Wet Hop Harvet Ale 2019

The beer you can only make that one special time of year when the hops are freshly picked from the bine.

Grain Bill / Fermentables

  • 9 lbs 2 Row Pale Malt
  • 0.5 lb Vienna Malt
  • 0.5 lb Munich Malt
  • 0.75 lb Carapils
  • 0.4 lb Crystal 10
  • 0.4 lb Crystal 20

Hops

  • 1.3 lbs Magnum (15 AAU Estimated)
  • 2.56 lbs Cascade (7  AAU Estimated)

Yeast

  • Danstar Nottingham

Other

  • Whirlfloc Tablet
  • Campden Tablet

Target Stats

  • 5.5 Gallons
  • OG 1.048
  • FG 1.012
  • ABV 4.77%
  • IBU ?
  • SRM 4.88

Final Stats

  • 5.5 Gallons
  • OG 1.051 (Tilt)
  • FG 1.012 (Tilt)
  • ABV 5.12%
  • IBU 465.46 (Estimated — I don’t have my hops tested for alpha or beta acid content.)
  • 79% Efficiency
  • 76% Attenuation

Brew Day

Heat 8 gallons of water to 164°.  (8 Gallons unfiltered Dover City water with a campden tablet.)

Gently dough in grains until all grain is covered by water. Add 1/2 tsp gypsum and 1/4 tsp epsom salts and stabilize pH at ~5.2 adding citric acid if needed.

Mash grains at 155° for 1 hour.

Remove “grain bag“, rinse, squeeze and allow grains to drain.

Bring wort to a boil.

Once wort is boiling, add 8 oz Magnum hops and continue for 45 minutes.

Add 0.84 lbs of total yield of Cascade/Magnum hop mix and continue boil for another 10 minutes.

Add whirlfloc, yeast nutrient, 0.84 lbs Cascade/Magnum hop mix and continue boil for 4 minutes.

Add 0.84 lbs Cascade/Magnum hop mix and continue boil for last 1 minute. (This is a good time to drop in the wort chiller.)

Reduce wort temperature to 150° and add 0.84 lbs Cascade/Magnum hop mix.

Reduce wort temperature to 68° and take OG reading.

Sufficiently aerate and transfer to primary fermenter.

Pitch rehydrated yeast into fermenter.

Allow beer enough time in the primary to adequately ferment and cleanup any diacetyl produced during fermentation.

Bottle and wait another 2 weeks or keg and carb.

Enjoy!

Notes:

August 25, 2019 Brew Day
  • Pitched yeast at 80° due to high groundwater temperatures. Prechilling with ice water did not provide enough cooling and should have occurred towards the end of the chilling, not from the start because it warmed the ice water too much and would have been more useful at the end of the cooling period.
    • Once carboy was placed in the heat sink inside the fermentation chamber, the temperature quickly dropped to 72°.
    • Only used 0.5 lbs of Magnum hops for bittering to avoid an overly bitter beer. ~465 IBUs should be enough :p
  • 3 days, 1.025 – began raising fermentation chamber temperature to 68° for the diacetyl rest.
  • 5 days, 1.013 – began dropping the temperature to promote flocculation.
  • 8 days, 1.012 – beer is clear, time to keg.
  • After carbonating this beer had a strong diacetyl taste to it. It was along the lines of a thick caramel that would coat the mouth after swallowing. It was unpleasant. I bottled the beer and transferred the bottles to a room set around 80°~90°. After 4 days, allowed the bottles and room to naturally cool to an ambient 68° and let it sit for another week. This completely cleared the diacetyl from the beer and it is now delicious.