Frog's Breath APA

Brew Day 2/9/13

With just one bottle of Hella! IPA left in the fridge, I figured it was time for another hop-bomb. I have a lot of different prototype recipes for my upcoming hoppy beers, and for this one I wanted to do one that would be a slight change of pace when compared to Hella! Not a total change of pace, mind you, as Frog’ Breath will still be a completely overwhelmingly hoppy beer, but I shifted the hefty gravity of Hella! down a few notches, and went for a hop blend that will hopefully show fruity/ green/ dank as opposed to the big pine/ tropical/ spice in Hella!

I adjusted the gravity down to 1.054, which puts this well under the IPA weigh-in gravity. I used the same hop qtys as in Hella!, which will put the balance much more off in favor even more of the hops and bitterness, so I compensated with a fairly heavy hand of gooey wheat malt and a splash of light crystal to provide some extra doughy sweetness as a counterpoint to the deadly IBUs. I think I could have doubled the crystal given the low gravity, or mashed a bit higher but there is always next time… Here is a quick breakdown of the recipe:

-90% Clean American 2-Row as the base to stay out of the way.

-Blend of Wheat Malt, C15, and Carapils to boost body and add some doughy sweetness.

-WLP090 San Diego Super yeast because I’ve been told that it is the bees-knees in clean and hoppy beers. Just like the Chico yeast but more flocculent.

-Nelson Sauvin leading the hop charge with their funky/ fruity/ foxy flavors. I have only had a handful of commercial beers that use Nelson hops, and I definitely get a prominent New Zealand white wine flavor with some white grape, skanky grapefruit, and dark resin in the background. These are said to be quite polarizing hops, but I’ve really enjoyed the lighterbeers I’ve had them in.

-Centennials for their great, bright fruitiness to lift the Nelsons up out of the “darkness”. I can’t say enough good about the batch of Centennials I have in the freezer right now!

-A touch of Columbus hops for their green and resiny bite that carries a bit of chive to my palette. I feel like Columbus and Chinook both make for great background hops thanks to their earthy bites—Columbus is more dirt/ weed/ onion (think: dirty hippie) to me and is GREAT along with fruitier hops. (Chinook has a fresher wood/ mushroom/ spice thing that I think goes perfectly with piney and citrusy hops, but that is neither here-nor-there;))

-New water treatment calculated for a moderately bitter finish with 225ppm of Sulfate. This is my first brew using Oakland H2O, so we’ll see how it goes and adjust from there.

-Super heavy hop doses ‘cuz that is how I like it.

Honestly, this may not be my finest effort- I undershot the gravity by quite a bit due to much lower than expected boil-off rates (maybe thanks to the switch from cold and dry Sonora air to balmy Oakland), and therefore wish I had mashed higher, targeted more like 70IBUs, and used more like 5% C15 instead of the 2% each C15/ Carapils split. Next time I guess.

The Recipe (for 6 gal kettle yield to make room of hop losses):

11 lbs Great Western Premium 2-Row~90%

.75 lbs Great Western White Wheat Malt~6%

.25 lbs Crystal15~2%

.25 lbs Carapils~2%

1 oz Columbus @ FWH

1oz Columbus @ 15min

2 oz Nelson @ 15min

2 oz Nelson @ k/o at 180F “whirlpool”

2 oz Centennial @ k/o at 180F “whirlpool”

1 oz Columbus DH for 10 Days

1 oz Nelson DH for 10 Days

2 oz Centennial DH for 10 Days

1 oz Nelson DH in 1 Day in bottling bucket for extra “pop”

 

24oz starter of WLP090 San Diego Super Yeast pitched at 65F and allowed to free ferment in ambient room temp of 65F

Oakland Tap with 1.5g/gal gypsum for Pale/ Hoppy water

Mash in with 6 gal to hit 145 sac for 1 hour, then infuse 2 gal to hit 156 dex rest for 1 hour, no mash out, no sparge

1 Whirlfloc tablet at k/o

Collect 5.75 gal after trub removal

OG: 1.054= 75% efficiency
FG: 1.010= 5.7%
Calculated SRM: 4
Calculated IBU: Garetz 70, Tinseth 101

2/9- Pitch yeast and put in Miguel’s fermentation room for low-mid 60sF ambient. Never really went crazy.

2/19- Airlock activity has stopped. Added DH. Gravity @1.011. Samples are quite dank.

2/27- Added final 1oz of Nelson 1 day before bottling. Extra brightness I hope?

2/28- Bottled with 4.1oz table sugar at 65F into 5.5 gals for target VOL CO2 2.4. Added sugar directly to primary bucket and gave a gentile swirl and filled bottles directly from primary to minimize O2 uptake. FG@1.010

4/3- Wow hops! Everyone loves it. Dark, moody, skunky, fruity, grassy, citrus. Check it out!