Today was a big day in the world of Sarah Stone homebrew! I ventured off the safe path of pre-packaged recipe kits and traversed onto the uncertain road of creating and making my very own recipe.
I did have a little help, though. Back in March, the
Craft Brewer's Conference was held here in Washington, DC. The CBC is the craft beer industry's main event and I was
ecstatic that it j
ust so happened to be held here in DC
just around the time that I've been brewing beer on a regular basis. Of course I had to figure out how to weasel my way into an event of some sorts.
Thankfully, one of the local home brew clubs here hosted an event at the start of CBC featuring a lecture on IPAs by the acclaimed
Mitch Steele, head Brew Master at
Stone Brewery in San Diego (yeah, I know, they stole my name). This piqued my interest because I had recently visited Stone's brewery in November whilst on a business trip to San Diego. Talk about the most
beautiful brewery you can imagine! Mitch lectured on the history of Indian Pale Ales and I picked up his fascinating book on the subject.
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Nerd alert! Learning about Burton's IPA |
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There is a whole entire book on IPAs! |
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duh, of course I got mine signed |
This
wonderful book includes several historic as well as modern day IPA recipes. I had been wanting to brew a great IPA, and what better way than from a recipe out of a whole entire book on the subject!
I decided to brew the recipe for Stone's IPA. The book provides the grain bill, hops and yeast strain that each recipe calls for. It's up to the reader to figure out the math to make the amount of ingredients work for a five gallon homebrew batch. I am fairly confident that my interpretation will work out alright. (o_O) I call mine
Sarah Stone IPA!
I might sound confident now, but you should have seen me this morning. I was totally second guessing everything. The recipe was pretty loose, so I had a lot of desicions to make about boil times for the grains/malts/hops. Hopefully I made the right choices!
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My first time using White Labs yeast |
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Nice mix of 10L and 20L crystal malts |
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LOOK MOM, A WORT CHILLER! |
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Chinook, Columbus, Centennial Hops |
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Bad boy in action |
The two other milestones from today include using White Labs yeast for the first time and using my new piece of equipment, the mighty wort chiller! Best investment I've made thus far. Say goodbye to ice baths and say hello to easy temperature changes.
I'm pretty nervous and excited to find out how this IPA turns out. I am expecting great things! Will let you know what happens.