Gyle 17 - AG Experimental Hop 366 SH IPA

I was very excited to get these hops, so excited that I had to brew almost instantly with them.
They have a very big aroma, and quite an oily feel in the hand. I would say that there were similarities with Citra, but with a tropical fruit hop like Amarillo thrown in for good measure. With that in mind, it's pretty obvious why I wanted to brew with them straight away.

 I decided to attack this hop with a decent body and strength so that I could showcase the hops as I felt that they should be shown. To that, it had to be an American style IPA about the 6-8% range. I've tried low ABV single hop beers, and don't feel that they showcase the hops as well as I would like. I will try a 5%< version of this to see how it compares.

The recipe was as follows;

Malts
6kg of Marris Otter Pale
0.5kg of Carapils
0.5kg of Light Munich

 Hops
20g of Experimental 366 @ 60mins
25g of Experimental 366 @ 20mins
25g of Experimental 366 @ 15mins
25g of Experimental 366 @ 10mins
50g of Experimental 366 @ 5mins
50g of Experimental 366 @ Flamout
150g of Experimental 366 @  Dry Hop for 5 days

 This was as I was weighing the malts, they're fairly similar in colour, so it shouldn't be too dark.

 At the moment I am running a 2 cool-box system that I got from the ever so kind @crasch77 and @doctor_james. The top cool-box in the photo below is the HLT, and the lower is the mash tun.

 With this system I usually aim for about 70% total system efficiency and I go for fairly big ABV beers and a batch size around the 21 to 25 litre mark. With these I could get probably 40-45 litres of a lower ABV beer, but I am massively limited by the size of the brew kettle that I have at the moment. All that will change soon enough though.

At mash in, I open the tap on the HLT, then start adding in the malts, I do it this way to try and get as good a mixture as possible. I mash at a ratio of 2.5 Litres of liquor for every kg of malt. I also mash at quite a low temperature (usually between 62 and 64 degrees C) for between 90 and 120 minutes as this was recommended to me for higher ABV beers. It seems to work well for me.

It's worth noting that I do water treatment to try and get as much out of the mash as possible, and to help showcase the malts and hops in the finished beer.

To try and keep the temperature as constant as possible, and to not lose too much, I put some foil over the top of the mash, when it comes to sparging, I then put some holes in the foil and pour over that. I don't have a proper sparge setup yet, and this helps to not disturb the grain bed too much.

I take the first load of run-off and put it back through the mash with the sparging liquor, and once I get half of the final volume I put that into the pan to start getting it up to boil temperature, as I complete the rest of the boil.

Once the wort is all in the pan, it's time to get it up to boil and start the hop additions and timer.

This is how I have to do my 60 minute boil at the moment, in two pans. It's not so bad, but I am looking forward to when I have a single kettle with which to brew.

Having all of my hops already weighed out takes any element of urgency out of the brew, I just put in the pot at the time my timer tells me to do so.

At the end of the boil, it's time to turn on the water to the immersion chiller that has been in the brew pot for the last 15 minutes (It goes in at the same time as the Irish Moss).

Enough has evaporated by this point that it's possible to combine the two boil pots to help make the cooling easier.

At the aimed 70% efficiency I should have got a starting gravity of 1.069, quite happily I actually got 1.072, which means an overall system efficiency of 73% for this brew. I was quite happy with that.

All the calculations I have in my spreadsheet tell me that the yeast should brew it down by 75% which would give me a final gravity of 1.017 and an expected alcohol of 6.8% (based on the expected theoretical 1.069). I generally just leave the yeast to do it's job, and I take the beer off the yeast after 5-7 days, depending on what I have going on in life.

When I had done this for this brew, so that I could dry hop and condition, I was down to an adjusted gravity of 1.008, giving me an ABV of 8.38% I get my gravities by using a refractometer and 2 apps which give adjustments for the brewing, I calibrate and check the 0 readings on the refractometer with every brew, and I think I'm going to start using a hydrometer as well, to make sure I'm getting the right values.

Following taking it off the yeast, it was dry hopped with 150g of the Experimental 366 hop for 5 days before being put into the cellar for 2 days of lower temperature conditioning to help clear out the yeast and hops.

After the 2 days in the cellar, it was bottled and is now sat in the living room, hopefully conditioning and carbonating nicely. As it was bottled on the 27th of May, I reckon it will be nice and drinkable on the 26th or 27th of June. I will put up another entry then to let you know how it tastes/looks/smells. I can't wait.