Brewed: Alpha Acid Aspirations – Blast

By scot in Home Brewing on Tuesday, December 4th, 2012

2oz Citra, 2oz Warrior, and 3 bags of 1oz Citra and .25oz Simcoe

Sometime in May of this year, I was playing around with recipes. American Imperial IPA recipes to be exact. During this time, I decided that I needed to come up with a “series” name for the beers I was concocting. Since almost all of my beers are named from my years of caddying (usually golf terms), I had to get a golf spin to the name while evoking thoughts of hops. Alpha Acid Aspirations (my own version of AAA) was born with each beer being named from the caddying days. The word “aspire” is in there to promote my goal with these home brews: lofty heights for hoppy beers. I plan to make at least 26 home brewed beers in this series: one for each letter of the alphabet. A few letters will be tough. At this point, I have no plans of brewing the same beer twice, but, hopefully, I will manage a few annual home brew members.

IPAs constitute one of my favorite styles of beer to home brew. The amount of hops that are available, the amount of new hop varieties, and the pursuit of new varieties, allow for this style to evolve from just a hop standpoint alone. This beer, Blast (the first beer in the series is Aerosol, but I wanted to start with this beer), is centered around Citra with Simcoe hop highlights.

A third of my base malt is Pilsner. I know these beers are about the hop but I was trying to see how the Pils graininess would mix with a basket of hops. I also added wheat and oats for head retention and body. A half pound of table sugar was added besides the low mash temperature to really dry this beer out.

General Information
Brew Date: Sunday, December 02, 2012
Recipe Type: All Grain
Yeast: Safale U-05 (2)
Yeast Starter: none
Batch Size (Gallons): 5.00
Original Gravity: 1.073
IBU: 148.3
Color: 5.7 SRM
Boiling Time (Minutes): 90
Brewhouse Efficiency: 74%
Alcohol by Volume: 8.9% (believe it should be closer to 8.0%)
Primary Fermentation: 21 days @68*F
Secondary Fermentation: 7 days @68*F

Grain Bill:
10.00# 2-Row
5.50# Pilsner (German)
1.00# Wheat
0.50# Crystal 20L
0.50# Sugar
0.40# Flaked Oats

Mash:
Saccharification Rest @ 150*F for 60 minutes.

Hop Bill:
2.00 oz Citra (12.0%) first wort hop
2.00 oz Warrior (15.0%) @ 90 min
1.00 oz Citra (12.0%) @ 10 min
0.25 oz Simcoe (13.0%) @ 10 min
1.00 oz Citra (12.0%) @ 5 min
0.25 oz Simcoe (13.0%) @ 5 min
1.00 oz Citra (12.0%) @ 1 min
0.25 oz Simcoe (13.0%) @ 1 min
3.00 oz Citra (12.0%) dry hop for 7 days
0.50 oz Simcoe (13.0%) dry hop for 7 days

Extras
1.0 tsp Whirlfloc @ 15 min.
1.0 tsp Yeast Nutrient @ 15 min.

2013-0120 – Blasted by a Tasting

I figure this beer to be in primary for three weeks. Racked and dry hopped for a week. Bottled, hopefully conditioned two weeks thereafter. A total time of six weeks. Enjoy!

Useless Fact: If you yelled for 8 years, 7 months and 6 days, you would have produced enough sound energy to heat one cup of coffee. If you fart consistently for 6 years and 9 months, enough gas is produced to create the energy of an atomic bomb.