Thursday, October 28, 2010

Go Dodgers Imperial Amber Ale


My brother-in-law is going to be in town this weekend so I figured it'd be a perfect weekend to brew. I'm all out of the CDA I made and I don't have anything hoppy on tap (cardinal sin...I know). I'm a huge Dodger fan and God has cursed me with filthy rotten Giants fans all around me, Andy is one of the accursed SF supporters I have to deal with. To make matters worse, those good for nothing Giants are playing in the world series. Anyhoo...I'm going to use a bunch of the hops he got me and all the hops I grew. This would be an IIPA except the crystal 120 darkened it a bit. Here's the recipe:

Grain:
14 lbs 6-Row
1 lbs Caramunich
0.5 lbs Special B
0.5 lbs Biscuit
0.5 lbs Crystal 120

Hops:
This is where it's going to get a little sketchy.
I'm going to continuously hop from first wort to the end. If I were forced to write down how much I used, this would be my guess:
1 oz Todd's Spice FWH
1 oz Todd's Spice @90
1 oz Todd's Spice @80
1 oz Todd's Spice @70
1 oz Todd's Spice @60
1 oz Todd's Spice @50
1 oz Todd's Spice @40
1 oz Todd's Spice @30
1 oz Todd's Spice @20
1 oz Home grown Cascade @ 5
1 oz Home grown Cascade @ dry hopped in the fermenter

Yeast:
2 packets of Safale-05

Water:
1 lbs to 1 liter

Notes:
10-30-2010--Everything went smooth enough. Andy and Luke were over helping, so that was nice. The hops were a lot of fun since we just dumped a ton every 10ish minutes. We were drinking, so sometimes we forgot. Andy made up for those times by dumping 6 oz at a time. There were so many hops that we had to filter them out half way through the boil; then again at the end. I'm not sure we got them all.
11-2-2010--So I guess we didn't filter out all the hops because there was a LARGE amount sitting at the top of the bucket. I think it sucked up all the yeast because I haven't seen a lot of action in the airlock.
11-3-2010--Pitched another packet of dry yeast.
11-4-2010--Took a reading: 1.020. It's probably finished, but I racked to secondary just to drop it a little more. It's REEEEEALLY hoppy :]
11-7-2010--Kegged
11-9-2010--Not fully carbed yet, but I had a pint anyway. Big, bright hop taste with a caramel finish. Real murky color with some yeast sediment on the bottom of the glass when I finished. Suuper good.
11-16-2010--Big maltly-caramelly flavor with a spicy finish. Really good.

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