Brewing slowed in recent months but we kicked it back into gear a few weeks ago and now have 2 brews fermenting. Our first foray back into brewing was a 1 gallon all-Simcoe IPA. This was our 6th brew and the first using Simcoe hops.
Here’s the recipe:
- Recipe Type: Extract
- Yeast: Safale S-04
- Batch Size: 1 gallon
- Boil Size: 1.5 gallons
- 2.00 lbs light DME
- 0.33 lbs Crystal
- 0.375 oz Simcoe - 60 min
- 0.375 oz Simcoe - 15 min
- 0.25 oz Simcoe - 5 min
We changed three other steps in the process. The first was to add the steeping grains once the water reached 150 F instead of starting it in the cold water. The second change was dumping the malt extract in prior to the water boiling. This allowed us to control the boil better and not have to worry about boilover as much. Our last change in the process was to wait until the hot break to add the hops. This led to a longer boil time but again helped to control the overall boil.
The IPA sat in the primary fermenter for 10 days when we racked it to secondary. In between the primary and secondary it tasted incredible. All previous homebrews have been ok but nothing spectacular. This batch was the first that made me say “Wow!” It’s been in the secondary for 2 weeks so we’ll likely bottle it in the next few days.
Two weekends ago we brewed a full 5-gallon wheat beer. We followed the same new techniques as with the Simcoe IPA but also decided to control the fermentation temperature which we had not done previously. The fermentation bucket has been sitting in a cooler for 9 days and we’ve been cycling frozen water bottles every morning and night keeping the temperature between 66 - 70 F. We’ll take a gravity reading in the next couple days to monitor fermentation. The plan is to split the batch and keep half for a straight wheat beer and make a peach wheat out of the other half by racking to secondary and adding 2.5 lbs of fresh Georgia peaches.
I’m excited to taste each of these once they’ve conditioned, particular the IPA and peach wheat. The next batch will be a stout.