Willamette / Cascade India Pale Ale

Well there’s a lot happening on the beer front over at my house lately!  The pumpkins are out, as are the fall beers, plus several tasty imperial treats that I just blogged about.  Thus, I’m enjoying the commercial side of things quite a bit as of late.

In addition, I’ve almost completed the construction of my first mash tun, made from a cooler.  I plan to start making all grain beer soon!  I will be starting off with 3.5 gallon batches, mostly due to the fact that I’m using a 5 gallon cooler, and I want to do a full boil without purchasing a new pot.  I will learn and improve my process with 3.5 gallon batches, then upgrade my equipment later.

I have one more extract batch to make, and that’s going to be this post: Willamette / Cascade India Pale Ale.

Also, I just picked up Beersmith II and I’m quite pleased with the software!  The stats for this beer came from Beersmith II.

Now it should be noted that I originally planned this to be a 5 gallon batch, but it’s going to come out more like 4 now, with a little bit of adjustment on the ingredients.  The ratio of grains might be a little off from my original plan, but I have gotten such good results from a full (or nearly full) boil that I’m just going with what works from here on out.

I also kind of decided on this mixture of ingredients partially to get rid of some stragglers that I had in my cupboard and freezer.   Might dry hop it, but if that happens I’m not sure what hops I’ll use (I’ll have to see what I have at the time).

Recipe:

• 1 lb 2-row
• 1 lb caramel 40
• 0.5 lb pale wheat malt
• 2 lbs extra light dry extract
• 3.25 lbs pale liquid extract
• 1 oz cascade 60 min
• 1 oz willamette 60 min
• 2.19 oz willamette 5 minutes
• 2.57 oz cascade 5 minutes
• US-05 (rehydrated)

Procedure:

1. prepare checklist
2. lay out ingredients and equipment
3. bring 0.75 gallon spring water to 165 F
4. add grains
5. mash for 30 minutes at 155F
6. Sparge / strain
7. In main boil pot, pre-boil 3 gallons spring water
8. when grains are finished mashing, combine wort into boiling pot with pre-heated spring water and bring to boil
9. add bittering hops, 1 oz each cascade and willamette at 60 minute mark
10. add the wort chiller at 30 minutes.  make sure wort chiller is pre-filled with hot water
11. add the DME and LME incrementally during the last 30 minutes of the boil
12. add 1/4 tsp Irish moss powder at 15 minute mark
13. add 2.19 oz willamette at 5 minute mark
14. add 2.57 oz cascade at 5 minute mark
15. begin sanitation procedures on spoon, thermometer, bucket, wine thief
16. begin cooling with wort chiller at 0 minutes
17. stir occasionally with sanitized stainless spoon during cooling
18. ensure bucket, wine thief, thermometer, spoon are sanitized
19. when wort gets to about 75F, add to fermentation bucket
    
20. top to 4 gallons with chilled spring water (if necessary)
21. take OG reading with sanitized wine thief
22. thoroughly aerate wort with sanitized stainless steel spoon
23. ensure wort is 75F or a little less before pitching yeast
24. pitch yeast
25. gently stir using sanitized stainless steel spoon
26. install sanitized bucket lid and airlock
27. ferment in closet for 7-9 days at 67F ambient air temp.
28. after 7-9 days, add dry hops
29. take FG sample and bottle (after a minimum of 14 days)
30. use 4 oz corn sugar at bottling

Targets:

• OG 1.067
• FG 1.015
• IBU 50
• ABV 6.9

• Actual OG 1.062
• Actual FG

Please note: these target figures are from Beersmith II.  If anyone who reads this has beersmith and comes up with a different set of numbers, please comment or contact me so we can discuss beersmith!