will provide an update on what temperatures we'll be mashing at and how it goes.
As always, relax and have a homebrew.
Cheers!