Handlebar Bitter - Premium Bitter

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Kilgore IPA - American IPA

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[Side Note: Sorry for the format, but I'm trying to do this for free, and one thing that I've noticed about Google's software is that none of it works with anything else created by Google. So here's a screenshot of a Google spreadsheet that I had to upload and dump into Blogger.]

On Brewing IPAs in Seattle

Last Spring I brewed the 'Hoppiness is an IPA' out of Jamil's Brewing Classic Styles book. I did a full boil on my new outdoor propane burner, in a 7.5 gallon stainless steel kettle. I didn't have access to Horizon for the 60 minute addition, so I replaced it with Magnum. I used pellet hops at the time, which should have higher utilization than whole hops.

[Side Note: I had a bad, fire extinguishing boil-over when I added the 60 minute Magnum addition. I have no idea how much I lost of the hops at that time, but I added another .5 oz as soon as I got the water going again, and called it good. This was my third brew ever! Hopefully that doesn't affect the rest of what I'm about to cover.]

The hop flavor from that recipe was fantastic. Floral and citrusy. People who didn't like IPAs or heavily hopped beers said they actually liked it. And that was part of the problem. I was making an American IPA and it wasn't that bitter. Where all my IBUs at? I figured it might have something to do with the boil over, or to the quality of hops I bought, and just enjoyed the tasty beer.

Fast forward to a few months ago, I'm talking with Ricardo at Cellar Homebrew. He laments that IPAs made around the area just don't have that strong hop bitterness and bite that you get from commercial examples. So we talked about water quality. But let me back up a bit.

Since switching to all grain brewing I became obsessed with water profiling. When you brew with extract, the water that is needed to get the right flavor for the type of beer you are going to make is used to create that extract. Malt extract, after all, is just dehydrated wort. The water you brew it with is chemically altered by the leftover nutrients in that extract from the water used to create it. I brewed a Berliner Weisse which I decided needed to have a lower pH since it was a very light colored beer, but didn't know anything about Seattle's water quality.

2011 Seattle Area Water Supply Analysis [PDF]

Tolt and Cedar have very similar water profiles. Plugging various values into our handy mash pH nomograph, we get this:

We're actually in good shape for pale ales. Really good shape! I had to add some CaCl (calcium chloride) in order to lower the pH for the Berliner Weisse, but not by much.

Back to the brew store. Talking to Ricardo, he's convinced that it's an issue of water profiling. While we're in good shape for pale ales, he knows a guy who is obsessed with getting the hop bitterness up higher not by increasing quantities or using higher Alpha Acid strains, but instead by adjusting the water. Your IBUs are still there, its just that the water is not giving them a good foundation to really sparkle. I took this away and thought about it, and realized he might be on to something.

Where is the birthplace of the IPA? England is the home, but the water used to make the early IPAs was from Burton-on-Trent, which has a rather odd water profile. It has incredibly high calcium and sulfate (SO4) levels, but really what it comes down to is that the sulfate levels are super high and the sodium is super low (820ppm vs 54ppm). By contrast, Seattle area water has them almost even, at 1.6ppm to 2ppm, respectively.

All of this is coming from John Palmer's great How to Brew book, and he asserts that this is what gives the Burton IPAs clean, big hop bitterness. So what does the Burton-on-Trent water look like on the same nomograph?

How crazy is that? The residual alkalinity ends up being just a little bit lower, but it's potentially so much better for allowing those hops to really shine. Of course in order to manipulate Seattle's tap water to have the same profile, for a 23L (roughly 6 gallon) batch of Strike water I'd be looking at adding 13.9 gm of CaSO4 (gypsum), 11.1 gm of CaCO3 (chalk), and 5.4 gm of MgSO4 (epsom salt).

The gypsum and epsom salt raise the calcium and magnesium levels without touching the sodium. More importantly they add a ton of sulfates. Also we're now sitting at 432ppm vs 2ppm for sulfate and sodium - much better! We get the rest of our calcium increase and raise our alkalinity through the chalk, which brings our pH back to where we started. It's a weird balancing act, and I might even want to add some sodium to make that ratio a little closer to Burton's levels. So is it worth it?

I'm planning on brewing up Kilgore IPA today, which I already know will have a huge hop flavor from my selected hops (Summit for bittering, Centennial, Chinook and Amarillo for flavor, and then dry hopping with Centennial). My problem is that each time I take on something new, I tend to change at least two things, so I am never quite sure which new thing is actually making the difference in the final result. If something isn't broken, don't fix it, which I guess can apply to processes as well, so I'm tempted to go for it.

[Side Note 2: Yes, they make Burton water salts, which add crazy amounts of Ca, Mg, CO3 and SO4 to your brew. I might take the easy way out and just grab a bag of this from Cellar, but I'd worry about how this is a generic solution to a complex problem. Seattle might be in the best position to benefit since we have largely clean, simple water. We'll see what happens!]

First public tasting of Handlebar Bitter v2

It's only 3.5 weeks in the bottle but I tried one last Friday and instantly fell in love.

The Handlebar Bitter is a bigger version of the Ordinary Bitter recipe from Jamil's Brewing Classic Styles book. I'm still tied pretty heavily to that book for my recipes, but it's indispensable. If you're looking to get started or want to investigate different styles, I can't imagine a better resource. Enough of that, though.

I put Handlebar in the Special/Best Bitter category since the estimated 70% efficiency of my mash ended up being higher, and with a target OG of 1.038 I managed 1.045 @ 75°F. Target FG was 1.009 and I logged 1.012 at bottling.

[Side Note: I'll post the recipe I used once I find a decent way to do so on Blogger. I also want to post my current brewery setup, as I'm finally getting to a point that I feel really efficient, and that I have the right tools for the job.]

The main changes were moving to Fuggles from Kent Goldings (I know, not really a change), increasing the bittering addition, and sliding the 1 minute final addition up to 10 minutes for just a little bit more of a hop kick. For the grain bill, I replaced Special Roast with Caramunich, because that's what the brew shop had on hand.

I brought a bottle to Whiskey Wednesday at work today and got great feedback. For being such a light beer it has a great mouthfeel, and the hops feel just right. The carbonation is low as it should be. What I love most about it is that it drinks so easily, and when you're done your mouth feels empty without it. Nice drying quality. Does that sound right?

[Side Note 2: part of this blog is to help me expand my brewing/tasting vocabulary. For instance, I still don't quite know what 'bready' means in regard to mouthfeel. I'm pretty sure this brew is bready though, dammit.]

I think I'm going to try to find a local competition and enter this in the English Pale Ale - Special/Best/Premium category. I'm pretty middle of the road for that style stat-wise. I've got another bottle or two to hand out to some trusted tasters, but so far overwhelmingly positive. I knew even at the real ale stage that this was pretty special.